Young Winston (1972)

Touches You

As Good As It Gets

Great story, amazing characters, superb action, enthralling cinematography. Yes, this is something I am glad I spent money on.

One of the film's great tricks is that, for a time, you think it will go down a rabbit hole of unrealistic glorification.

What an excellent cast. Anybody who was anybody in the British acting world in 1972 was in this film. In addition, there was the little known Simon Ward doing a fantastic, difficult, turn as Churchill. The one thing lacking here - and it is due to the script - is Churchill's impish and often self-deprecating humour, which he brilliantly used to counterbalance the overweening ambition he was rightly accused of.The trouble is the poorish script and the plodding direction. Richard Attenborough had many great moments as a director, but this wasn't one of them. The pace is often slow and exciting moments are somehow rendered almost dull. Read Churchill's own account of his imprisonment and escape and compare it to this lame version.It has dated more than Churchill's true story and his own writings. The thing that has dated most is Anne Bancroft's ludicrous thick early 1970s makeup. If she had worn that makeup in 1900, she would have been for ever shunned as a harlot.I wish someone would have another go at this subject.

Young Winston is perhaps one of the forgotten films of the early 1970's, and there may be no better explanation for it besides the fact Hollywood pumped out a plethora of artistically successful productions as well as films successful at the box office. Richard Attenborough directs another all-star British cast, as he did in his first film, along with a main actress of the day to play Churchill's neglectful mother: Anne Bancroft. The film stars Robert Shaw as Churchill's impossibly over-bearing father Lord Randolph, whose bout with syphilis led to his slow decline. Simon Ward plays the young Churchill from his late teens into his mid 20's as an equally adventurous, arrogant, brash, and ultimately courageous young man coming into his own after failing to meet his father's ridiculous standards for achievement and success.The film is slow-moving in the first half with the not-too-original background of a young boy mistreated by parents, aimlessly searching for direction in life. Writer Carl Foreman's Oscar-nominated screenplay heats up in the second half with Churchill's adventurous exploits as a lieutenant and a journalist. Attenborough is best at panning the majestic landscapes and filming action scenes peppered with intense emotion, as during Winston's escape from Pretoria. Ward is the very embodiment of a young Churchill, and it's his voice imitating the famous elder Churchill's that narrates the film. The film benefits immensely from its strong British cast, including Jack Hawkins, Ian Holm, Anthony Hopkins, Patrick Magee, Edward Woodward, and John Mills. Look for an appearance by Jane Seymour and Nigel Hawthorne in his film debut. The film was Oscar-nominated for its Art Direction and Set Decoration as well as its costumes. The film climaxes somewhat unexpectedly when Ward gives a speech in Parliament, echoing a battle Lord Randolph fought years before. It's a deliberately paced film telling a story about one of the twentieth century's most important figures. *** of 4 stars.

Young Winston is based on Winston Churchill's early life from childhood until his first speech in Parliament circa 1901. I well remember when Sir Winston Churchill gave up that seat in 1961. Except for two years in the Twenties it's the longest tenure in the British House of Commons and I was 14 at that time.Carl Foreman's screenplay and Richard Attenborough's direction were no doubt tempered with some historic reading about Winston Churchill's early years. What you see here is the standard interpretation given to those years and how they shaped him personally and the views he had on various issues.Churchill was the eldest of two boys born to Randolph Churchill and his American wife Jennie Jerome as played by Robert Shaw and Anne Bancroft. While Shaw was busy on a political career and Bancroft being the social toast of two continents, Young Winston who grew up to be Simon Ward was a lonely kid who was mostly raised by a favored governess. Randolph Churchill's rise was dramatically cut short in the late 1880s when it was discovered he had the dread syphilis, a social disease not mentioned in polite society. He continued to serve in Parliament with rapidly decreasing health and influence. It was only then that Shaw and Ward begin something of a relationship, cut too short when Randolph Churchill dies in 1895. He died thinking that his son would never amount to much and Churchill spent his whole life trying to prove his disappointed father wrong.In that he became a young man in a hurry as he tries by every means available to make a name for himself in the process stepping on a lot of important toes. He'd continue to do that his whole life also as he sought to preserve the British Empire as it was in his formative years.His army commission got him participation in the Sudanese War of the last cavalry charge of the British army at Omdurman. While using his mother's charm and influence to get himself a rather unique status as both army officer and war correspondent, he got captured by the Boers in that war. His dramatic escape provided a media opportunity as they would say no and made his election to Parliament in 1901 possible after sustaining a couple of losses.Robert Shaw, Anne Bancroft, and Simon Ward are perfectly cast. Shaw's best moment comes during a speech to an almost empty Parliament when you can see the ravages of the disease and what they've done to Randolph Churchill. With both Bancroft and Ward in attendance, it's pitiful to watch. Attenborough populated the rest of his cast with some talented folks like Sir John Mills as Lord Kitchener, some very prominent toes that Churchill stepped on and a young Anthony Hopkins as David Lloyd George who Bancroft warns her son against associating with that man. In fact much after the events of this film conclude, Churchill's association with Lloyd George proved to be a mixed blessing for the rest of his life.Young Winston is both a faithful adaptation of Churchill's own memoirs as interpreted by others and a grand historical pageant of the time the sun was not setting on an Empire some thought would last forever. Among those were the subject of this film.

When I watched this picture on DVD I had in hand The late Roy Jenkins massive biographical study of Winston Churchill and therefore I could compare the action and story line of the with a written source.Pivotal events of young Churchill's life were described both in book and movie as for example, his difficulties as a young pupil as well as his faultless recitation of Macauley's Ruins of Ancient Rome, when in Harrow. His problematic relationship with his father was also portrayed convincingly.Afterwards his journalistic/military adventures, as his participation in a punitive expedition and mainly his escape from the Boers which catapulted him to world fame. I found that the movie gave the established version of events as well as providing memorable quotes which may be a mark of authenticity or a symptom of cliché depending on personal viewpoint. For someone who is not British the evocation of the British Imperial establishment in the movie has an air of historical accuracy as far as manners and ways of life are concerned, the veracity of which I can not check since neither me nor my ancestors had experience of that environment. The movie is picturesque and has aura of adventure when describing the various imperial fronts that it's dashing hero traversed in his young adventurous days. It also emphasizes the importance that social connections played in British society for the advancement of a young aspiring politician. The movie shows the development of a human, if extraordinary, character in the manner of a novel, that Germans call Bildungsroman, that is a story about the evolution and crystallization of a human character. I would compare it in cinematic terms with Abel Ganz's Napoleon, an other earlier movie that explores the formative years of an other Titan of European history, Bonaparte. Young Winston of course relates to a smaller part of it's subject's life in the sense that it ends with his break into politics and also covers barely 4 chapters in Roy Jenkinks massive book from a total of over fifty such devoted to the great man. Clearly it strives to portray solely the early beginning but that it does so very ably. P.S. After I had written the above part of the review I read Churchill's own "My Early Life" on which the movie is based according to the titles of the beginning. I have to admit that it follows "My Early Life" in the content of the events described although not in the sequence since there exist numerous flashbacks. The important thing to point out is that having as a previous written source Roy Jenkins' biographical study I had a sympathetic although supposedly neutral source, while "My Early Life" is as all autobiographies a unabashedly self-justifying piece of writing and that quality is reproduced in the movie. One has to note that the filmic text follows the written text and many narrations in the movie supposedly made by Churchill speaking as an old man, are verbatim reproductions of the text of "My Early Life" which serves as inspiration. Truly reading the book and watching the film is an experience that marries two different forms of art. Also the content of the movie, not only the verbal narrations follows the book and memorable incidents, such as the report to General Kitchener and the presence of the wife of Mr. Dewsnap in the Oldham election meeting stand out. One of course has to observe that everything had been exceptional about Churchill's early life, including his boyish naiveté before the master of his first school, to exclaim that he never speaks to a table as Latin grammar would have him do-an incident described in the book where a small board containing the first declension of the noun mensa=table in Latin is contained. Clearly it offers a lot of insight to it's subject.