L'invincible Armada

Sir Laurence Olivier once said that he thought his work before Wuthering Heights markedly inferior to that after because it was William Wyler who taught him the art of film acting and the difference between that and the stage. Although he overacts in spots in Fire Over England, even with that it comes natural because the character he's playing is an impetuous youth.

England did not have the big navy and the empire it boasted of in later centuries. Spain was the big kid on the European block in 1587 when this story takes place. It's Hapsburg King, Philip II either directly or through his Hapsburg relations lay claim to about half of western Europe and about 3/5 of the North and South American continents combined.

And Spain was driven by a religious ideology in the Roman Catholic faith with its Inquisition determined to stamp out diversity of thought in it's wake. England had broken away from the Roman Church and the Pope and was asserting its own religious sovereignty.

England didn't have a navy, but it did have privateers, although the Spanish called them pirates. They raided Spanish commerce and exacted a heavy toll in life and property. That got Philip II pretty mad and he set out to build the biggest fleet anyone ever saw to wipe these upstarts out. He called it the Armada.

These upstarts had a female ruler in Elizabeth I, played by Flora Robson. Over 400 years before Germaine Greer and Betty Friedan were writing about feminism, in that most masculine of ages Queen Elizabeth devoted her very existence to her people and sacrificed a lot of personal happiness in doing so. Flora Robson gives the definitive portrait of Elizabeth of England in this film. She did it so well that when she came to America, Warner Brothers had her play Queen Elizabeth again in The Sea Hawk. Elizabeth in this writer's humble opinion was the greatest monarch the English have ever had.

Raymond Massey plays Philip II, a dour humorless man who also unceasingly worked for his country. He's a cunning adversary for Elizabeth.

Fire Over England was the first film that Olivier did with his future wife Vivien Leigh. On this film they started the affair that was the Taylor-Burton romance of it's day. I'm sure the publicity helped the box office here. Vivien Leigh is one of Elizabeth's ladies in waiting and she falls big time for Olivier who has been captured, escapes Spain and then sent on a confidential mission by Elizabeth to find out about some English fifth columnists she suspects. How Olivier escapes the first time and what happens on the mission, well that's for you to see Fire Over England for.

Two other main characters are Lord Burleigh played by Morton Selten and the Earl of Leicester played by Leslie Banks. Leicester in his youth was the lover and chief confidant of Elizabeth even before she became Queen. Their story is a part of the rich tapestry of pageant that was Elizabeth of England's life. Why they didn't marry is a whole film in and of itself and Banks's anguish is captured well here.

Grand entertainment and a grand historical pageant tribute to one of the most heroic times in English history.

'Fire Over England' covers more or less the same ground as 'The Sea Hawk' did a few years later, though the younger film did it to much better effect. The issue is Philip II of Spain's (Raymond Massey) ambition to eradicate Protestantism, which requires annexing and re-catholicising countries such as England. In 'Fire Over England' Elizabeth (Flora Robson) sends young Michael Ingolby (Laurence Olivier) as an agent to Spain. His mission: discover a) when the Armada will sail, and b) who of her courtiers are secretly in league with Spain. The plot is pretty convoluted; moreover, there are several sub-plots that are not adding or helping much (for example, Elena's (Tamara Desni) only function seems to be to convince the audience of Michael Ingolby's irresistable charms). Robson as Queen Elizabeth is excellent. She reprised her role later in 'The Sea Hawk'. As a swashbuckling hero, Olivier is no match for Errol Flynn. Vivien Leigh, who plays his love interest Cynthia is charming and vivacious. The sets are great throughout. One important thing that should not be forgotten is that 'Fire Over England' had a clear message for British audiences in 1937: It is about the need to resist great powers bent on the invasion of England. I am sure many viewers saw the parallel with Nazi-Germany - but I am not sure whether this helped the film: public opinion was pacifist, and British politics dominated by appeasers. 'Fire Over England' took a courageous, if unpopular stance.

Note the date this was made..1937. What a shot in the arm for a people about to fight for their survival....AGAIN. The lines that effectively say "Loved I you, loved I not England more" spoken by Olivier speak for all the Brits that would soon have to turn their backs on a gentle home life. Today we are not faced with that decision and it seems amazing that a human being would have to lay down his life for his country. As Vivien Leigh pleads with her lover (later to be her husband) to remember 'all the sunsets we could see together", you know that she is speaking to the audience of that time in a visceral manner.

Quaintly anachronistic, and let's pray it stays that way.

To watch Raymond Massey play the king of Spain and James Mason play the English 'spy' Vane is worth the price of the movie itself. Logic rears its ugly head, of course, or illogic: Five Englishmen are identified as traitors by Olivier and what happens? Elisabeth puts them under his command to fight off the Spanish Armada. Didn't she ever hear of fragging?

As the English ships are set ablaze and sailed into the Armada, it makes me long for a history book to find out what actually happened. I thought the weather broke the Spanish Armada up before it reached English shores off the coast of Ireland....accounting for the 'black Irish', descendants from those sailors who made it ashore.

Nonetheless, to watch the Lord and Lady of the English stage appear together while their love was young (and both were married to others) is fascinating.

You think you're watching Elisabeth Taylor half the time, with those big expressive eyes. Olivier also sings and plays a lute. His singing voice isn't bad atall, and is he handsome!!!!

When he plays his acrobatic ship and sword fighting tricks, you'll think of Errol Flynn and long for the movie to be colorized. How easy it would be with today's technology to color these wonderful old movies in gorgeous realistic color. And the mood would be enhanced, not destroyed as it might were it a film noir.

When Queen Elisabeth (the first one) says, "I'm only a woman", you'll burst out laughing.....she who made England was 'only a woman'. See it.

So 'Fire over England' was a propaganda film. Fine. I loved it.

Renowned and handsomely-mounted early British spectacular with imposing credentials – producers Alexander Korda and Erich Pommer, cinematographer James Wong Howe, art director Lazare Meerson, special effects creator Ned Mann – and a cast virtually assembling the cream of the crop working in the country at that particular moment – Laurence Olivier, Flora Robson, Leslie Banks, Vivien Leigh, Raymond Massey, Robert Newton, James Mason – all of which is complemented by a suitably rousing score from Richard Addinsell.

The narrative revolves around the planned invasion of England during the reign of Queen Elizabeth I by the Spanish armada of King Philip II (with help from British traitors); the former is magnificently embodied by Robson (who would eventually return to the role in Hollywood for the Errol Flynn vehicle THE SEA HAWK [1940]), while the latter is played by Massey as a sleek but cagey monarch. With one of the dissidents among her ranks (Mason) intercepted, the English Queen appoints a young naval officer (Olivier) – who had just lost his admiral father to the Spanish Inquisition – to assume the conniver's identity and travel to Philip's court in order to obtain the names of his associates and establish the enemy's strategy for attack. Complications arise when one of the Spanish ruler's subordinates (Newton) is revealed to be married to the woman (pretty Tamara Desni – the German-born Russian actress died in France only last month at the venerable age of 97!) who had previously cared for the wounded Olivier, their respective fathers having been the best of friends. Torn between betraying his country or his wife, Newton engineers Olivier's flight home – whereupon the latter receives a knighthood, before being promptly sent by his sovereign (along with the conspirators newly-swayed to patriotic duty) on a mission to destroy the approaching enemy fleet!

The film maintains a good balance throughout between romance (thanks to Olivier's matinée idol looks, he's briefly involved with Desni apart from his love interest in England – provided by future wife Leigh, as the Queen's lady-in-waiting, in the first of three on-screen collaborations…though Robson herself is shown carrying a hesitant torch for veteran and devoted chief adviser Banks!), intrigue (in effect at both camps), action (including raids by pirate ships, a couple of chases, discreet swordplay and culminating in the final elaborate fiery offensive) and propaganda (WWII was already looming at this point). While the print I viewed turned out to be anything but pristine, I was grateful to have finally caught this altogether splendid historical epic; incidentally, I'd become acquainted with several wonderful Korda productions over the years on both Italian TV and VHS – but, oddly enough, FIRE OVER ENGLAND itself seldom turned up until now in my neck of the woods!

There is not real film about the events leading to Philip II's great enterprise of 1588, the sailing (and destruction, as it turned out) of the great Spanish Armanda. To understand the story would take too many twists and turns. I recommend Garrett Mattingley's classic account of the Armada from the 1950s for those interested. Philip, tired of the aid that Elizabeth I of England gave to the Dutch and French Protestants, made a plan to transport an army under his nephew, Alexander Farnese, Duke of Palma, from Belgium to England using the Armada. He put the fleet under command of the Spanish nobleman, the Duke of Medina Sidonia. But Medina Sidonia was not a sailor (although a conscientious nobleman and servant of Philip). The Armada would first suffer a raid (by Walter Raleigh and Francis Drake). After it was repaired it did sail, only to find the faster English ships of Drake, Howard, and Frobisher more deadly, and the heavy winds, seas, and storms even deadlier. Many ships were wrecked off Scotland and Ireland. It was one of the worst naval catastrophes of history.

However it was also Philip's finest moment. Always a firmly religious man, he did not despair at the disaster to his fleet and plans, but he saw it was God's will. He actually put together Armadas again twice in the 1590s, but neither got as far as the first one did.

The complications of the story make it too confusing for anything but a full television seris: Philip was spurred on when Mary, Queen of Scots was executed in 1587 - he had been named her appointed heir to the English throne in her will; the French religious wars were approaching a critical moment, and Mary's uncle (the Duc de Guise) was leader of the Catholic forces at war with King Henri III of France and King Henri of Navarre (the leader of the Huguenots). There have been films dealing with Elizabeth's sea rovers, such as Drake ("Seven Seas To Calais", "The Sea Hawke"), but only this film tries to tackle the actual story of the Armada. As an adventure story it is excellent. As history, not exact but pretty good in parts.

First it does touch briefly on Mary's execution, in an early scene where one of Mary's servants tries to assassinate Elizabeth (Flora Robson). It really concentrates on the complex world of Elizabethan spying and the Elizabethan Catholic "underworld". The latter is an unfair description, for the Catholics were being persecuted in England. They had been supporters of Mary, and now that she was killed they gave support (mostly begrudgingly) to Philip. England's master of spies was Sir Francis Walsingham (who does not appear in this film). Instead the espionage against Spain is handled by Robert, Earl of Leicester (Leslie Banks) in the film - but in fact, Leicester died in 1587 in Holland, so he was not around for the Armada.

Lawrence Olivier is splendid in this early role as the young agent sent to spy on Philip and his plan (going in place of James Mason, who committed suicide in trying to avoid arrest). Olivier manages to get close to Philip (Raymond Massey) but that is not fully possible. Philip does not even like Englishmen, but he is willing to go along with the Catholics to get rid of Elizabeth and her regime. Philip is not easy to fool, and in a marvelous (almost comic moment) he stops Olivier from disclosing anything by finding that there was one name Olivier does not know that he should.

I won't go into the rest of the film's story. Watch it to see how Olivier still manages to escape and save England, and end up with his love (Vivian Leigh). For a 1937 historic film it is quite good, even if it could not tell the completely true story of the invasion of 1588.