L'invincible Armada

I saw this years ago and didn't think much of it at the time dismissing it as a third rate Errol Flynn rip-off. I'm glad I revisited it - I found it a real exciting, superbly produced intelligent swashbuckler.

Laurence Olivier shows that he wasn't just a great dramatic actor - he could also be a fabulous dashing romantic action hero as well. It seems a stupid thing to say but he sure could act. Good old reliable Leslie Banks and Vivien - the most beautiful woman in the world, ever - Leigh provide good believable support. As for Flora Robson, she is Queen Elizabeth.

Historical films are usually guaranteed to get those of us with some historical knowledge shaking their fists at the slightest inaccuracy. Unlike Korda's earlier SIX WIVES OF HENRY VIII however, this film isn't too bad on that score. (SIX WIVES was a clever comedy anyway so doesn't really count). Apart from the timing of the famous Tilbury speech, it's surprisingly how historically accurate this film actually is. Although we can't really know exactly how these people thought, that sense of impetuousness and that sense of certainty that their beliefs were the absolute truth is reflected well in this.

The contrast of England's freedom of thought with the repressive totalitarianism of Philip's Spain is an obvious analogy with what was happening in Germany. Whilst American films in theory had to be politically neutral, no such undertaking existed in England so this no doubt helped to stir us up to stand up against that chap over in Berlin. It's very stirring stuff and still after all these years manages to engage emotionally.

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.

I'm afraid I was disappointed by "Fire over England", having pinned too many hopes on this film of all those in the Olivier season: based on a novel I'd loved as a child, starring Flora Robson as Queen Elizabeth with names such as Raymond Massey, James Mason and Robert Newton among the supporting cast, and featuring Vivien Leigh as the real-life love interest of a Laurence Olivier described as channelling Douglas Fairbanks and John Barrymore as he does all his own stunts, what could hold more promise? Like "The Sea Hawk", it was a picture I'd heard of and had long since been waiting to see.

But great anticipation places an insuperable weight on a film. "The Sea Hawk" disappointed, and Olivier is no Flynn. The character is petulant and callow, admittedly -- but I couldn't identify with Michael emotionally (not aided by the fact that he appears to be trifling completely untroubled with the affections of two ladies at once, which deprived the love scenes of their conviction: it didn't come across as a conflict of loyalties, but as having your cake and eating it), and I found the action sequences uninspiring. The stunt dives look like belly-flops (presumably with an eye to the angle of the safety nets), the 'storm-tossed' ships wobble along with their sails obviously providing no propulsion whatsoever (would it have cost too much to have someone blow on them?), and the palace guards at the Escurial display a degree of stupidity in their pursuit that even in the context of cliché is less thrilling than ridiculous. The only moments of the Spanish adventure that worked for me at all were the double-edged dialogue at the dining table, and the 'spy' scenes with Raymond Massey.

For the true honours of this production lie not with the adolescent hero but with the ageing generation. Massey invests the workaholic, melancholic Philip of Spain with a lethally plodding efficiency that makes him truly to be feared. The quietly-weighted exchange between the older Ingolby and his friend-turned-captor holds far more emotional impact than young Michael's histrionics when he finally cottons on (about a reel later than everybody else, audience included). The Queen's relationship with her boyhood's Robin is far deeper and better-portrayed than Michael's with Cynthia, and the memorable struggle is not Laurence Olivier with a sword in his hand but Elizabeth facing the loss of her youth.

It is the grown-up drama that is worth watching here. But unfortunately this is not the main focus of the motion picture.

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.

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.