Les griffes du lion

This is a movie worth seeing not because it is a well made one but because Churchill's early life was full of adventures no less than Indiana Jones; and all real! Richard Attenborough has tried to cover them all. Starting from clash with Pathans followed by charge against Sudaneese fakirs and fight against Boers. However, flash back technique has been used. So the viewers are transported from adulthood to childhood and back. This rather diminishes the impact of various events on Churchill's life and gets confusing for the viewers unfamiliar with his life history beforehand. Attenborough's depiction of this remarkable life is often quite dull and any strength in this film is due to Churchill's own writings on which the script is based rather than any effort on the part of director and adaptor writer. The director has failed to elicit thrill and suspense from various scenarios when there were numerous opportunities. Story seems to end abruptly. It should have continued to a certain phase in his career e.g. till when he assumes his duties in admirality in twenties or perhaps when he assumes prime ministership. A touch of romance and some view of his married life would have given some diversification to this movie.

Music, cinematography, costumes and makeup are fine, as is the acting and these with Churchill's own writings save this movie from declining into a very monotonous presentation.

YOUNG WINSTON was a film that director Richard Attenborough said was very difficult for him to make...his reputation as a director, in 1972, rested solely on his only previous film, the anti-war cult classic OH! WHAT A LOVELY WAR (1969), and with YOUNG WINSTON, he was expected to tackle a subject that was directly opposite to his point of view. Winston Churchill was the moral center of Great Britain in WWII, staunchly pro-Empire, and anything but anti-war. Yet his early life was an fascinating saga of contradictions, and the director felt that if he could focus on the personal odyssey Churchill experienced, against the backdrop of the dramatic events of the time, it would be a story worth telling. While the end result of Attenborough's labors would not be entirely successful, YOUNG WINSTON is still a rewarding, entertaining movie.

Told as a series of flashbacks, narrated by the older Winston Churchill (mimicked very accurately by the film's young star, Simon Ward), we jump from battlefields in the Sudan to a childhood in Blenhiem Palace, at an occasionally dizzying pace. The son of a brilliant yet self-destructive MP (played, with élan, by Robert Shaw), and his dazzling American wife (the radiant Anne Bancroft), young Churchill worships his parents, but is largely ignored by them, except when the cruelty of a boarding school would become too apparent. Only an average student through most of his youth, he seems destined to a life of mediocrity, at least in his father's eyes, and the parent's cold indifference would only become more pronounced as he experiences the ravages of syphilis, which destroys his career, and would kill him. Too late to win his father's love, Winston blossoms as a student, and determines to win fame, first as a soldier/journalist, then to take up his father's banner in Parliament.

Self-centered, opinionated, and glory-hungry, Winston attracts the animosity of Britain's war staff, yet seems to be anywhere history is being made, from tribal rebellions, to the last cavalry charge in history (seeing Churchill sheath his sword and pull out a pistol as his weapon is a telling sign that the era was ending). Behind the scenes, his widowed mother, trading on her legendary beauty and string of admirers, makes up for her earlier aloofness by using her contacts to help her son 'get ahead'. Yet Winston feels his progress is too slow, and decides to go to South Africa, where the Boer War rages.

As a journalist, Churchill is captured, but, taking advantage of the British prisoners' escape plans, manages to break out of prison, and elude the Boers, while all England watches. By the time he finally reaches safety, the entire world is celebrating him as a hero, and he easily wins his father's seat in Parliament...and takes up the same unpopular issues the elder Churchill had championed, and gone down defending. As Anthony Hopkins, playing Churchill friend David Lloyd George remarks, "A young lion is loose in Parliament."

With an all-star cast (including Jack Hawkins, Patrick Magee, John Mills, Edward Woodward, and a very young Jane Seymour), the greatest credit must go to Simon Ward, the oldest of the three young actors portraying Churchill through his early years. Ward is astonishing, not only physically resembling Winston, but giving the character a humanity that makes his opportunism and ambition far more palpable.

Of note, as well, is Gerry Turpin's cinematography, with it's sweeping vistas of the British army in the field, and Alfred Ralston's rousing score, drawing heavily from Elgar's marches.

While the sheer scope of the story, and flashback approach, ultimately defeat the 'intimacy' Richard Attenborough had hoped for, YOUNG WINSTON is still well worth watching, and helped him prepare for his next film, the even more challenging A BRIDGE TOO FAR.

It is a wonderful film adventure!

From the autobiographical works of the Prime Minister of England comes this remarkable chronology of his life. The Film is called " Young Winston " and was directed by equally famous, Sir Richard Attenborough. The film encapsulates Churchill's early life (Russell Lewis) during his formative school years of which he later recalls both the loving affection given by his nanny (Pat Haywood), a woman he fondly remembers in his memoirs and the brutal education system he was subjected to. It is to his credit he relates his Father's (Robert Shaw) struggle to maintain his conservative political status as well as his parental obligations. All the while, Winston tries to earn approval and become a success. His mother, Lady Jennie Churchhill (Anne Bancroft) is seen as both a proper wife and mother as well as a spirited Representative of her family's social affairs. The audience is also privy to the courageous undertakings of the ambitious Churchill (Simon Ward) as he experiences both the hazards of war and the warnings of the political arena. In this he is scrutinized carefully by both friend (Anthony Hopkins) and adversaries like Lord Salisbury (Laurence Naismith) alike. The movie, like his biography, is creatively smooth and contains both the hurtles and inner doubts. As a result, it becomes an exceptional narrative studded with noted movie icons like Jack Hawkins, Patrick Magee, Edward Woodward and John Mills. In addition the colorful costumes, panoramic scenes and exciting action make for an interesting historical film of one of the world's most respected leaders. Superb Movie and definitely a Classic. ****

This epic biopic from '71-72 directed by Sir Richard Attenborough with a screenplay adapted by US writer Carl Foreman from Churchill's memoir My Early Life caught the zeitgeist of the early-'70s which were pioneering years - 1972 was that most downbeat of hippy years but many serious and intelligent films were released that year, including Pocket Money, Solaris, The Darwin Adventure, Antony & Cleopatra, Lady Caroline Lamb, The Master Touch etc. Young sandyhaired English actor, Simon Ward became an international star - he looks the part and his aristocratic bearing and Tory patrician style are spot on. The adventure scenes in the North-west Frontier, the Sudan and South Africa are thrilling - Ward shows great flair. The skirmish with the Derviches and the battle of Omdurman were filmed in the deserts of the High Atlas, Morocco in 1971, the scenes showing Churchill's hideout at a South African colliery were filmed at Morlais Colliery, Dyfed, Wales while the battle featuring a military train and Boer soldiers was filmed in Hampshire at Longmoor Military and Railway Camp also in that year. Vis-a-vis the coal-mine scene, ironically the winter of '71-72 featured the renowned UK Miners' Strike led by Yorkshireman Arthur Scargill head of the N.U.M. which occurred a few months before the release of this film.

This fine film of Richard Attenborough with Simon Ward really does have great legs, just like Ann Bancroft. What a great film with a splendid cast, John Mills, Robert Shaw, Patrick Magee, Tony Hopkins, Ian Holm and the great Jack Hawkins! I had not seen it since its release back in '72 and it was just as delightful seeing it tonight as it was back then.

History buffs may take a few shots at the unevenness of the story line and the flash-backs-- especially, the interviews with Bancroft and Ward-- are a bit distracting but the writing, the script and the film all work together in the hands of a real master, Richard Attenborough. It helps to no end that Ward had the face of the young Winston Churchill and is able to subtly portray the young man burning with ambition. The supporting cast is superb. The events are gloriously Victorian and it leaves not a whit of doubt about the origins of the last of the old imperialists, Sir Winston. The final scenes with Ward giving the speech on the floor of Parliament are wonderful and suggestive of the great oratory that was characteristic of the old British Lion. A great picture of Sir Winnie's rhetoric was given in Harry S. Truman's notes on meeting with him at Potsdam who observed how "[he] spoke in sentences formed into well-formed paragraphs...a master orator." Young, proud, vain, arrogant, ambitious, full of himself and self concerned, and fiercely intolerant of opinions differing from his own,Sir Winston Churchill was indeed one of the controversial albeit great men of our last century. This fine film stands as a fitting tribute to him.