Wellington in Film
Linda Parker
The 1970s seems to be the peak decade for featuring Arthur Wellesley the first Duke of Wellington in movies, but his inaugural appearance is likely to be in one of the early ‘talkies’: The House of Rothschild. The five Rothschild brothers found banks across Europe, and are all petitioned by various governments to help to finance Napoleon’s defeat. One of the five, Nathan Rothschild, declines to loan £5m to the British Government, but offers the Duke twice that sum to annihilate Bonaparte. After the war is won, the film concentrates on the link between the Duke and the success of (Nathan) Rothchild’s Bank. The majority of the film was shot in black and white, but the final sequence was one of the very first to be shot in Technicolour. The film was one of 1934’s most popular, and was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Picture.
You might be surprised to learn that the Duke appears in a James Bond film! In Dr No, the first Bond film starring Sean Connery and released in 1962, there’s an appearance of Goya’s Portrait of the Duke of Wellington. In a case of truth being stranger than fiction, the picture was stolen from London’s National Gallery a year before Dr No was released and the theft was a major crime story in the newspapers. This meant that filmgoers recognised the portrait when they might otherwise not have noticed it. Happily, the painting was returned to the Gallery in 1965.
1970 saw the release of the British/Italian/Swiss comedy adventure film The Adventures of Gerard which is based on a series of short stories which were written by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and published in the Strand Magazine in the late 1880s and early 1900s. Brigadier Etienne Gerard is a Hussar officer in Napoleon Bonaparte’s army, and is a character notable for his vanity and, in his mind, being the greatest swordsman, soldier, horseman and lover ever. The film stars Peter McEnery as Gerard, Eli Wallach as Napoleon and John Neville as the Duke of Wellington.
1970 was also the year that the epic period war film Waterloo was released. It tells the story of events before, during and after the Battle of Waterloo, and is famous for its lavish battle scenes which were filmed in Ukraine. The movie was one of the most expensive ever made for its time, with final costs coming in at around £12m (approx. $38m). The cast was huge and included 17,000 soldiers in the battle scenes; they all had to be taught 1815 drill and battle formations, and there were another 50 circus stunt riders to perform the dangerous horse falls. Waterloo won two BAFTA awards and was nominated for a third although it wasn’t a hit at the box office.
Lady Caroline Lamb is a drama/tragedy about the lady’s love affair with Lord Byron, her descent into madness when he leaves her for a younger woman and her death from a broken heart. Laurence Olivier has a cameo part as Wellington, with The Times’ critic crediting Olivier’s performance as being “…a beautifully witty and rounded characterisation that is worth the price of the admission in itself”. The film was nominated for three BAFTA awards and was one of the most popular movies of 1973 at the British box office.
The popular British television series, Sharpe, ran for five seasons and was originally set during the Peninsular War in 1809. The fictional Sharpe saves the life of General Sir Arthur Wellesley, is promoted by him to the rank of lieutenant and put in charge of the 95th Rifles. Sharp’s Rifles is a TV movie from 1993, and was the first film spin-off from the Sharpe series. In later films, the role of General Wellesley is played by Hugh Fraser (Captain Hastings in Poirot).
Finally, and coming more up to date, Lines of Wellington is a Franco/Portuguese war epic with dialogue in French, Portuguese and English, and features the Duke when he was Viscount Wellington. The story is set in 1810; the French forces are invading Portugal, but are temporarily held up by the Anglo/Portuguese army under the Viscount at the Battle of Bussaco. The dramatic events which occur at Wellington’s secret fortifications at the Lines of Torres Vedras, known as the Lines of Wellington, and the effect on soldiers and civilians, are told in this 2012 film which was mainly made for television.
