Cromwell

As a lover of history, especially the history of my own nation, I never miss an opportunity to see a great historical epic, with Kings and Queens fighting the very battles of words and blood, which have carved our nation into what it is today.

I also feel that for a film to be educational and informative it has to be accurate and unfortunately Cromwell is never going to win any awards in the 'what really happened' category.

Despite these inaccuracies, the film does give us a general idea of what went on in the England of the 1640's so it still has the power to be enjoyable.

Alec Guinness steals the entire film with the only accurate portrayal in the movie as Charles I. The stuttering Scot who believes in the divine right of Kings. A man who looks upon Parliament as a challenge to his authority over the people, and a head of a protestant state wrestling with his own strong catholic leanings and sympathies.

Richard Harris is outstanding and brilliant, but portrays Cromwell as someone he most certainly wasn't. As an Irishman, it amazes me what ever persuaded him to take on the role. With Cromwell being the most hated Englishman in Irish history, I was surprised he didn't portray him as an evil oppressor and murderer complete with handlebar moustache, top-hat and cape accompanied by Hammond organs and loud hissing sounds from the audience.

Instead Harris' Cromwell is so nice and decent, honourable and just that by movies end he would have been welcomed at any dining table in County Cork.

Cromwell's belief was that Parliament runs the country and the people run the Parliament (reminder for Tony Blair!!!) The system we have today. However during his time as head of a republic state, he seemed to have forgot this and went his own way on nearly everything despite what the people wanted (remind you of anyone Tony Blair!!!)

So again inaccuracies rain on what is on the whole a very good parade.

The battle scenes also fail to excite as they are not filmed on the dramatic scale needed to have done them justice. In fact sometimes they are reminisent of Monty Python's reenactment of the Battle of Pearl Harbour by the Batley Towns-women's Guild.

Watch this film and enjoy it as I did, but I beg of you, don't use it as a basis for a factual thesis in your History Degree...you will fail big time.

It is to be admitted that Oliver Cromwell (a.k.a. THE LORD PROTECTOR, "Old NOLL") was a great figure in British history. But Cromwell was a flawed hero. He did rebel against his liege king, Charles I, and voted for his monarch's execution. He also truncated Parliament, when he found it impeded his own reforms. His treatment of Irish Catholics, while typical of the ruthless massacres of religious opponents in the period of the Thirty Years War (1618 - 1648), is still a stain against his fame. Still, in the period that he was the dominant figure (1644 - 1658) he rebuilt the British army and navy, restored Britain to major power status, and actually did one act of surprising religious toleration - he allowed the Jews to return to England in 1655, a reform that Charles II decided not to undue when he was restored to the throne five years later.

Such a career deserves a careful movie. CROMWELL is not that film. It does do well in showing King Charles I (Alec Guinness) as a untrustworthy individual (though one driven to such actions because of his need to maintain his rights as monarch). It does make one serious howler regarding Charles I and his trial for treason. Charles may have been a liar and betrayer at times - but Sir Edward Hyde (who was a leading supporter of his, and would be a statesman in his son's reign and the father-in-law of the future James II) did not testify at Charles's trial as a witness for the prosecution.

Such glaring errors are frequent in the movie (for example, Prince Rupert was not dismissed so callously by his uncle King Charles - Rupert was a very fine cavalry leader, and would remain a fixture in English society when Charles II was restored). The subtle acting of Guinness is not matched by Harris, who rants and raves throughout the film - even in the closing moments talking about his intentions to create better schools and laws. Charles and Cromwell are two fascinating characters, and both deserve a better film than this as the sole film about the English Civil Wars (except for Vincent Price's THE CONQUEROR WORM) to come out.

This film ultimately fails as an historical drama. It has some pretty good elements. The production values of the costumes, scenes, etc., are overall quite good. Guinness is great as Charles: he looks a lot like him, and he does a good job at conveying the king's tyrannical, autocratic stance, his conviction in his belief that he's right, his nobility to the end, and the fact that while he usually ended up taking bad positions or doing the wrong things, he did so not entirely for bad reasons (at least in his own mind), for he was sure that he was right. The film also makes some modicum of effort at showing Cromwell's more troubling qualities, too, making him out to be the noble hero, but not entirely covering up his transformation into ruthless, hypocritical dictator.

However, the film has equally strong bad points. It tends to drag at many points and frequently gives the impression of being an overly drawn-out stage production that fails to be fully convincing. More serious, though, is the problem that, although presenting itself as historical, it plays fast and loose with history. It does not fully explain the causes of the Civil War or the differences of viewpoints within each side, especially the Parliamentarians, not all of whom were fighting for the same reasons. It portrays the Royalist forces as the flashy, well-equipped and stronger element when in reality the Parliament forces were not only much more numerous, but usually much better equipped as well (after all, it was not a war of rag-tag, grass-roots rebels trying to topple the government; each side represented in part one branch of the government and Parliament, not the king, was the body that held the purse strings). In addition, the Royalists often did quite well in battle despite their inferior forces. It clearly makes Cromwell out to be too important from the start: rather than being one of the key leaders in the beginning, he really started out as a military commander and simply rose to prominence over time. Finally, Cromwell, despite some of his autocratic tendency coming through, is still shown to be too much the reluctant, noble hero, and the film only hints at his other face, one which in short order made him none too popular in England, let alone Ireland. Needless to say, nothing is mentioned of his willingness to shed the blood of Royalists and Catholics, or to destroy historic architecture that conflicted with his Puritan views.

For some reason the English cinema seems to prefer the sixteenth century to the seventeenth. There have been numerous films about the Tudor dynasty, most recently "Elizabeth: The Golden Age" and "The Other Boleyn Girl", but fewer about their Stuart successors, apart from Restoration romps and bodice-rippers like "Forever Amber" or "Stage Beauty", which generally feature a walk-on part for Charles II.

"Cromwell" is one of the few exceptions. As the title suggests, it is based on the life of Oliver Cromwell and concentrates on the 1640s, the decade during which Cromwell rose from a modest Huntingdonshire country squire to commander of the Parliamentary forces during the English Civil War and played a leading role in the deposition and execution of King Charles I. It has less to say about Cromwell's rule as Lord Protector of Great Britain and Ireland in the 1650s.

The film has been criticised for its historical inaccuracies. This sort of thing can normally be put down to a lack of adequate research, and the film does indeed contain a few mistakes of this type. (Cromwell's son Oliver junior was not killed at the Battle of Naseby but died of natural causes, and the Earl of Essex and the Earl of Manchester are shown as sitting in the House of Commons rather than the House of Lords). In most cases, however, inaccuracies which might appear to be careless errors are really deliberate distortions made to fit in with the film's underlying agenda which is to whitewash Cromwell's character and to present him as a hero of democracy.

In the period leading up to the Civil War, Cromwell's prominence in the opposition to Charles I is exaggerated. In a meeting which never took place, he is shown as telling the King that England should be a democracy and he is incorrectly numbered among the five members of Parliament whom Charles attempts to arrest.

During the war itself the film depicts Cromwell as single-handedly transforming the Parliamentary Army, after a disastrous defeat at the Battle of Edgehill, from a disorganised rabble into an effective fighting force and as a military genius whose tactics are responsible for the defeat of a numerically superior Royalist force at the Battle of Naseby. In fact, Edgehill was an indecisive battle rather than an outright Royalist victory- if Charles had won as decisively as he is shown doing here the war would probably have been over very quickly- and at Naseby it was the defeated Royalists, not the victorious Roundheads, who were outnumbered. The film omits the Battle of Marston Moor, arguably a more decisive turning-point than Naseby, possibly because Cromwell was not in overall command of the Parliamentary armies on that occasions. (The commanders in that battle were Sir Thomas Fairfax and Manchester, neither of whom are shown in a good light in the film). To emphasise Cromwell's piety, the famous prayer of the Royalist Sir Jacob Astley at Edgehill is put into his mouth.

The main reason why the film does not concentrate too much on Cromwell's record after 1649 is that that record will not bear too much scrutiny if one regards him as a hero. Although one view of history has traditionally seen the Roundheads as fighting for parliamentary democracy, Cromwell made himself dictator of Britain by force of arms, succeeded where Charles had failed in ruling without Parliament and had himself proclaimed Lord Protector, monarch in all but name. Had his son Richard, who briefly and ineffectually succeeded him, been a man of the same ruthless stamp, Britain might today be a Hereditary Protectorate under the House of Cromwell. The greatest stain on Cromwell's memory, the brutal subjugation of Ireland which cost several hundreds of thousands of lives, is totally ignored. (The film gives the impression that he spent the years in question, 1649-53, living peacefully on his farm in Huntingdon).

As a costume drama the film is not a bad one and succeeds in bringing seventeenth-century England to life. Richard Harris is not particularly good in the title role, especially as he is not always successful in concealing his Irish accent. (Given Cromwell's antipathy to, and persecution of, the Irish, it seemed ironic to have him played by an Irishman). There is, however, an excellent performance from Alec Guinness as Charles I, who is treated more objectively than are his political opponents. There is no attempt to blacken Charles' character, although there are a couple of inaccuracies. Charles did not treat his nephew Prince Rupert as shabbily as he is shown doing here, and his trusted adviser Sir Edward Hyde did not testify against him at his trial. (Had Hyde done so, he would doubtless have been executed at the Restoration instead of becoming Charles II's chief minister). Guinness plays Charles as a man who, beneath his outward dignity and firm belief in the Divine Right of Kings, is nervous, hesitant and self-doubting, something indicated by a stammer. One senses from Guinness' portrayal that although Charles was a bad king he may not have been a bad man.

Some have seen a film which praises a republican rebel as revolutionary, but in fact hagiography of Cromwell is far from something new. The film's politics fall broadly within the Whig tradition, which saw English history in terms of a steady progression towards the triumph of liberty and Protestantism- two concepts which for the Whigs were practically indistinguishable- and the Civil War as a vital step in this process. The film also shows the influence of Thomas Carlyle, who regarded Cromwell as one of the heroes of history and eulogised him in his "Heroes and Hero-Worship". By 1970, however, this approach to history was starting to look outdated and Carlyle's idea of hero-worship hopelessly naive. If the charismatic dictators of the twentieth century have taught us anything, it is to beware of the strong man on the white horse. 7/10

Splendid historical flick based on the confrontation which created the only England Republic . The movie deals with take over from Republican government in England . Facing off between Olivier Cromwell and King determined to rid England of a tyrannical rule and an absolutist King : Charles I , it resulted in beheading of the King . There was created two factions : the Roundheads (Cromwell congressmen) and Cavaliers or Royalists (King's nobility) , both sides had generals of considerable skill and undaunted courage as Thomas Farfaix . Cromwell defeated King's army in battles of Moor , Preston and Naseby (1645). Later on , in 1653 , he was named Lord protector of the Republic "Commomwealth" . He imposed a dictatorship ruled by Puritans and vanquished the Irish and Scottish army . Cromwell was a Puritan leader who , according to several historians carried out near genocide in Ireland . He also battled Holland and Spain . Cromwell developed a law of navigation for the British navy . He early died by fever's illness . Richard Cromwell succeeded his father as President but he was rapidly dismissed . Duration Republic was 1648 to 1660 . Charles II went back to British kingdom and the regicides (those who had condemned Charles I to death) were arrested and hanged , drawn and quartered at Charing Cross . The Cromwell's body was disinterred, and his remains were hung from a scaffold.

Spectacular historical melodrama with magnificent acting , wonderful locations , glamorous gowns and attention to period detail . In the movie there are historic events , intense drama, and Richard Harris as well as Alec Guinness give excellent performances , though Harris as a coldly unsympathetic Briton is usually shouting and overacting . Great acting by secondary players : Frank Finlay , Patrick McGee ,Dorothy Tutin, Robert Morley , Geoffrey Keen, Timothy Dalton , Michael Jayston , Douglas Wilmer , Charles Gray , among others . The film is a bit boring for parliament speeches but in the battles (Naseby 1645) is more entertaining , being splendidly staged . The final version of Cromwell at one stage was 180 minutes long, but it was cut down to 141 minutes, deleting a number of featured roles in the process .

The film is appropriately atmospheric and based on real deeds . First-class production design and sets by John Stoll are outstanding , including Oscar winning costume design by Novarese . In fact , close to 5.000 costumes were made , and 17.0000 separate ítems or props found or realized . Heavy make-up was utilized ; in addtion , thousands of wigs from all around the world. Glowing cinematography in Panavision by Geoffrey Unsworth and evocative as well as rousing musical score by Frank Cordell . Good direction by Ken Hughes . The motion picture will appeal to history's buffs . Rating: 7,5/10 , above average .