Capital Celluloid 2023 — Day 305: Thu Nov 2

The Queen's Guards (Powell, 1961): BFI Southbank, NFT3, 6.20pm


This 35mm presentation, introduced by BFI National Archive Curator Jo Botting, is part of the Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger season at BFI Southbank. BFI update: We are pleased to announce that this screening will be introduced by actor Jess Conrad.

Rather than reproduce a review here's an extract from the Brad Stevens column 'Bradlands' in the October 2012 issue of Sight and Sound. Stevens explains why: 'An especially memorable event scheduled by The Art House Cinema Meetup, involved a rare screening of Michael Powell’s The Queen’s Guards (1961) at BFI Southbank earlier this year. Although the film’s reputation could hardly have been worse – Ian Christie, who introduced the screening, virtually apologised for it – everyone I spoke to afterwards seemed pleasantly surprised. Several members of the group who attended our post-screening discussion were familiar with Peeping Tom, and noted how the protagonists of both films were attempting to simultaneously imitate and rebel against their obsessively traditional fathers, the central character of The Queen’s Guards being depicted as a helpless puppet (via the toy soldier possessed by his girlfriend) and a fly caught in a spider’s web (his crippled father moves around the family home by swinging from steel bars attached to the ceiling). One of our members, Yusef Sayed, continued this discussion in an email he sent me, observing that “the emphasis on the Captain’s trolley rail system cast an eerie comment on a person’s actions being determined by external barriers and guidelines. As you said, the ascent of the stairs was striking and almost spider-like. The central character, too, was obviously troubled by the feeling that he needed to fulfil a role and stick to a tradition, stay within set codes of conduct – leading to the uncertain feelings about following in his brother’s footsteps… This, of course, leads to the idea of being governed by tradition, expectations, identified only by your role in society, whether a soldier or a gentleman…”

I had noticed Kim Newman heading into the screening, and subsequently posted a message on his Facebook wall, noting that The Queen’s Guards had “reminded me of John Ford’s The Long Gray Line (1954), another CinemaScope film in which the director’s admiration for military institutions struggles with an awareness of the neuroticism of those institutions”; to which Kim responded, “I thought of the same Ford film, but also saw odd connections with that 80s cycle about being in not-really-needed services (Top Gun, An Officer and a Gentleman, Heartbreak Ridge)… The nicest touch was the hero not taking his girlfriend’s job as a fashion model seriously since all she does is dress up in silly clothes and pose, when it turns out that the highlight of his military career is exactly like that.” These discussions were clearly far more carefully considered than the ‘official’ discourses on Powell’s film, demonstrating how cinephilia has been enriched by technologies all too frequently imbricated with superficiality.'

Here (and above) is the opening scene.

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