TV shows how the Churchill magic cajoled generals

Press, 21 November 1979, Page 19

TV shows how the Churchill magic cajoled generals

It seems right that the idea for “Churchill and the Generals,” the longest and most expensive single play that 8.8. C. television has produced, should have come from a man with a reputation for thinking big — Cedric Messina, the producer who started the 8.8. C. on its six-year plan to record all Shakespeare’s plays. While watching television in the United States several years ago he was impressed by a vivid dramatisation’of the stormy relationship between President Truman and General Macarthur. This put him in mind of the far more complex and colourful situation in which Winston Churchill and his 10 key generals were involved. He passed the idea to lan Curteis, a prolific television dramatist, who specialises in plays about recent history — "The Atom Spies,” “The Strange Flight of Rudolf Hess,” and “Suez” are some of them. He immediately became enthusiastic, so much so that he spent a year in research. There was no shortage of material, for not only were Churchill’s own memoirs an invaluable source of information, but

most of the generals also recorded their wartime experiences in books. Montgomery wrote two books on his campaigns; Alexander left an account of his command; the diaries of Alanbrooke were edited by Sir Arthur Bryant. Excellent biographies exist of those generals, such as Wave!! and Auchinleck. who did not put pen to paper. When the memoirs and biographies of Eisenhower, Roosevelt, and George C. Marshall are added to the list, it will be seen that the dramatist’s main problem was one of compression. lan Curteis spent many hours in the Public Record Office in London sorting out the chronology of events. He talked to people who had worked as c’erks and secretaries in the underground war room, where so many decisions were taken.

By

SYLVIA CLAYTON.

TV critic.

“Daily Telegraph.” London

This might suggest a scholarly approach, but lan Curteis emphasises that he did not set out to write a documentary but a play. He has given his own interpretation to the facts he has assembled. This, he argues, has been the privilege of historical dramatists since Shakespeare dealt shrewdly with some then top'cal Tudor na’ace politics in “Henry VIH.” It was while watching Timothy West olav Cardinal Wo ,co ” ear’” in ’979 in the 8.8. C. Television production of that play that producer Allan Shallcross decided h° was one actor who had both the gravitas and the nuckish energy to carry off the part of Churchill. Curteis’* script strikes up a fanfare for Churchill; it sets ponu’ar history moving to a iaunty tune. The Second Wo r ’d War is to this Prime Minister a glorious game. “Nothing in life is so exhilarating as being shot at without result,” says Churchill, who does not want to

miss a moment of the action. In his finest hour the mixture of zest, pugnacity, deviousness, and total confidence has enormous potency. The fact that he has inherited no military plans, little strategy and an empty exchequer only makes the challenge greater. There is no subtlety, there are no black moods, for this is not so much Churchill the man as Churnhi’’ tl w magician of popular folklore. To see the magician at work with his generals, driving, cajoling, forcing them on (“Lam in a rage to win this war”), is exhilarating drama. Timothy West, even with a false nose and cosmetic lenses, does not reallv resemble Church’ll closely, but by the end of two hours and three-quarters the sheer power of his acting has made this fact immaterial. All the cast was picked

more for acting ability than close likeness to the generals concerned. Eric Porter as the dedicated, unobtrusive, Sir Alan Brooke, who for endless hours had to act as buffer to Churchill’s temperamental outbursts, gave his finest performance since he played Soames Forsyte. lan Richardson caricatured Montgomery — but with wit and style. Patrick Magee, as Wavell, was the only senior officer who in this play appeared to reflect that war is not just a game but a matter of killing and being killed. Once the Americans enter the war and Churchill no longer commands the centre of the stage, the magic of the leader tends to fade as the game is diffused into international discussion. The quirks of Curteis’s interpretation loom larger. Stalin and General de Gaulle rate barely a mention, while he dwells at length on the Greek Island campaign. Naturally the Americans figure largely in the story, for this play is a com-

bined operation. The television rights to Churchill’s memoirs belong to Jack Le Vien, an American producer who likes to tell how he secured them from Churchill aboard Aristotle Onassis’s yacht, “Christina.” in 1960 and was amazed to find that noelse had bid for them. Also taking a share in this SI.2M 8.8. C. co-production is the Australian Broadcasting Commission. Technically, the most interesting aspec. of the programme is the way newsreel footage, naturally in monochrome, is faded into colour shots of the studio production. Alan Gibson, the director, provides in each case a linking shot in unsaturated film, so that the eye moves smoothly from black and white to colour. This is especially important in a film that relies on newsreel for its action, apart from moments in the desert war which were staged on Camber Sands, in southern England. To ensure that Army procedure was correct, the 8.8. C. engaged a military adviser, :T ; ' , adier n eter Young, together with a unuo.m adviser to assess all the changes that took place in dress and equipment over the four years. Even so a retired general has complained that some of the shoes were wrong. Generals were apparently issued with toe-capped shoes, bearing two rows of stitching.