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Historical films

Captain Kidd
US, 1945
Director  Rowland V Lee
Screenwriter  Norman Reilly Raine
Cinematographer  Archie Stout
Music  Werner Janssen
Cast  Charles Laughton (Kidd), Randolph Scott, Barbara Britton, Reginald Owen (William III), John Carradine, Gilbert Roland, Sheldon Leonard

Laughton is in fine emoting form in this tale of the pirate who tricks William III into giving him royal orders, and is hanged in the presence of enemies he thought dead. The real Kidd was given command (in 1695) of an expedition against pirates in the Indian Ocean, but on arrival in Madagascar, he began to sanction pirate attacks on merchant ships. Proclaimed a pirate, in 1699 he surrendered on the promise of a pardon, but was sent as prisoner to London where he was convicted of piracy and hanged in 1701.
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Cardboard Cavalier
British, 1949
Director  Walter Forde
Screenwriter  Noel Langley
Cinematographer  Jack Hildyard
Music  Lambert Williamson
Cast  Sid Field, Margaret Lockwood (Gwyn), Mary Clare, Jerry Desmonde, Claude Hulbert, Irene Handl, Brian Worth, Edmund Willard (Cromwell)

In Cromwell's England, Royalists commission a barrow boy to carry a secret letter. He succeeds with the help of Nell Gwyn, who must have been quite precocious, having been born in about 1650.

Cromwell
British, 1970
Screenwriter/director  Ken Hughes
Cinematographer  Geoffrey Unsworth
Music  Frank Cordell
Cast  Richard Harris (Cromwell), Alec Guinness (Charles I), Robert Morley (Earl of Manchester), Dorothy Tutin, Frank Finlay, Timothy Dalton, Patrick Wymark, Patrick Magee, Nigel Stock, Charles Gray, Michael Jayston, Anna Cropper, Michael Goodliffe

Covering the period 1640-53, this film biography of the future Lord Protector plays havoc with history but has an uncannily excellent performance by Alec Guinness as Charles I. For an historian's assessment of this film, see Past Imperfect.
Read Professor Blair Worden’s review of this film
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Forever Amber
US, 1947
Director  Otto Preminger
Screenwriters  Philip Dunne, Ring Lardner Jr
From novel by Kathleen Winsor
Cinematographer  Leon Shamroy
Music  David Raksin
Cast  Linda Darnell (Amber), Cornel Wilde, George Sanders (Charles II), Richard Greene, Glenn Langan, Richard Haydn, Jessica Tandy, Anne Revere, Robert Coote, John Russell, Leo G Carroll

The screen version of Kathleen Winsor's sensational (in the 1940s) novel tells of the amorous adventures of a young woman during the reign of Charles II. George Sanders makes a satisfactorily sensuous Charles II, while Linda Darnell's chest heaves appropriately.
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The Moonraker
British, 1957
Director  David MacDonald
Screenwriters  Robert Hall, Wilfred Eades, Alistair Bell
From the play by Arthur Watkyn
Cinematographer  Max Greene
Music  Laurie Johnson
Cast  George Baker, Sylvia Syms, Marius Goring, Peter Arne, Richard Leech, Clive Morton, Paul Whitsun-Jones, Gary Raymond, John Le Mesurier (Cromwell), Patrick Troughton, Michael Anderson Jr

Swashbuckler set during the English Civil Wars, in which a noble highwayman smuggles the future Charles II into France.

Nell Gwynn
British, 1934
Director  Herbert Wilcox
Screenwriter  Miles Malleson
Cinematographer  F A Young
Cast  Anna Neagle (Gwynn), Cedric Hardwicke (Charles II), Jeanne de Casalis, Muriel George, Miles Malleson, Esmé Percy, Moore Marriott

The affair between Charles II and the orange seller is brought to anodyne life by the virginal Anna Neagle.

Restoration
US, 1996
Director  Michael Hoffman
Screenwriter  Rupert Walters
From the novel by Rose Tremain
Cinematographer  Oliver Stapleton
Music  James Newton Howard
Cast  Robert Downey Jr, Sam Neill (Charles II), David Thewlis, Polly Walker, Meg Ryan, Ian McKellen, Hugh Grant, Ian McDiarmid, Mary Macleod

A young doctor (Downey Jr) agrees to an unconsummated marriage to one of Charles II's mistresses, but then loses favour when he falls in love with her. The sumptuousness of the production design (which won an Oscar) is the best thing about this historical drama, which takes in the Great Plague and the Great Fire of London.
Read Professor Justin Champion’s review of this film

The Vicar of Bray
British, 1937
Director  Henry Edwards
Screenwriter  H Fowler
Cinematographer  William Luff
Cast  Stanley Holloway, Felix Aylmer, Hugh Miller (Charles I), K Hamilton Price, Margaret Vines, Garry Marsh, Esmond Knight, Martin Walker

Historical comedy in which a clergyman (Holloway) manages – by changing his theology with the changing wind – to hang on to his living through the reigns of Charles I, Cromwell and Charles II. The story actually comes from a popular early 18th-century song based on a 16th-century vicar of Bray in Berkshire who managed to survive the religious changes of the reigns of Henry VIII, Edward VI, Mary and Elizabeth.

Witchfinder General
British, 1968
Director  Michael Reeves
Screenwriters  Michael Reeves, Tom Baker
From the novel by Ronald Bassett
Cinematographer  John Coguillon
Music  Paul Ferris, Jim Morahan
Cast  Vincent Price (Hopkins), Rupert Davies, Ian Ogilvy, Patrick Wymark (Cromwell), Hilary Dwyer, Wilfrid Brambell

A curiously effective horror film set in pretty countryside in which a loathsome Essex lawyer Matthew Hopkins (Price) sets out on a crusade to rid East Anglia of all its witches. He is so good at his job – the real Hopkins sent more than 200 to their deaths and wrote an account of his work – that he himself comes under suspicion. In 1647, when he fails his own test by floating in water while bound, he is hanged. For reasons best known to them, the Americans retitled this film The Conqueror Worm.
Read Dr Malcolm Gaskill’s review of this film
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