Perspectives on Elizabeth I
Jun. 17th, 2009 06:16 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
deborahjrossAs posted earlier, ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
davetrow and I have been watching various film versions of the life of Elizabeth I. What an adventure it has been! This is the order in which we watched them:
Glenda Jackson's miniseries
Helen Mirren's miniseries
"The Private Lives of Elizabeth and Essex" with !Bette Davis! and !Errol Flynn!
Both Cate Blanchett movies
Ann-Marie Duff's miniseries (Masterpiece Theater)
Each one had different weaknesses (and, conversely, things we liked). We both decided we had watched them in a good order, although we probably could have switched the Jackson and the Mirren without any loss of understanding. Leaving aside "The Private Lives," both the Blanchett and the Duff abbreviated a lot, of necessity. By watching the longer series first, we got solidly grounded in who was who and where the major lines of political and religious tensions were.
The Blanchett movies were the most cinematic and least historical.davetrow's comment was that they weren't so much history as hagiography (lives of the saints). Certainly, the immensely spacious architecture wasn't accurate, but also the visually evocative but erroneous scene of Elizabeth, barefoot and in what looks like a nightgown, standing on a cliff watching the Spanish Armada burn. Er . . . not exactly. In fact, not at all. Only a few burned and the weather did the rest, sweeping the fleet into the North Sea. Which I might not have known if I had not seen the other versions. And if mine erudite spouse had not gone running for the relevant entries in the Encyclopaedia Brittanica. But Geoffrey Rush as Walsingham was a world unto himself.
Jackson's Elizabeth was the most opaque, an amazing feat of acting in creating and maintaining emotional sympathy with a person so rigidly controlled. I loved the ease of old lovers and friends between Mirren and Jeremy Irons as Robert Dudley.davetrow thought the portrayal of Elizabeth aging was best done in the Duff Masterpiece version (as well as the only one to show her as plain).
As for "The Private Lives," it makes no pretense of historical accuracy, or perhaps that was as close as Hollywood got in those years. Even so, Davis was an extraordinary actress, fearless in her portrayal of unattractive, obsessed women.
davetrow and I have been watching various film versions of the life of Elizabeth I. What an adventure it has been! This is the order in which we watched them:Glenda Jackson's miniseries
Helen Mirren's miniseries
"The Private Lives of Elizabeth and Essex" with !Bette Davis! and !Errol Flynn!
Both Cate Blanchett movies
Ann-Marie Duff's miniseries (Masterpiece Theater)
Each one had different weaknesses (and, conversely, things we liked). We both decided we had watched them in a good order, although we probably could have switched the Jackson and the Mirren without any loss of understanding. Leaving aside "The Private Lives," both the Blanchett and the Duff abbreviated a lot, of necessity. By watching the longer series first, we got solidly grounded in who was who and where the major lines of political and religious tensions were.
The Blanchett movies were the most cinematic and least historical.
davetrow's comment was that they weren't so much history as hagiography (lives of the saints). Certainly, the immensely spacious architecture wasn't accurate, but also the visually evocative but erroneous scene of Elizabeth, barefoot and in what looks like a nightgown, standing on a cliff watching the Spanish Armada burn. Er . . . not exactly. In fact, not at all. Only a few burned and the weather did the rest, sweeping the fleet into the North Sea. Which I might not have known if I had not seen the other versions. And if mine erudite spouse had not gone running for the relevant entries in the Encyclopaedia Brittanica. But Geoffrey Rush as Walsingham was a world unto himself.Jackson's Elizabeth was the most opaque, an amazing feat of acting in creating and maintaining emotional sympathy with a person so rigidly controlled. I loved the ease of old lovers and friends between Mirren and Jeremy Irons as Robert Dudley.
davetrow thought the portrayal of Elizabeth aging was best done in the Duff Masterpiece version (as well as the only one to show her as plain).As for "The Private Lives," it makes no pretense of historical accuracy, or perhaps that was as close as Hollywood got in those years. Even so, Davis was an extraordinary actress, fearless in her portrayal of unattractive, obsessed women.
