Elizabeth of Ladymead

Elizabeth Of Ladymead written by English playwright Frank Harvey is one of those films which provides its lead with a once in a lifetime opportunity to create multiple characters. The following year Alec Guinness had the same opportunity in Kind Hearts And Coronets to do the same thing that Anna Neagle has here.

The first Elizabeth we meet is the modern one, a woman anxiously expecting the return of husband Hugh Williams home from World War II. He's at loose ends, not really sure what he wants to do after five years of action. She's got ideas and the couple do get into a heated discussion. When Anna bumps into a wall and gets a concussion, the other Elizabeths Of Ladymead appear with the same post war problems after the Crimean, Boer, and World War I.

The four vignettes reflect the changing attitudes of British society, especially female British society over the year. Neagle does a marvelous job in creating the three imaginary Elizabeths, the proper Victorian woman of 1856, the anti-war and suffragette of 1903, and the pleasure crazed flapper of the Twenties. Of the four the flapper Anna and her husband Michael Lawrence are the best and definitely the most dramatic piece of the bunch. The other two imaginary husbands Bernard Lee of 1903 and Nicholas Phipps of 1855 are nicely done also.

Neagle gets to display all her talents, she sings as well, a nice version of Love's Old Sweet Song in the 1903 story before she starts starting her husband with new ideas about women's suffrage and the fact she thought the Boer War was not a good idea. Absolute blasphemy in her Edwardian home of the time.

Definitely Elizabeth Of Ladymead is for fans of Anna Neagle.

I loved this movie, especially Anna Neagle's performance as the four "Elizabeths", how each of these women coped with the men in their lives coming home from war and finding them changed, some for the worse (Betty is a bit of a tramp circa 1918!).

As a post war film, it works amazingly well, in particular the depiction of the attitudes of the soldiers expecting to step right in to their lives and surprise-no more "little woman"!

Great Equus Collection film-hope it comes out on video some day!

It is little surprise that this film was a failure at the box office.Retelling the same story four times would strain the patience of a saint.It is extremely boring.

At first, I thought this film was going to be about an aristocratic Army officer returning from the Second World War, finding it hard to settle down into civilian life and coping with Peace, as opposed to War. However, as soon as the officer was reunited with his wife, you realised that there was going to be something wrong with their relationship.

His wife, having been alone in their Georgian mansion house with no staff to help her manage the estate, had a boring War and was having to do everything herself. While the husband wanted to settle down to a simple life in the country, she wanted to give up rural life, hoping that her husband would return to Politics, where she would be able to enjoy a more active and useful life in a London fancy apartment.

However, the film came to be more than just a social drama about a married couple adjusting to life after six years of War. Anna Neagle, playing the part of the wife, after being knocked unconscious seemed to start dreaming about her life being paralleled by married couples in the same situation, with the husband coming home from different wars stretching back over 100 years.

Each husband was played by a different actor wearing a different uniform associated with the war that they had just fought in. However, in every part of the anthology, Anna Neagle plays the wife. The parts of the husband's friend and wife's mother were also played by different actors and actresses.

The first husband was played by Nicholas Phipps, an actor who usually appeared in supporting roles in many British film comedies during the 1950s and 1960s. He wore the uniform of a cavalry officer who had just returned from the Crimean War in 1854 and was present at the Battle of Balaclava. This short part of the anthology is about the chauvinistic husband being very disturbed at his wife wanting to join Florence Nightingale as a nurse. He advocated that wives' and women belong in the home - looking beautiful - and not soaking up the dubious glory of life on the battlefield.

The second husband was played by Bernard Lee, who later became more famous as 'M' in the series of James Bond films. He wore the uniform of another cavalry officer, but this time he was an officer having just returned from the Boer War in 1903. This part of the anthology was about his disapproval of his wife having ably managed his estate by herself and her controversial support for Woman's Suffrage and her even more controversial lack of support for the War in South Africa, advocating that the Boers were quite justified in the way they were fighting for their farms, land and their own way of life.

The third husband was played by an actor called Michael Laurence in a rare film appearance. As well as looking like Errol Flynn, he wore the uniform of an army captain who had just returned from France, having experienced the grim realities of life in the trenches and the tragic aftermath of the First World War. This part of the anthology was about the husband coming home, from the worst war that had ever been fought up to that time. He was miserably greeted to an empty house and a wife who had become an amoral wastrel and flapper. Without giving to much away, this was the most tragic part of the film.

The last part of the film shows Anna Neagle regaining conscious and telling her husband about her dream and how they came to understand each other again, adjusting to each other's needs and how they both wished to spend their life together.

Throughout the film the underlying theme seemed to be about women's emancipation. In 1854 was about their subjugation; in 1903 it was about how women's freedom and independence was being fought for; and in 1919 it showed how it had all gone too far.

By 1945 the film seemed to be trying to say how everything had gone back to where it was before.

8 out of 10.

A strange and confusing film that goes thru four time periods of wars in England's history. Very dull and boring as you try to figure out the whole point of the film. It actually starts out well when the husband returns from WWII after a long five years. How things have changed in those five years. Suddenly the star of the film, Anna Neagle bumps into a wall and now we start time travel with Neagle as the only constant. This is the kind of movie that you fast forward alot.