Filmed in the beautiful English countryside as well as London's Shepperton Studios, this is a visually stunning movie. With outstanding writing and great actors like Richard Harris and Alec Guinness it's also great drama.
The basic story involves the removal of a king of England for acts of treason against the people, and the creation of Parliament. Vital to making this a good drama is that the usual idea of portraying the bad king in comic-book-evil characterization is instead handled with full awareness that even a weak king has residual power by reason of his throne, and that he knows all the tricks to keep himself in power; almost.
The film deals only with Cromwell's rise to power. His 6 years of rule and his life after that have the makings of another fine movie.
The weakness and indecision of the politicians in 1645 --- with their self-serving motivations and cowardice --- purely reflects the current 2006 cut-and-run double-talk in our war against terror.
Cromwell is/was a splendid movie. In 1970 it was just one more of many outstanding movies, the quality of which was taken as normal. Sad to reflect that not one single quality film has emerged in 2005 or 2006 and none (to my knowledge) are planned. Toilet humor, comic book heroes, not much else.
The basic story involves the removal of a king of England for acts of treason against the people, and the creation of Parliament. Vital to making this a good drama is that the usual idea of portraying the bad king in comic-book-evil characterization is instead handled with full awareness that even a weak king has residual power by reason of his throne, and that he knows all the tricks to keep himself in power; almost.
The film deals only with Cromwell's rise to power. His 6 years of rule and his life after that have the makings of another fine movie.
The weakness and indecision of the politicians in 1645 --- with their self-serving motivations and cowardice --- purely reflects the current 2006 cut-and-run double-talk in our war against terror.
Cromwell is/was a splendid movie. In 1970 it was just one more of many outstanding movies, the quality of which was taken as normal. Sad to reflect that not one single quality film has emerged in 2005 or 2006 and none (to my knowledge) are planned. Toilet humor, comic book heroes, not much else.