11.-12. Film review catch-up
I watched four films before going to Romania, so this is a start on getting caught up with them. The other two will follow when I am able.
11. The Viking Queen (1967), dir. Don Chaffey
This is a Hammer film which, in spite of its title, is set in Britain shortly after the Roman conquest. Its use of 'Viking' in the title where 'barbarian', 'Celtic' or possible 'Icenian' (I see why they couldn't use 'British') would have made more sense encapsulates its approach to history fairly accurately. The aim was clearly to capture the broad feel of a post-conquest Britain, and especially the relationship between conquered and conquerors, rather than to retell any specific historical narrative. So the story is set in the kingdom of 'Icena' and it is ruled by a queen, but she receives it from her father (rather than husband) at the beginning of the story, and is called Salina, not Boudicca. Indeed, her political stance owes something to Cartimandua too, in that she initially cooperates with the Romans - though by the end of the film she has been driven to a Boudiccan-style rebellion. Meanwhile, the main Roman characters are very confusingly named Justinian and Octavian, but have nothing to do with the famous political figures of those names - rather, Justinian is the provincial governor, and Octavian one of his leading military advisers.
You would expect the story to be a fairly simple goodies vs. baddies adventure, with the noble Brits as the goodies and the evil imperialist Romans as the baddies. But actually, Romans-as-baddies is a Hollywood trope tied in to America's rejection of British rule. British films about Romans are considerably more complicated, and often tend to be comic (e.g. Carry on Cleo, A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum, Up Pompeii, Life of Brian), because as a former colonial power ourselves the Romans are us, and that's... awkward. You might have guessed it would be Hammer that stumbled blithely into the fray anyway, generating what is actually a pretty rare non-comic portrayal of Roman Britain, for all that it isn't quite straightforwardly historical either. As this blog post points out, for them it was one of a series of broadly-historical adventure stories which they had been churning out since the mid-'50s - and indeed of course let's not forget that Gothic horror too involves period settings, and that once you are in the swing of producing those sorts of costumes and sets, a non-supernatural adventure story is not that different from a horror story.
So instead of Romans-as-baddies vs. Britons-as-goodies, the key structuring principle of the story is actually one of moderates vs. extremists. At the centre of the story are Salina the British queen and Justinian the Roman governor, both of whom see the value in cooperating with one another and bringing their people along with them. Justinian even tries to introduce a progressive tax system, but it is locals with vested interests who angrily reject it - an easy analogy for well-intended British colonial rulers vs. ungrateful natives. Indeed, their political willingness to cooperate is expressed (in typically cinematic terms) as a love-story, and as this blog post very rightly points out, this sort of doomed cross-cultural romance is one of "the familiar story elements of the Raj adventure yarn". Meanwhile, on either side of them and constantly snapping at their heels stand hardened extremists, personified in particular by the Druid priest Maelgan on the British side, who likes to burn people in wicker cages and foment rebellion against the Romans, and Octavian on the Roman side, who likes to rape and flog local women and stamp out all disobedience to Rome. In the end, the extremists on both sides combine forces to oust the moderates, and everything ends up badly for all with an armed confrontation and Salina tragically crushed beneath the might of Rome. Again, the nostalgic colonial resonances are clear to read ("wouldn't it have been better if we'd all just cooperated?"), but I'd be curious to know if the moderates vs. extremists plot-line has potential contemporary resonances with the domestic British politics of the mid-'60s, too.
In fact, I suspect there's probably quite a lot more Classical receptions potential to be got out of this film generally, especially as it is so unusual for this period in being British-made, Roman-set and non-comic. But that will have to be it from me for now. Also notable for including Patrick Troughton as a sort of well-meaning guardian-figure for Salina after her father dies, and Nicola Pagett, aka Lady Elizabeth from Upstairs Downstairs, as her younger sister.
12. Bram Stoker's Dracula (1992), dir. Francis Ford Coppola
ms_siobhan and I both saw this when it first came out, and could not remember being very impressed. But given our shared love of all things Dracula-related, and our unspoken pact to keep each other company through even the direr entries in that field, we decided to gird our loins and give it another go. To be honest, though, we were both pretty much right the first time. My major impression on revisiting it was that it felt like a huge cloud of ideas thrown up into the air, some of which could probably have been quite good if they had been picked out, matched with thematically-similar stable-mates, and worked through properly. As it was, they had simply been mashed together with no real thought for consistency of tone, so that the result flits from anachronistic fantasy (e.g. Dracula's mad wig) to verism without any obvious logic.
Worst of all, though, the characters are completely under-developed, with very few meaningful character scenes at all, so that romances which should be central to the plot (e.g. Mina and Dracula) utterly fail to convince. Some of the actors in this film get a bad rap for their performances (especially Keanu Reeves), but in all fairness they are given very little to work with. Bizarre costuming inconsistencies, like Keanu's hair being covered in talcum powder one minute (to represent the effects of stress, apparently) but then back to normal brown the next, do not help. Then again, this was the first serious attempt to blend the historical Voievod and the fictional Count together on screen, and certainly the first to portray anything of the historical Voievod's life in that context. Given how much I like that strand of the Dracula mythos, I should be grateful for the effort - and I think it's certainly pretty fair to say that Dracula Untold would never have been made without it.
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11. The Viking Queen (1967), dir. Don Chaffey
This is a Hammer film which, in spite of its title, is set in Britain shortly after the Roman conquest. Its use of 'Viking' in the title where 'barbarian', 'Celtic' or possible 'Icenian' (I see why they couldn't use 'British') would have made more sense encapsulates its approach to history fairly accurately. The aim was clearly to capture the broad feel of a post-conquest Britain, and especially the relationship between conquered and conquerors, rather than to retell any specific historical narrative. So the story is set in the kingdom of 'Icena' and it is ruled by a queen, but she receives it from her father (rather than husband) at the beginning of the story, and is called Salina, not Boudicca. Indeed, her political stance owes something to Cartimandua too, in that she initially cooperates with the Romans - though by the end of the film she has been driven to a Boudiccan-style rebellion. Meanwhile, the main Roman characters are very confusingly named Justinian and Octavian, but have nothing to do with the famous political figures of those names - rather, Justinian is the provincial governor, and Octavian one of his leading military advisers.
You would expect the story to be a fairly simple goodies vs. baddies adventure, with the noble Brits as the goodies and the evil imperialist Romans as the baddies. But actually, Romans-as-baddies is a Hollywood trope tied in to America's rejection of British rule. British films about Romans are considerably more complicated, and often tend to be comic (e.g. Carry on Cleo, A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum, Up Pompeii, Life of Brian), because as a former colonial power ourselves the Romans are us, and that's... awkward. You might have guessed it would be Hammer that stumbled blithely into the fray anyway, generating what is actually a pretty rare non-comic portrayal of Roman Britain, for all that it isn't quite straightforwardly historical either. As this blog post points out, for them it was one of a series of broadly-historical adventure stories which they had been churning out since the mid-'50s - and indeed of course let's not forget that Gothic horror too involves period settings, and that once you are in the swing of producing those sorts of costumes and sets, a non-supernatural adventure story is not that different from a horror story.
So instead of Romans-as-baddies vs. Britons-as-goodies, the key structuring principle of the story is actually one of moderates vs. extremists. At the centre of the story are Salina the British queen and Justinian the Roman governor, both of whom see the value in cooperating with one another and bringing their people along with them. Justinian even tries to introduce a progressive tax system, but it is locals with vested interests who angrily reject it - an easy analogy for well-intended British colonial rulers vs. ungrateful natives. Indeed, their political willingness to cooperate is expressed (in typically cinematic terms) as a love-story, and as this blog post very rightly points out, this sort of doomed cross-cultural romance is one of "the familiar story elements of the Raj adventure yarn". Meanwhile, on either side of them and constantly snapping at their heels stand hardened extremists, personified in particular by the Druid priest Maelgan on the British side, who likes to burn people in wicker cages and foment rebellion against the Romans, and Octavian on the Roman side, who likes to rape and flog local women and stamp out all disobedience to Rome. In the end, the extremists on both sides combine forces to oust the moderates, and everything ends up badly for all with an armed confrontation and Salina tragically crushed beneath the might of Rome. Again, the nostalgic colonial resonances are clear to read ("wouldn't it have been better if we'd all just cooperated?"), but I'd be curious to know if the moderates vs. extremists plot-line has potential contemporary resonances with the domestic British politics of the mid-'60s, too.
In fact, I suspect there's probably quite a lot more Classical receptions potential to be got out of this film generally, especially as it is so unusual for this period in being British-made, Roman-set and non-comic. But that will have to be it from me for now. Also notable for including Patrick Troughton as a sort of well-meaning guardian-figure for Salina after her father dies, and Nicola Pagett, aka Lady Elizabeth from Upstairs Downstairs, as her younger sister.
12. Bram Stoker's Dracula (1992), dir. Francis Ford Coppola
ms_siobhan and I both saw this when it first came out, and could not remember being very impressed. But given our shared love of all things Dracula-related, and our unspoken pact to keep each other company through even the direr entries in that field, we decided to gird our loins and give it another go. To be honest, though, we were both pretty much right the first time. My major impression on revisiting it was that it felt like a huge cloud of ideas thrown up into the air, some of which could probably have been quite good if they had been picked out, matched with thematically-similar stable-mates, and worked through properly. As it was, they had simply been mashed together with no real thought for consistency of tone, so that the result flits from anachronistic fantasy (e.g. Dracula's mad wig) to verism without any obvious logic.
Worst of all, though, the characters are completely under-developed, with very few meaningful character scenes at all, so that romances which should be central to the plot (e.g. Mina and Dracula) utterly fail to convince. Some of the actors in this film get a bad rap for their performances (especially Keanu Reeves), but in all fairness they are given very little to work with. Bizarre costuming inconsistencies, like Keanu's hair being covered in talcum powder one minute (to represent the effects of stress, apparently) but then back to normal brown the next, do not help. Then again, this was the first serious attempt to blend the historical Voievod and the fictional Count together on screen, and certainly the first to portray anything of the historical Voievod's life in that context. Given how much I like that strand of the Dracula mythos, I should be grateful for the effort - and I think it's certainly pretty fair to say that Dracula Untold would never have been made without it.
Click here if you would like view this entry in light text on a dark background.