The Queen's Guards

Quite a poignant movie if I remember correctly and I've only seen it once, when first released. For some reason I've always thought the title was "Red letter day" and not "The Queens Guards".Maybe someone can check it out or maybe I'm like the Raymond Massey character, just getting old with my memory playing tricks.

Considering it was made at the start of the 60's the generation gap is in full swing here between father and son, both military men, the father played by Raymond Massey is a crippled veteran. The son, played by Massey's real life son Daniel is a Guardsman poised to take the Queen's salute and standard at that day's ceremony. The storyline involves tradition, honour and indeed bitterness and the bickering between father and son on the day of the "Trooping of the Colour", a pageant which takes place every June in London's "Horseguards Parade" in honour of the Queens Birthday. There is a flashback sequence telling of the son's ignominious military exploits over the Suez crisis which the father believes is a blot on the family AND the guards. There is a dead son who the father believes deserves all the family honour.The wrong son died syndrome.

The scene where Massey struggles to get to the window using a cane to pull himself along on bars attached to the ceiling of the apartment overlooking Horseguards Parade.(Now THAT apartment I would love to have) in time to watch his son take the Queen's salute is indeed poignant. It is actually quite a stuffy film but very fine acting from all concerned saves it from complete obscurity.Not Michael Powell's best effort.

I'm guessing that since tourists and subjects of Her Majesty Elizabeth, II stand around for hours watching the Coldstream Guards in their various military ceremonies Michael Powell decided that a story about the guards would be a money maker and tourist bait. I'm sure that The Queen's Guards succeeded on both levels.

It's a pity a better story was not provided in between all the footage of the cream of the British military doing the pageantry they're known for. But it isn't all spit and polish and drill for these guys. They're the best of fighting soldiers for the British army and it's one exclusive club to get into.

The story such as it is has guards officers Daniel Massey and Robert Stephens spending some time away from the guards at Massey's home. Where movie and real life father Raymond Massey hosts them along with wife and mother Ursula Jeans.

The family tragedy that looms large over the household is that of a late older brother who never returned from the desert fighting in World War II. They say he's missing, but Raymond Massey knows better. Later on in some action in some archetypal Middle East Principality where Great Britain has a treaty with the rulers Daniel Massey and Stephens face a similar situation to what led Massey's older brother to be killed.

Quite frankly the plot got in the way of the Coldstream Guards and their ceremonies. And it didn't make a lot of sense. It's a rarely seen film now, but Michael Powell did a whole lot better than The Queen's Guards in his career.

That was Powell's view of this film.Terrible was my view when I saw it on its release in 1961.I have not changed my view.There is very little in the way of narrative.At times it is more of a recruiting film.Powells last British film,what a waste.

The last theatrical film Michael Powell was able to make in Britain, The Queen's Guards became the least of his works in his own eyes. Apparently, it was one of those productions where the script (credited to Roger Milner) was constantly being rewritten on set, implying that no one really understood what the film was supposed to be. And the final product reflects that. There are subplots that don't go anywhere. There are characters that seem to serve no purpose. There are ideas that don't get the kind of attention and care in presentation that they should. However, there are ideas there under the surface, some interesting nuggets that just kind of sit there without anything to do. Handsomely presented by Powell, the film largely just doesn't work. It'd be interesting to give it to some film school students in a screenwriting class as a case study in script doctoring, though.

It's the story of John Fellowes (Daniel Massey), a member of the Queen's Guard, told in flashback as he stands ready to lead his command in maneuvers for the queen's inspection. He reflects back on his life in the Guards from his time in training to his present status. The core problem here is that Milner and Powell don't have any kind of straight throughline to guide the telling. It essentially branches into four directions. In terms of least to most important, they are his girl troubles starting with seeing Susan (Elizabeth Shepherd) but ends up seeing Ruth (Judith Stott) instead, the mechanics of which are given no attention and never matter, which is followed by his rivalry turned friendship with fellow officer in training Henry (Robert Stephens), his desire to both be and not be like his elder brother David who was killed in North Africa during WWII, and then his relationship with his father, Captain Fellowes (Raymond Massey).

So, as imaginary script doctor, you cut out the girls unless you're willing to make this film an hour longer into an actual epic. Next, everything else needs rebalancing and focus. The interesting ideas at play here are about David's dishonorable end that has been hidden from most of the family, preserved by Captain Fellowes because he feels shame at the reality that his elder son, as a Queen's Guard, shot an unarmed German prisoner and then was shot himself when his position was overrun by the Germans. John doesn't know this, constantly feeling lesser in his father's eyes, and he's trying to make up for it by joining the Guards after the war and be the son his father lost, except it's a lie. So, he has to become his own man, which gets matched by John having to himself go into North Africa for a mission to the desert to rescue the prime minister of a British protectorate. The problem is that it's introduced so late, the action so poorly filmed (Powell was a good visual filmmaker in general and across the rest of the film, but this action is straight up incoherent and difficult to follow), and the connection so hoary that I don't think it works.

Imaginary script doctor hat on: make the North Africa mission the framing device and end the whole film with the presentation to the queen.

The emotional core of the film ends up being the relationship between John and Captain Fellowes, helped in no small part by father and son being played by father and son (there's no question of Daniel's parentage! Dude looks exactly like his dad). The choice to make Captain Fellowes a cripple who can only get around his house by using hooks along rails hanging from his ceiling limits his ability to be around John, especially at the presentation where Captain Fellowes remains in his house and looks off wistfully as though he knows what's going on at the right time. I mean...I kind of get it all. Captain Fellowes was wounded in WWI, he was living vicariously through his sons, he lost the first, and he wants his second to be even better than his shameful elder brother, but...couldn't he have gotten into a wheelchair to go to the presentation?

And that's where I end up. There are just so many weird choices dotted throughout that undermine what are the interesting ideas and even a couple of good scenes (the reveal of David's war crime is particularly good, probably because it largely hinges on Raymond). The film does not work, but there are enough nuggets to grasp onto throughout that I can't quite get to the point of calling it bad. It might be his least film in decades, but there's stuff going on that grabs my attention. It's not good, but it's kind of interesting and frustrating in equal measure.

"Guards! Guards! Call out the Guards!" And this could only mean the Queen's Guards and the English look to them in times of military emergency. With their ceremonial uniform of Buckingham red with that unlikely shako supposedly made of bear skin; with their mounted units wearing polished breastplates during full dress parades, they are world famous as tourist attractions. Little do people know that these are the cream of the elite of the British military corps. If I am not mistaken, their members are selected from the various services. Thus, they are commandos, paratroopers, tank men, intelligence specialists, etc.

As a little boy, I was fully taken in by the ceremonial parade at the end of the movie: "Escort to the colors! Forward!" Somehow when the goosestep is done by The Guards, it doesn't seem sinister. And the intricate but highly dignified dressage executed by the commander of the mounted unit is admirable.

The military action is in the Middle East in connection with the Suez Canal crisis in 1956. Egypt then took full control of the canal and the British and French felt that their interests were threatened.

There is a touching scene near the end during a ceremonial parade with the Queen in attendance. A semi-paralyzed veteran has an apartment overlooking the square (Trafalgar?). He's bedridden but he manages to put on his military uniform. There is a series of bars on the ceiling of his apartment and with a hook or a cane, he manages to get a hold of them and he painfully and laboriously locomotes himself to the window to get a view of The Guards as they are honored by the Queen.