Young Winston **** (1972, Simon Ward, Robert Shaw, Anne Bancroft, Jack Hawkins, Ian Holm, Anthony Hopkins, John Mills, Pat Heywood, Patrick Magee, Edward Woodward, Colin Blakely, Robert Flemyng, Laurence Naismith) – Classic Movie Review 4642

Director Richard Attenborough’s meticulous, exciting and enjoyable 1972 British historical adventure movie is an ideal subject for him. It is an all-star pageant of Winston Churchill’s early years from his wretched schooldays via serving as a war correspondent in South Africa during the Second Boer War and his life as a soldier fighting in India and the Sudan, to his first election as a Member of Parliament.

The movie is painstakingly and capably directed by a clearly involved Attenborough, with well fleshed-out performances interpreting Carl Foreman’s intelligent and faithful screenplay, based on The Rt. Hon. Winston Churchill K.G. O.M. C.H. M.P.’s classic book of memoirs, My Early Life: A Roving Commission.

An ideally cast Simon Ward is powerful as Winston, while Anne Bancroft and Robert Shaw are moving as his inattentive parents, Lord and Lady Randolph Churchill, with Jack Hawkins as Mr Welldon, Ian Holm as George Buckle, Anthony Hopkins as Lloyd George and John Mills as General Kitchener.

It runs 157 minutes with the cut version at 145 minutes.

Nigel Hawthorne has an un-credited walk-on as a Boer sentry.

Also in the massive cast are Patrick Magee, Edward Woodward, Colin Blakely, Pat Heywood, Robert Flemyng, Laurence Naismith, William Dexter, Basil Dignam, Robert Hardy, John Stuart, Richard Leech, Clive Morton, Reginald Marsh, Dinsdale Landen, James Cosmo, Peter Cellier, Ronald Hines, Russell Lewis, Julian Holloway, Thorley Walters, Patrick Holt, Norman Bird, Gerald Sim, Andrew Faulds, Maurice Roeves, James Cossins, John Woodvine, Norman Rossington, Pippa Steel, Robert Harris, Dino Shafeek, Michael Anderson, Peter Mann, Ron Pember, James Cosmo, Edward Burnham, Jeremy Child, George Mikell, Willoughby Gray and Norman Gay.

© Derek Winnert 2016 Classic Movie Review 4642

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Richard Attenborough, Baron Attenborough, CBE (29 August 1923 – 24 August 2014).