Penn of Pennsylvania

The film "Penn of Pennsylvania" is not a crowd pleaser and it's the sort of movie few would enjoy. However, as a retired history teacher, I loved how it actually captured his life much better than the average film of the day. Perfect? Nah...but worth seeing.

This biopic is about William Penn and follows him from his conversion to his founding Pennsylvania and the death of his wife. It's a bit idealized and at times seems a tad stagy, but it did stick reasonably close to the facts. In particular, I thought the court case was ridiculous and never happened...and I researched and found that the judges DID refuse to accept the jury's verdict AND did imprison them for their decision! Crazy...but true.

Overall, a good look at who William Penn was...but because it is close to the facts, it's also not among the more exciting films you can watch...and I can live with that.

I would appear to be the first reviewer of this film from the UK.I would agree with the majority so far in saying that this is a dull and uninteresting film which moves at a snail's pace.The production values aren't up to much but you have to make allowances as this country was at war.I recently visited his home in Rickmandworth which is now the local museum.

Penn Of Pennsylvania was one of those films that was made to encourage Anglo-American relations and had the misfortune of not being released before Pearl Harbor when America was given no option but to join the Allied cause. It's purpose was clearly to butter up the Americans to show we had a lot more that united us across the pond than what divided us. William Penn however was a great deal more complex than the saintly man you see here.

What was shown is true enough about Penn and his first wife played by Clifford Evans and Deborah Kerr. After the action of this film is concluded Penn did marry again and between the two wives had enough children to populate Pennsylvania all by himself. The guy you see however is someone you can't imagine doing any propagating.

William Penn was a lot of things, but definitely not a saint. Why Evans played him and the writers wrote him as a Francis of Assissi like character boggles the mind. Historians will scorn this film and the general public will find Evans as Penn totally unrealistic.

As was pointed out in another review, having the one Indian character made up like a 19th century plains Indian as opposed to someone who might have been in one of the Iroquois was also an example of horrible research. But to a British public who saw American westerns these were the Indians you had to give them.

The saintly Penn and the dutiful wife made for some dull viewing as well. Clifford Arundell playing Charles II who no one ever accused of saintly behavior provides some interesting moments. I doubt though that the Merry Monarch was as farsighted as all that. In his own way Charles was far more tolerant than Penn was in real life.

Penn Of Pennsylvania is a ponderous film about a saint that never existed.

Playing William Penn, Clifford Evans conquers Deborah Kerr, the English jury, King Charles II and Pennsylvania in this well-meaning but ultimately "Highlights of History" biopic of the Quaker founder of the state of Pennsylvania.

There's little to suggest that this admiring movie had less than absolute sincerity in the hearts of anyone associated with it... although Dennis Arundell as Charles II seems to be intended to let the United States know that Britain likes them, and they should like Britain, so send more armaments; peace-loving William Penn would like to return the favor. Perhaps the problem can be attributed to the script by Anatole de Grunewald, whose script looks like he used an illustrated edition of C.E. Vulliamy's WILLIAM PENN and wrote scenes about the pictures. the result in the hands of the canny film makers is always watchable, but unsatisfying to anyone who wishes to know more of Penn than "He did great things, and here they are."

This is a slow-moving, stodgy, badly-photographed tale of William Penn and his journey from being a member of the upper class in England to his founding of the state of Pennsylvania in the U.S. The movie suffers from the pomposity that afflicted many British epics of the period. The hero is written as an absolute saint (you expect to see a halo around his head and hear a heavenly choir in the background), the secondary characters are completely uninteresting, and once Penn lands in the "new world", the film becomes almost laughable. The "Indians", for example, are dressed like and act like the kinds of Indians you see in westerns. The only thing wrong with that is that Pennsylvania is in the eastern U.S., not the west, and the dozens of tribes there have absolutely nothing in common--culturally, linguistically, ethnically, or in any other way--with what are known as the Plains Indians of the west, a fact that apparently the filmakers either didn't know or ignored.

The film is as slow as molasses, the photography is so dark at times you can barely see anything, the sound is tinny, and the acting is very much of the "old school" type--a lot of flaring nostrils, arched eyebrows, etc. William Penn was a fascinating man, and his life story could make a good movie, but this one isn't it.