Luta por um Trono

Unfortunately a number of technicolour productions made in Britain in the forties were great failures.In this case Niven was miscast and the script was a total bore.

This movie is excellent - I've been looking for a copy for ages but do not know where to purchase it from. Can you help! I am very interested in Scottish History and find this movie contains all the ingredients I enjoy in a movie. Prince Charles of Scotland was the rightful heir to the throne of England but was duped out of the throne by his English relatives. He was a descendant of James VI of Scotland and I of England which gave him title to the throne of England. That is why he attempted to get the throne back by force. He nearly succeeded but his Army was too small and the English loyalties were elsewhere. They didn't want a Scottish King sitting on the English throne. That would have been anti-English.

Not a bad movie but badly in need of restoration. This was a very sad time in Scottish history. Charles brought years of hardship to the Highlands. His grandfather James 2nd tried to get his throne back 56 years earlier in Ireland. He landed there with a French force with the view to conquer Ireland, then Scotland & England. Causing hardship at the Siege of Londonderry, he was finally defeated at the Battle of the Boyne. This crazy ex king & then his nutty grandson 56 years later caused the misery of thousands of people. Charles could not even speak Gaelic, the language of the highlanders. His English was'not very good either.

Sick of the rule of the Hanoverian government that had arrived following the deposition of King James VII/II, the Scots people are all too keen to welcome his son - the "Bonnie Prince" himself (David Niven) as he calls for a gathering of the clans at Glenfinnan and declares that he is going to restore the house of Stuart to the throne. There are sceptics, but once he manages to secure the services of the acclaimed soldier "Murray" (Jack Hawkins) and the support of many of the chieftains the length and breadth of the land, they set off to remove the "redcoats" from not just Scotland but from the whole kingdom. Initially this all goes surprisingly well as the population quite fancy the idea of a change, but as they push farther south and then face the superiority of the Duke of Cumberland (Elwyn Brook-Jones) and his thirty thousand soldiers, the wheels start to come off! It's a gentle and romanticised view of British history from a turbulent and violent period of the 18th century, and historians and purists will probably loath it, but as an exercise in Hollywood mythology it allows Niven to exude some cheeky charisma as a character who undoubtedly had a considerable amount of personality whilst Margaret Leighton puts on her best accent as the infamous Flora MacDonald and an whole host of Scottish regulars from John Laurie to Finlay Currie to James Hayter help give it a certain tartan heather feel to it. It's a bit long, but there's enough action to keep the romantic elements in check and if you just sit back and enjoy it for what it is, then there are worse ways to spend 2¼ hours.

When I saw this had a rating of 4.9 and a running time of 130 mins I was expecting a disappointing long slog of a movie and I admit it's no great film by any means but it's also no way as bad as the 4.9 rating suggests. The DVD that I watched which was from The David Niven Screen Icons collection was only 112 minutes and had a good for its age unremastered colour picture that made the most of the rich colours of the costumes and landscape. Expecting it to be a longer film I saw it in two sittings and it was hard to get into at first but by about halfway I was quite engrossed by the story and thought it was well told. No doubt its failure at the box office along with its high cost has dented its reputation but that doesn't mean it's a terrible film. I would give it a 6/10.