Alfred le Grand, vainqueur des Vikings

"Alfred the great" is an entertaining film with perhaps too much battle scenes.The two leads are convincing but the part of the queen is too underwritten.

The first scenes between David Hemmings and Prunella Ransome are good though: an educated prince who knows the Bible by heart and whose only ambition is to become a monk;an ignorant virgin under her father's thumb who uses her for political reasons.

Then comes Michael York ,the villain who's got twenty concubines and who falls for his enemy's wife .

This is the story of a reluctant king who believed in peace and love and finally discovers that in those troubled times (the 9th century) you had to be cruel to be kind .

Like this?try these...

Richard Fleischer: the Vikings 1958

Jack Cardiff:The long ships 1964

At least for this period, and in a so accurate and careful way in terms of historical details, this movie from UK - and plus directed by a very eclectic film maker Clive Donner, who had not really a personal style - is far far far far better than most of todays straight to DVDs or streaming platforms craps, most of them from eastern Europe and helped by CGI galore, and certainly not by powerful or concincing actors. I repeat, there was great great care in the making of this film, it is also far more true than it would have been produced by Hollywood - which did not care about actual facts at all, prefering epic side with thousands of extras in awesome and gruesome battle scenes. But here you ALSO have terrific battle scenes, such as the last one. So, in this movie, you have both, quality in terms of script and also the spectacular elements which is not the least at all. My favourite from Clive Donner. Battle scenes and overall story telling has nothing to envy to BRAVEHART.

A pretty decent film overall. "Chapters" in the story change with a gimmicky visual effect of Hemmings' face looking at itself in transition (from would-be priest to young king, from ruler to man on the run, etc.), it's sometimes hard to catch the names of the individual characters (and the final credits don't help much), and the battle scenes (though staged well) might be seen as overlong. But the film tells its story effectively, brings the characters and events to life and gives us a nice look at 9th century England, and how its people rallied around a king who learned from his early mistakes. I found the actors believable in their roles, the interpretation of events plausible and came away feeling like I knew something about King Alfred and his thoughts. Wouldn't take it as light entertainment, but would recommend it as dramatised history. --Of course, Hemmings' Alfred relies on cleverness, while York's Viking leader Guthrum leans mainly on bravado; familiar parts for both.

Though I'm quite aware of this film's shortcomings (length and the multitude of exotic names, etc.), I must say that I think Leonard Maltin does this film a disservice. It accurately portrays some of the most important events in English history, and also paints a fine portrait of a monarch torn between earthly passions and the desire for spiritual purity. It is only by truly balancing these two forces that a man can succeed, and Alfred did so.

The conflicting forces in the film also symbolize Alfred's inner struggle -- the church representing his spiritual desires and the Danes standing for the passions and lusts of the physical world. Certainly the Battle of Athelney Marsh, one of the pivotal events in British history, is stirringly portrayed, particularly when the peasants and commoners rise up to save their king. This film, despite its flaws and its abysmal box office performance, remains a personal favorite of mine.

This movie is dire. It paints England in the squalid colours of cliché and melodrama, where there should be character and drama. The script is mainly at blame here, with its stagy monologues and all-too-often speeches. But, "once more unto the breach" this is not. It is wooden and bereft of any real sense of emotion or motivation for the characters. As a result we are dragged through the major events of Alfred's life without any real notion of what made the man tick. What we have instead is a real Bastard - a man who is arrogant and tyrannical, self opinionated and full of self loathing. So you wonder if you care at all.

David Hemmings is as wooden as the script itself and poor Michael York suffers so much from being a stereotype that he might as well be a cartoon character. Nothing works here. It's long, it's boring, and Hemmings ranting in yet another tirade of opinion does nothing but annoy.

The battle scenes are awful - and I don't mean in the light of today's battle scenes. I mean these are terribly choreographed jumbles which, even when they are trying to be clever with military formations, just look like a load of soccer hooligans going at each other in a field. It's wholly uninspiring stuff! Bare in mind that Spartacus was 1960 and The 300 Spartans (which the film alludes to) was 1961, El Cid 1963, the list goes on... and while this film is an English and not Sword'n'Sandal Epic I see no reason why it could not at least aspire to set pieces such as feature in The Vikings (1958).

The Danes wander around chanting in formation and the chanting is nothing short of infuriating because it goes on and on and on throughout the entire picture. Also the depiction of these pagans is nothing short of ignorant. Yes, certain Gods are mentioned, but any understanding of how these people really thought of them and worshipped them is sold down the river for yet more clichés of the "evil-pagan" vs the "good-christian" - utter rubbish! There are no "real" scenes of Danes at all, and it is films like this that merely fuel ignorance, not dispel it. It all stinks of really bad direction and ill-thought out production.

The colour is drab and lifeless, and life is depicted as not much short of squalid, which we know it wasn't. I kept expecting the Monty Python team to pop up, "there's some lovely mud down 'ere" (a lá The Holy Grail). The costume department do seem to have been more on the ball, but the dull colours only amplify the banal palate of the picture, with it's uninspired wallpaper score and it's pseudo-theatrical pretensions. Even the photography and the editing are dull.

Only Ian McKellen appears to come out of this picture without egg on his face - and that's because he looks wholly uncomfortable in the film, probably wondering what the hell he's doing in this tripe.

And the "Gutts-Ache" of my title is a favoured saying of Alfred in the film awe inspiring script - "you make my guts ache"!!! Dross...