UK TV alert: next Thursday

[elisabeth]

Not actually LBH, but a vision of the sort of LBH movie that might one day (if we're very lucky) be made:

On Thursday December 6th, in the middle of the night -- 2 a.m.-4.15 a.m. -- Channel 4 is screening the 1968 Tony Richardson movie, "The Charge of the Light Brigade". It's utterly wonderful. (A slight excess of soggy subplot, but that doesn't matter.) Gorgeous for the feuding between Lucan and Cardigan, the dithering of sweet Lord Raglan, the single-mindedness of the doomed Nolan, the fun-and-games of the dodgy Mrs. Fanny Duberly, the atmosphere of the times, and of course for the charge itself. It's sprightly, witty, yet heartfelt and thrilling, and gloriously cast ... You can't ask much more from a movie than that. So -- set your videos, folks!

[harpskiddie]

Elisabeth:

It is lovely, except, as you say, the slightly unbelievable subplot and the waste of Vanessa Redgrave in a throwaway role. It is rather accurate, although the writers have put Nolan into some incidents where it was others [Black Bottle etc], and, of course, there is a lot left out. Richardson supposedly wanted his name taken off the finished version. I saw it when it first came out in the cinemas, and was quite taken. I had just finished reading Woodham Smith's "The Reason Why" and was therefore suitably primed.

I have the DVD and watch it regularly. "Airey, Airey!!! The French are in the courtyard!!" "Pull your horse up around your ears and....." "Surely that is the signal for enemy advancing, my lord! Surely? Why was I not told?"

Too bad that they left out the stand of the Highlanders before Balclava [Russell's "thin red streak, tipped with steel" - forever to be known as the thin red line] and the Charge of The Heavy Brigade, which preceded the Light Brigade fiasco, and which was positively one of the most remarkable cavalry engagements on record. Especially considering that Scarlett, the commander, had never been in combat.

The movie does, I think, recreate the aura of waste, ineptitude and general malaise that infected the times and certainly the Army. One sometimes wonders how the British ever won any wars. It shows what can be done if one wants to REALLY try to be at least a bit authentic.

Gordie
MC
major critic

[elisabeth]

Gordie --

Oh boy, you awaken the wondrous thought of a posthumous Director's Cut. I wonder if the original unshown footage is still around ...? Maybe he did shoot those missing sequences.

Yes, a frightful waste of Vanessa -- she was, of course, Mrs. Tony Richardson at the time, which accounts for her presence -- and also an imbalance to the movie, as her luminosity makes us pay far more attention to the dumb subplot than if it had been some average actress. But never mind; it's a pure delight.

Like you, I'd read "The Reason Why" not long before it came out, which may have made me (like you) especially receptive. Not sure how the movie would work with anyone who didn't know the history at least a bit; it made quite a splash when it came out, but in the UK at least has been banished to limbo for ages -- I'm pretty sure I had to get my DVD copy from the US. Bizarre, really, when even in simple film-making terms it was such a ground-breaker -- those fabulous Richard Williams animations.

It boggles the mind to imagine the wondrousness of a movie that took the same approach to the CW, or (even more) to LBH. There's so much that's comical, in the latter even more than in the former. If only.

[BrokenSword]

Elisabeth-

I was just wondering....

Did stories and accounts (by survivors of The Charge) abound in England as stories did in this country after LBH?

I know EXACTLY what you mean about '16 Rising. Same in Atlanta over a particular game (baseball - I won't bother to fill in details) in which a LONG standing record was broken. The stadium had room for a crowd of about 50,000. In the 25 plus years since that night, I have heard the stories of probably 75,000 who were, "there to see it happen."

Funny how many rebellions against the Crown have happened in Britain. So many in Scotland alone that they are simply referred to by year. The '69, The '45 and so forth. And they say we Americans were naughty.

M

[elisabeth]

Re survivors' stories: oddly enough, no -- or at least as far as I'm aware. All I've read about survivors is of a handful of officers being lionised in London drawing-rooms, and disappointing everybody by being closed-mouthed and dour about the affair. What enlisted men did, I don't know. But there certainly doesn't seem to be the same "survivor" culture prevailing.

Two possible reasons: (1) there were enough who survived to scupper any fanciful stories, and (2) the age of the mass media hadn't yet quite arrived. If The Charge had happened in the 1870s rather than the 1850s, who knows; there could have been the same rich crop of fantasists as on the other side of the Atlantic. But there's also the consideration that Britain is a much smaller country; far harder to go off and reinvent yourself when there's a danger you'll run into someone who knows all about you from childhood. (Ironic, really, that Scott Fitzgerald could say "there are no second acts in American Lives"; in the 19th century, they were almost all second acts! Or third, or fourth, or fifth. You could recreate yourself as whoever you wanted. Magic.)

Agree, the rebellion quota is startlingly high. I wonder if it perhaps stems from the old Viking/Anglo-Saxon traditions in which you expected to elect, or at least choose, your leader? (Even in the current Coronation ceremonial -- I think -- there's a token gesture towards "affirming" the right of the Monarch to rule.) The inheritance thing may be to some extent anathema to the inner British psyche. Then again, we had so many "foreign" imports -- James I from Scotland,
William of Orange from Holland, George I from Germany -- that the whole thing became very convoluted, and "patriotism" became whatever you wanted it to be that week. Yes to The Monarch, but no to The Monarch as embodying the country. -------------- We pretend to be docile, but in fact I think we're quite a turbulent people deep down. Who knows what will happen next.

[BrokenSword]

Thank you, Elisabeth - I knew I could depend on you to put some meat on a bare bones question on the subject. I've never heard of such people or their tales either.

Many good points about the phenomena or lack of, concerning ‘extra’ survivors of great events. I would imagine you’re correct that the logistics involved with finding an audience to tell your tale to without detection would present a huge challenge. Too bad there was no Internet back then. What stories we would have now. Geez, talk about some people re-inventing themselves.

As to Britain’s many rebellions. Naturally the history of your nation covers an immense length of time. Aside from that, there is the class thing. For the upper classes, the road to greater wealth and power always required rebelling against or standing by the man at the top. You couldn’t just ride into the sunset and start your own cattle ranch somewhere, so to speak.

There was also the long tradition of clan chiefs, and/or feudal lords to which the lower classes owed allegiance. Survival depended on the lord’s/chieftain’s pleasure with you. If he said, “We fight,” then there was no choice but to fight. The most a peasant could expect from it was a pat on the head afterward. As so many Confederate soldiers put it, “A rich man’s war, but a poor man’s fight.”

People generally want to get near a celebrity for assorted reasons. The officers or upper-crust had the advantage of being those to seek the favor of or a favor from, so maybe there was little market for the common soldier’s story. In other words, perhaps people just weren’t so interested in a celebrity who was untitled, un-propertied and a common soldier with no influence, or in what he had to say. Genuine OR fake. Just the cultural thing.

We won’t even get into the religion aspect of it all, and the roll it played in quarrels among those that sought dominance.

M

P. S. I'll add to that. Come to think of it, I've heard no tales of 'lone' survivors from the Fettermen fight or, for that matter, other wiped out commands. It really seems that the Little Bighorn carried a special mystique while not being unique.

[harpskiddie]

There are a couple of stories of survivors of/escapees from the Alamo and Goliad, but I can't remember the names or details. I suspect it depends upon which versions of the Alamo and Goliad one chooses to accept, though I will freely admit to knowing next to nothing about either.

Gordie
MC
mister clandestine.................................................................

[BrokenSword]

Gordie- "...the Alamo and Goliad, ... I will freely admit to knowing next to nothing about either...."

Well then ... you know more about Goliad than I do.

As far as the Alamo, there's a tale that Col. Travis drew his famous line in the sand with a saber and then said that any man who wished to remain should cross that line. Only one man did not cross, and escaped under cover of darkness and through the Mexican lines. I think I read his name years ago. Who knows?

In any case, there are not near the number of stories as with the LBH caper. Certainly no 'gallery of stars' trying to claim the title.

M

[alfuso]

I have this on DVD. I read "The Reason Why" And "The Gallant 600" and "Hell Riders"

Once one knows the background- the idle rich class buying commissions, the class warfare -- the film becomes more detailed. But it was the horses which suffered the most. About 230 Light Brigade were killed or wounded that day, but they lost over half their horses.

Astoundingly, they made it to the [wrong] guns and over them and even spiked some of them. It was the run *back* which decimated them - their mounts were blown.

They'd been there nearly a year before the battle, the horses starved; in fact, the animals were just barely recovering from that when they went into the battle. Terrible stories of the animals chewing each other's tails and manes off in a desperate need for food. 5000 livestock and remounts dying in a huge corral near the harbor because everyone thought they were everyone else's responsibility.

The best description of the charge can be found in Sewell's "Black Beauty" when Old Captain gives a vivid eye-witness account. How riderless horses kept running with their intestines tangling in their feet, wounded horses staggering into camp; men stoic over a friend's death but weeping for their horse.

BB is not a children's book.

alfuso

[elisabeth]

alfuso, thanks for the reminder; that "Black Beauty" account is stunning. Well worth revisiting. I've long ago lost my childhood copy, but I have to visit the bookshop today anyway to pick up something they've ordered in for me -- will definitely get a replacement BB as well.

I have "Hell Riders", but haven't read it yet. (Saving it up for a rainy day.) Is it as good as I hope it is?

[harpskiddie]

Linda:

Thanks for the titles, two of which I've never read, and for the comment about Black Beauty, which I simply loved as a child - but obviously in an expurgated version, since I remember absolutely nothing like what you've described, and I know I would have. Three for my Christmas present to myself, and Autie to the back burner for a while.

Gordie
MC
mixing categories

["Hunk" Papa]

As Marechal Bosquet said as he watched the Light Brigade make their charge, "C'est magnifique, mais ce n'est pas la guerre."

I don't think that any other nation on earth could have made such a monumental blunder, yet be able to carry it off with such panache that Tennyson immortalized it in his epic poem.

Although the movie is quite accurate historically, the fascination for me lies in the magnificent performances of the actors, Trevor Howard as Lord Cardigan, John Gielgud as Lord Raglan and Harry Andrews as Lord Lucan in the way they portray the mixture of arrogance, pomposity, stubbornness, stupidity and the assumption of the divine right of the nobility of the day never to be wrong. It is fascinating as a precursor of the identical attitude adopted by the generals in WWI.

[alfuso]

Hunk

Just reread that chapter "An Old War Horse" It's not as detailed as I thought I remembered. I recall it just traumatized me when I first read it as a child.

Must be another book where I read the more detailed accounting. But Captain's eye-witness tale is still stunning.

I read somewhere that one of the saddest and hardest things after a battle back then was through the night hearing the screams of the wounded horses and the gradually diminishing sounds of that and single gunshots. . .

The scream of a wounded horse is terrible -- a high pitched rasping scream following by grunting as they get wind for the next scream...

BTW, Bosquet's complete quote is "It is magnificent, but it is not war...it is madness."

The Brits back then were really into doing it "Grand" even losing. If you did it Big and Grand you got immortalized.

After all, the light Brigade lost only about 125 dead in a war that took some 50,000. Ah, but the LB "blundered" and did it in Grand style.

alfuso

[elisabeth]

Funny thing -- I too had remembered the Captain chapter as more graphic than it is. Maybe it's one's childish imagination that paints the full picture? But yes, it's still magnificent. (Terrific book; so glad you sent me back to it.)

There are some hideous ACW accounts of wounded horses, too; one that depicts horses with one or even two legs shot away, nonetheless dragging themselves to take up their place in the formation. Heartrending. Perhaps we're both remembering an amalgam of all the stories we've read.

One of the things about The Charge, I suppose, is that it was at the birth of the mass media, with William Russell there to report. And possibly there was a point to finding some glory in that war -- because only if some Romance was attached would it really catch the imagination of the people, and thus force the government to do something about the appalling supply and hospital situation out there. I may be wrong about this ... but I think this was the first time that a "someone had blundered" concept made it through into public discourse. The beginnings of accountability, perhaps? (It didn't entirely take, as we can see today. A start, though.) Tennyson's poem is as much indignant as it's celebratory, and it's through that poem that the event was mediated. I don't know if anyone's done any work on this, but it'd be interesting to know if this did indeed mark any sort of turning-point in the growth of a popular democracy -- and/or a more professional army. I doubt the latter, as the Boer War is generally credited with that change. Still ... might be useful to know.

[harpskiddie]

Hey gang [lower case]:

I have, within the past three days, purchased The Errol Flynn DVD Charge of the Light Brigade , Black Beauty, Hell Riders, and The Reason Why. I have bids in on The Gallant 600 and Balaclava 1854. I know it's not any of your faults, I am a "responsible adult" - and I did say these would be a Christmas present to myself - BUT PLEASE DO NOT MENTION ANY OTHER BATTLES OR WORTHY BOOK TITLES UNTIL AFTER EASTER.

Thanking you in advance for your kindnesses, I am, and will remain,

Gordie
MC
master of chaos but not of his own impulses....................................................