George and Elizabeth is a documentary about the wartime King, George, and his wife Elizabeth, the parents of our present Queen.
With all the abuse the British Royal Family attracts today, for the sin of behaving like so many 'normal' people, it's revelatory to watch this documentary and gain an insight into the life of a thoroughly decent, in fact totally admirable man who became King under horrendous circumstances. He seemed doomed to failure, but became the greatest royal success of the 20th century.
Prince Albert, Bertie to his family, was a painfully shy boy, who found it almost impossible to speak in public - he was the product of a father who believed cruelty and no affection was the best framework for rearing children.
Bertie was second in line for the throne. His brother Edward, the public's favourite, was certain to succeed. Certain, that is, until he fell for the American prostitute and society leader Wallis Simpson. Her being a part-time prostitute and society leader wasn't a problem; her sin was that she was also a divorcee. Edward simply could not marry her, and rule as King. Fortunately (since this thoroughly unpleasant person was also a Nazi sympathiser), he chose Wallis, and abdicated. And Bertie, who became known from this point as George, became King in his place.
This documentary, cobbled together from Movietone News clips, tells a pretty comprehensive story of his life, focusing on the way he and Queen Elizabeth heroically buttressed the lives of all English people during the war. They refused to leave London during the worst months of the blitz. Asked if she would be sending her two little girls, Elizabeth and Margaret, to Canada for safety, Queen Elizabeth replied "The girls will not leave without me. I will not leave without the King. The King will not leave."
There are wonderful scenes here of King and Queen with the two girls, who are quite beautiful in a very fresh English way, It's almost - almost - enough to make one a royalist.
It's a charming but essentially lightweight documentary, nicely written, but without enough actual audio of the time to give it real bite... it's mainly straight narration, with a fairly intrusive background music track of truly awful muzak nature. It's pleasing elementary history, with some nostalgic images recalling the life of a thoroughly decent and heroic King.
This is mostly black and white footage from the 1920s through into the 1950s, with the occasional colour sequence.
While the colour footage has faded somewhat, the black and white images are in very decent condition. While the earliest clips show some wear and tear, most are in a very viewable state, with good contrast, deep blacks and good shadow levels.
This is a good historical survey, pitched, I'd imagine, at older royalists, or at early secondary school history students. It's quite pleasing, and would be worth renting for a look at a vanished style of royalty.
