Evelyn Waugh's 1945 novel Brideshead Revisited was offered to television viewers in this 11-part adaptation that originally aired on the U.K.'s ITV network. The miniseries, like the book, lays bare the eccentricities of the young British aristocracy, concentrating upon several Oxford students. The story is told from the point-of-view of Charles ...
Though Rudyard Kipling's poem Gunga Din makes a swell recital piece, it cannot be said to have much of a plot. It's simply a crude cockney soldier's tribute to a native Indian water boy who remains at his job even after being mortally wounded. Hardly the sort of material upon which to build 118 minutes' worth of screen time-at least, it wasn't ...
Based on the book by Edgar Wallace and produced by London Film Productions, the adventure drama Sanders of the River is an Imperialist propaganda film about British Colonial rule in Africa. Leslie Banks plays Commissioner "Lord Sandy" Sanders, who maintains British rule over the N'Gombi district of Nigeria. The fugitive Bosambo (Paul Robeson) ...
This film depicts the events prior to the devastating conflict that occurred in 1879 when British soldiers were held siege by thousands of Zulu warriors. Fifteen hundred soldiers were killed in the epic battle. This film portrays the tensions existing between the tribal factions and the British invaders. ~ Iotis Erlewine, All Movie Guide
Northwest Frontier was the original British title for Flame Over India. When the Moslems attack a British fortress in colonial India, it is imperative that the local Maharaja's son be taken to safety. The man for the job is commander Kenneth More, who uses a rusty old train for that purpose. Among the other fugitives is the boy's British governess ...
In the early days of sound film, one of Warner Bros.' big box-office draws was the aging stage actor George Arliss and, in Disraeli, Arliss scored his biggest box-office hit. He is at his best as the foxy British prime minister (in a role he created on-stage and re-created earlier in a 1921 silent film version of the same play). The film concerns ...
After declaring a holy war to rid the Sudan of Anglo-Egyptian rule in the 1880s, the fanatical Sudanese leader Muhammad Ahmad (Laurence Olivier) massacres a British-led force of 8,000 and marches on the strategic city of Khartoum at the confluence of the Blue Nile and the White Nile. The British government of Prime Minister William Ewart Gladstone ...
Of the many film versions of Alfred Lord Tennyson's narrative poem, 1936's Charge of the Light Brigade has the least relationship to the facts concerning the famous 19th century British military blunder in the Crimea. Reflecting the popularity of 1935's Lives of A Bengal Lancer, the film uses the climactic charge as the culmination of events which ...
The lavishly produced three-part telemovie The Far Pavilions was adapted from the best-selling novel by M.M. Kaye. Set in colonial India during the second Afghan war, the film concerns the exploits of Ashton Pelham-Martyn (Ben Cross), a British officer. Born and raised in India, Pelham-Martyn finds himself a victim of his own divided loyalties as ...
Out of Africa is drawn from the life and writings of Danish author Isak Dinesen, who during the time that the film's events occured was known by her married name, Karen Blixen-Flecke. For convenience's sake, Karen (Meryl Streep) has married Baron Bor Blixen-Flecke (Klaus Maria Brandauer). In 1914, the Baron moves himself and his wife to a ...
The war between England and Spain in the late 16th century serves as backdrop for the fictional machinations of Fire Over England. Laurence Olivier plays a British naval officer who offers his services to Queen Elizabeth (Flora Robson) after his father is executed by the Spaniards. The queen dispatches Olivier to the court of Spain, there to ...
This sweeping, highly literate historical epic covers the Allies' mideastern campaign during World War I as seen through the eyes of the enigmatic T. E. Lawrence (Peter O'Toole, in the role that made him a star). After a prologue showing us Lawrence's ultimate fate, we flash back to Cairo in 1917. A bored general staffer, Lawrence talks his way ...
During the ill-fated charge of British troops at Balaclava in the Crimean War, loyal soldiers who blindly followed orders were led to certain death. This is the fifth time the story has been told on film, but the actual event is an afterthought to the main plot. Snobbish aristocrats and ineffectual politicos combine with pompous blue-bloods to ...
This was the first sound production of A.E.W. Mason's classic adventure novel, which was brought to the screen three times in the silent era. Harry Faversham (John Clements) is the son of a military man who expects his son to follow in his footsteps on the fields of battle. Gen. Burroughs (C. Aubrey Smith), the father of Faversham's sweetheart, ...
It was Richard Attenborough's lifelong dream to bring the life story of Indian political and spiritual leader Mahatma Gandhi to the screen. When it finally reached fruition in 1982, the 188-minute, Oscar-winning Gandhi was one of the most exhaustively thorough biopics ever made. The film begins in the early part of the 20th century, when Mohandas ...
Filmed on a grand scale, Zulu is a rousing recreation of the January 22, 1879, siege of Rorke's Drift in Natal, Africa. An army of 4,000 Zulu warriors have already decimated a huge British garrison; now they are on their way to the much smaller Rorke's Drift. A Royal Engineers officer (Stanley Baker) is determined to stand his ground, despite ...
While 18-year-old Victoria (Victoria Hamilton) struggles to escape the rule of her domineering mother (Penelope Wilton), King William IV dies and the teenager assumes the throne as Queen of Great Britain and Ireland and empress of India. With the help of sympathetic advisers and her lady-in-waiting, Baroness Lehzen (Diana Rigg), Victoria asserts ...
A.E.W. Mason's perennially popular tale of honor and adventure is brought to the screen yet again in this lavish period action-drama. In 1884, Harry Feversham (Heath Ledger) is a young officer-in-training in the British Army who is soon to graduate and is expected to be shipped of to the Sudan, where the King's military are battling Muslim ...
The Man Who Would Be King opens with author Rudyard Kipling (Christopher Plummer) working in his study. His solitude is broken by the arrival of a tattered, half-mad derelict, who is soon revealed to be his old acquaintance Peachy Carnahan (Michael Caine). As Kipling listens in rapt fascination, Peachy relates the incredible adventures of himself ...
A Passage to India, director David Lean's final film (for which he also received editing credit), breaks no new ground cinematically, but remains an exquisitely assembled harkback to such earlier Lean epics as Doctor Zhivago and Ryan's Daughter. Based on the novel by E. M. Forster, the film is set in colonial India in 1924. Adela Quested (Judy ...
Director Bob Rafelson fulfilled a lifelong dream when he finally received backing to complete Mountains of the Moon. The film recreates the exploratory adventures of 19th century visionaries Sir Richard Burton (Patrick Bergin) and John Henning Speke (Iain Glen). The heart of the film is the effort by Burton and Speke to discover the true source of ...
A man bringing modern transportation to the ancient jungles of Africa discovers one of man's oldest enemies lays in wait for him in this period adventure drama. John Beaumont (Tom Wilkinson) is the owner of a British railroad firm who is building a rail line through Uganda. A bridge is needed so that the tracks may cross a large river, and ...
Errol Flynn is top-billed in Kim, but the title character is played by Dean Stockwell. The son of an Irish sergeant, young Kim wanders through the streets and hills of Colonial India, disguised as a native boy. Kim's adventures include an episode with a horse trader (Errol Flynn) who is actually a British secret agent; a sojourn with a holy lama ...
Originally aired as a British mini-series, Shaka Zulu follows the rise of Shaka (Henry Cele) to the king of the Zulus during the early 19th century when the British were beginning to gain control of Africa. ~ Stephen Thomas Erlewine, All Movie Guide
The ruler of England discovers the value of common friendship in this historical drama. After the death of her husband Prince Albert, Queen Victoria (Judi Dench) is despondent, and she remains in mourning for two years after Albert's passing. When one of her servants suggests that a daily ride on horseback might be a tonic for the Queen's health ...
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