Inside Buck House
PALACES
camera teams must be falling over each other in the Grand Corridor at Windsor these days with two films on the Queen's palaces appearing with less than a fortnight between them. Those of you preparing for, or recovering from, the Christmas nosh who found time to while away an hour at the box to see The Royal Palaces of Britain will have consumed a visual feast worthy of the most exacting gourmet. This joint BBC and ITV film scores in every way over its depressing predecessor, now trundling the rounds with Finders Keepers. The title alone sets the mood of sanity, where Palaces of a Queen (reviewed by me in these columns three weeks ago) sank firmly into the mire of the less literate, royalist cult, women's weeklies.
I would not go so far as to say that this is the ultimate in films on English royal palaces, but it is a very good film indeed. It sensibly sets out to do one thing—tell the story of the palaces and their collections from the Tudors to the present day. Henry VIII is reflected in Hampton Court, Charles I in Inigo Jones's banqueting house and marvel- lous pictures, William and Mary in Wren's un- finished masterpiece, the new Hampton Court, the Georges in Kew and Kensington and George IV in Brighton's Pavilion and Buckingham Palace. The feeling of procession through the centuries is heightened in the score by the Master of the Queen's Musick, Sir Arthur Bliss, a con- catenation of styles ranging from Tudor poly- phony to Victorian baroque, reflecting detail as diverse as angel musicians glistening on the ceiling of the chapel at Hampton Court, and Prince Albert gay in Roman cuirass and skirt.
The commentary by Sir Kenneth Clark, whose chirpy face, like some super, sage parrot, inter- venes periodically as we move from one gasp of splendour to the next, is all lucidity and con- cealed art. It is simple, perceptive and unabashed in its painless purveyance of basic facts—who reigned, what they built, whether or not they were great patrons. He is also blessed with that magic quality, the common touch, making things dead leap into sudden life, as when he dangles Holbein's drawings of the toughs, clods and hard-eyed beauties of Henry VIII's court before our eyes. One could certainly meet these up the junction.
Instead of cavorting in the air like a demented bat as in the Rank film, we approach the palaces from the ground, which is, after all, how one does on one's horse or in one's sedan chair, barouche or palanquin. There is also a very real feeling for the setting out of which these palaces arise. The first glimpse of Holy- roodhouse is of the gaunt hills around, heather rippling before a blast beating down from the leaden sky. Or Wren's Hampton Court is seen from the formal garden, a statement at a glance on how we should think of a baroque palace in which building and garden were part of a single rhythmic complex. The use of pictures and objets, too, is never obtrusive or deliber- ately showy. They are brought in without arti- fice to demonstrate points in the history of royal patronage: Charles I's perceptive purchase of works by Rembrandt, Albert's penchant for primitives or George III's formation of the old- master collection. Also conveyed without ped- antry is the essence of the function of a palace: here the court hangers-on waited to pounce on Charles II; at these windows blind, bearded George III loomed; or here Queen Victoria gave her grandest receptions and balls.
There is only one lapse, in that this film, like its predecessor, goes to town on the murder of Rizzio, no doubt shortly to be acted by Charlton Heston in succession to Moses, Michelangelo and General Gordon. This time a Charles II chair hurtles to the ground instead of a cheap glass, but otherwise the same old doors swing open and shut, the camera swerves crazily from side to side and goes out of focus. I was very glad, however, to learn that the portrait I thought was Charles I through the fuzz in the earlier film is in fact a gentleman of about 1620 wrongly called Rizzio. A minor quibble for a film which handles a complex subject with such tactful assurance and genuine feeling for the indefinable beauty of such things.
ROY STRONG
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