Cromwell's Missing Remains

By S.K.

He was the most uncommon commoner Britain has ever produced. He abolished monarchial rule, reformed the law, drew the blueprint for religious freedom. Yet he was preceded by one King Charles and followed by another. His followers were reviled or executed; his anti-Catholicism was notorious. Oliver Cromwell described himself as "a miserable and wretched creature"--but as Lord Protector he strode through England as God's appointed messenger.

It is scarcely any wonder that this ambiguous Puritan, this bigoted civil libertarian has eluded the makers of Cromwell. Yet it almost seems that they went out of their way to make the elusion mutual. As Director/Scenarist Ken Hughes sees it, Cromwell spent most of his time bursting into Parliament, squirming impatiently in his seat, then booming forth a set speech. Lost in the middle distance was the tentative, fluttery King Charles (Alec Guinness) whose crimes consisted of arbitrary taxation and ignorance that his nobles were cutting off the ears of outspoken foes. Happily, Guinness has his own ideas of how the role ought to be played. Hobbled by a stutter, consoled by a piety that assures him a crown in heaven, Guinness' Charles I is a not unsympathetic custodian of decay, unable to negotiate--how could a King make bargains?--even for his own life.

Mock Bach. In the title role, however, Richard Harris is misplaced. Technically he is jarring; his voice is often so laryngitic that one expects a stage manager to step forward to announce the appearance of Mr. Harris' understudy. When his speeches are unclouded, Harris endlessly "beseeches" always "in the name of God" even more often than Tevye in Fiddler on the Roof. But he struts with a histrionic swagger entirely out of keeping with Cromwell's Christian zeal.

The sound track also gives itself airs --usually mock Bach, which cannot let the cast alone. Even when Cromwell sees his dead son, killed in civil war, the music interrupts to shatter one of the film's few poignant moments. Cromwell squanders most of its energy on background and battle. The gathering of legislators is truly a parliament of fowls, with the Earl of Manchester (Robert Morley) as a peacock of surpassing foppishness. The engagements between the Royalists and the Roundheads are conveyed with lapidary detail, down to the last cavalryman.

Such work is the triumph of the technical adviser, not the film maker. The essences of conscience and character are left unfilled. Cromwell ends with a fatuous paragraph saluting Oliver's great contributions to democratic government. It never mentions that two years after his death, the Lord Protector's bones were dug up and hanged at Tyburn. No one knows precisely where Cromwell's remains now lie, and it is vain to search for any vestige of the man in the film that bears his name.

S.K.

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