Churchill's Secret

The Brits do television so well. This is a classic example of that. The film covers the last years of Churchill's last term as prime minister after he had suffered a stroke. It's interesting that the filmmakers would focus on a bad period in the life of a national icon yet still pay great tribute to him while also staying historically accurate. (Can you imagine, for example, Hollywood doing a film based on Ronald Reagan's last years with Alzheimer's?) Nor did they sugarcoat Churchill's dysfunctional family. Randolph comes off as an arrogant, drunken jerk, which he was. There are superb performances all around. This is a very British and a very good motion picture!

Set in 1953, Charles Sturridge's drama concentrates on one of the major political secrets of the Fifties - the stroke experienced by Prime Minister Winston Churchill (Michael Gambon), the news of which was kept from the public sphere through the machinations of his private secretary Jock Colville (Patrick Kennedy) and the powerful media barons led by Max Aitken, aka Lord Beaverbrook (Matthew Marsh).

There is a good story to tell here about politics, and the concept of releasing information on a "need to know" basis, something beloved of Sir Humphrey Appleby and his fellow civil servants in YES MINISTER. Concepts of "truth" and the public interest really do not matter; so long as the wheels of government keep running in the way they have always done, then everyone is happy. It was one of the lessons of this incident that the Conservatives and their civil servants realized that they could govern without Churchill, or his deputy Sir Anthony Eden (Alex Jennings).

Unfortunately this production misses just about every opportunity to reflect on past history. Instead Sturridge transforms it into a soupy family melodrama with echoes of THE KING'S SPEECH. Gambon makes a fair stab at Churchill, even though he looks nothing like the Old Man; but Lindsay Duncan, as Clemmie, looks to be impersonating Vanessa Redgrave (who memorably played the same role in THE GATHERING STORM (2002)) rather than developing a performance of her own. Although she protests a lot about her love for Winston, she seems more preoccupied with keeping her errant offspring under control, led by Randolph (Matthew Macfadyen) and Diana (Tara Fitzgerald). None of them, it seems, are very happy with their lives, and take every opportunity to voice their discontents. In the end we feel rather sorry for the old boy, not just because of his desire to continue in power, but because he has to contend with such an appalling family.

Stewart Harcourt's script doesn't really know whether to sympathize with Churchill or to criticize him for his self-absorption. Great man he might have been; but he seems to have been neglectful of his family. In the end Harcourt abandons this issue and opts instead for the traditional happy ending where Churchill makes a great recovery from his illness and gives a speech to the party conference in Margate.

The script is full of anachronisms; and although Sturridge makes strenuous efforts to hold our interest by using heritage film conventions such as cutaway shots of old vehicles, interior scenes with orange lights focusing on the characters' faces, and exteriors of Chartwell (where much of the production as filmed), the drama as a whole fails to come to life.

If viewers want to find out more about Churchill's life from recent films, they would be better advised to dig out THE GATHERING STORM (2002) and its sequel INTO THE STORM (2009).

This 100 minute long film was made for UK TV and stars the incomparable Michael Gambon as Churchill. It is 1953 and he has just suffered a second stroke. Proving that spin was alive and well even back then, the powers that be and the Tory party wanted to keep the truth hidden. So he is whisked off to his ancestral home to recover.

The film is based around the nurse who was drafted in to care for him – this is Ramola Garai ('Suffragette') who plays Millie Appleyard and she is both convincing and a lovely on screen presence. The drama unfolds around the International situation and the warming up of 'the Cold War' and domestic policies as well as the far too cosy a relationship Churchill had with the Newspaper moguls.

So is it any good? Well with a coterie of great actors it was always hard to make this fail. Lindsay Duncan plays Clemmie Churchill and is – as always- excellent. The massively talented Bill Patterson plays Lord Moran and we have 'Ripper Street's own Mathew Macfadyen playing Randolph Churchill at his swaggering best. The drama was never going to be edge of seat stuff but the performances are all solid enough to hold your attention. I actually really enjoyed it even though it could have been better, but I was hooked for the full run – recommended.

The cast for this film was amazing. It's hard to have a declared spoiler as we generally know how the story ends from the history books. The movie allows a little glimpse into the internal family conflicts of the most famous Prime Minister in British history. I'll say that not enough explanation is given regarding concerns for Eden, who is barely visible in the film though he was arguably a major rival for the PM and trying to trip up the aging Churchill to make a name for himself. There's another movie that treats this aspect of Churchill's life more thoroughly. This film is more homey.

Michael Gambon as Winston and Lindsay Duncan as Clementine Churchill lead a good cast in a good recreation of the 50s and the hidden crisis that the United Kingdom had at the time. If you can imagine a situation where Barack Obama suffered a stroke and Joe Biden was also incapacitated with bad jaundice then you have some idea of what Great Britain was going through. And the media stayed silent.

After leading the Conservative Party to victory in 1951 Churchill two years later sustains a serious stroke and it's touch and go. Anthony Eden as Foreign Secretary was considered the heir apparent, in fact he had even expected to lead the party in 1951, but patiently put his ambitions on a backburner.

Alex Jennings plays an increasingly impatient Anthony Eden who felt that Churchill had just stayed on and Eden was ambitious to have his turn at the top of the greasy pole. What you're seeing here concerning them is true enough. What is not shown is that when the torch passed Eden got himself and the country in a royal mess over the Suez Canal and his government barely lasted two years.

My favorite is Michael Macfayden as Randolph Churchill. Winston's only son was the belligerent drunken lout you see here. But like his three surviving sisters could never come out from so great a shadow. Oddly enough Winston's relationship with his father Randolph was somewhat the same.

The only equivalents I can see in our history was when Grover Cleveland had that cancer operation one of the very first performed in his second term and no one knew until 20 years later. Also Churchill's counterpart FDR spent an entire month during World War II almost in seclusion at Bernard Baruch's estate in South Carolina and the public never knew at the time. Roosevelt was in almost terminal exhaustion from war leadership and he would die within two years of that.

Churchill's Secret is good history for the viewer.