clanciai Review of Alfred the Great

Alfred the Great (I) (1969)

Love and terror, war and brutal politics, full blown barbarity and a great story.

[9/10 · 28 October 2020]

I saw this film when it was new 50 years ago at the cinema, and it gave the same impressions now as then: impressing by its reconstruction of two great bloody battles at the time and its genuinely primitive character in its fidelity to 9th century circumstances and style - this is the kind of scenery and circumstances that always were accurate for "King Lear" and "Macbeth" in dreary desolation, horrible exposure to weather and wind - the best scene of the film is for me when Alfred kidnaps his son and they are lost in the woods in the storm... The film might not be exactly historically accurate, but like the Shakespeare dramas, it's a good effort to reconstruct great historical drama with the need of some idealization and romanticization to make it digestible for the public, and above all, the acting is superb throughout, and so is the music, although modern and romantic, but it has the right character. David Hemmings as a young angry man (after Mordred in "Camelot") is quite all right, Michael York shows off as never before or after as the leader of the terrible Danish hooligans, Ian McKellen makes an early and very honest impression, and Prunella Ransome is perhaps the one who best succeeds in creating a real character - she is the one you will perhaps remember best. So it was for me 50 years ago, and she repeated that impact 50 years later with an impression of timelessness, giving the entire film a timeless sense although the 870s were a very short eipsode a very long time ago. In brief, this film will be a lasting masterpiece entirely on its own account, actually being very different from all other films to have waged the effort, and more often than not failed, in recreating the wild times of the vikings.