Phonearl Good start, but then it gets ruined

Matialth Good concept, poorly executed.

CrawlerChunky In truth, there is barely enough story here to make a film.

SeeQuant Blending excellent reporting and strong storytelling, this is a disturbing film truly stranger than fiction

bsmith5552 "Young Winston" was an ambitious effort from Producer Carl Foreman and Director Richard Attenborough to chronicle the early life of famed politician Winston Churchill. One always thinks of Churchill as the rotund cherubic cigar smoking politician who ultimately saved the world from Nazi domination. What we get is an unexpected adventuresome war correspondent who makes a name for himself on the battlefield.Churchill's life is chronicled from the age of seven to his first election to parliament at age 27. The young Churchill is distanced from his beloved father Lord Randolph Churchill (Robert Shaw) who is a member of parliament at odds with his Prime Minister Lord Salisbury (Laurence Naismith). We follow his schooling at an expensive prep school where he is brutally caned by his professor. His American mother Lady Churchill (Anne Bancroft) also has little time for the young boy at this juncture.When he is grown, Winston manages to get assigned to the India frontier as a war correspondent. There he is cited for an act of bravery. He begins to receive the recognition that will help him in his ultimate goal of being elected to parliament. His first try ends in defeat.His father is taken ill and dies a lonely painful death at the age of 46. This has a profound effect on both Winston and his mother. Later, Winston is posted to South Africa during the Boer War where he distinguishes himself in battle but is captured. His daring escape wins him accolades in his homeland. His second try at parliament is successful and the rest as they say, is history.The cast is supplemented by a number of notables from the British Hall of Fame. Included in small cameos are Jack Hawkins, Anthony Hopkins, Edward Woodward, John Mills, Ian Holm, Colin Blakely, Jane Seymour and others.Churchill's legendary sense of humor is absent here but we do see him light up his famous cigar at the end though.

mark.waltz With parents like his, it's no wonder that Winston Churchill found a place in history. It wasn't that they raised him for greatness, basically not even raising him at all. Brought up by a loving nanny, young Winston wanted nothing more than a chance to rise in politics with his Parliament father at his side. Shear determination and a will to serve made him perhaps the greatest prime minister (or at least the most remembered) in British history.If there were awards for voice-over, the one provided by young Simon Ward would have gotten one for sure. Not only does he play the role of young Winston from his early 20's on up, he also provides the much altered voice for the fat old man that people remember. Robert Shaw and Anne Bancrift portray his wealthy parents, with Pat Heywood as sweet as a biscuit as his devoted nanny. Shaw is outstanding as the elder Churchill, with Bancroft gorgeous as the noble mother who tried to make up in Winston's adulthood to make up for her neglect. Outstanding photography and a gorgeous score makes this lush epic very well worth seeing, with equally fine direction by Richard Attenborough. Battle scenes going back to wars prior to 1900 are epic in scope. There's a lot of memorable supporting parts for some of England's finest actors. I'm sure that this would look gorgeous on the big screen, but many films like this in the 1960's and '70s were forgotten by award time, although this got a few nominations. The mixture of history, family drama and light comedy will keep your attention. A little sleeper that may run over 2 1/2 hours but won't make you nod off.

Prismark10 Young Winston is based on Churchill's autobiography and therefore has a whiff of horse manure about it as he inflates his own importance in events. After all Churchill was more complex and complicated and in World War 2 he ended up being the right man at the right time but only in recent years do we see archive footage of him looking worse for wear with having a few drinks too many and this was during wartime.Only in the last few years I have seen sound recording footage after Britain had been victorious where Churchill was being booed by the crowd. I need not remind you that in the 1945 election held after victory in Europe, the Conservatives were soundly beaten by the Labour Party. Something was not quite right as the history books would have you believe.In this films directed by Richard Attenborough we see his distant relationship with his father, Lord Randolph Churchill marvellously played by Robert Shaw. His difficulties at school, his reckless behaviour in the military before he turns his ambitions to journalism and then politics.The film has flashbacks as well as scenes of various characters being interviewed by an unseen interrogator. I saw a version of the film many years ago that contained a dream sequence where an older Winston has a conversation with his father which is very moving. A recent version of the film has this scene edited out which robs the film of a lot of pathos.The film is handsome, finely mounted, well acted, Attenborough almost makes Churchill look like a prototype Indiana Jones with his military escapades but it has all the markings of a bio pic made a few years after the death of a subject widely regarded as a hero and whose flaws were swept under the carpet.You will never see this version of Churchill nowadays or at least I hope note.

george karpouzas When I watched this picture on DVD I had in hand The late Roy Jenkins massive biographical study of Winston Churchill and therefore I could compare the action and story line of the with a written source.Pivotal events of young Churchill's life were described both in book and movie as for example, his difficulties as a young pupil as well as his faultless recitation of Macauley's Ruins of Ancient Rome, when in Harrow. His problematic relationship with his father was also portrayed convincingly.Afterwards his journalistic/military adventures, as his participation in a punitive expedition and mainly his escape from the Boers which catapulted him to world fame. I found that the movie gave the established version of events as well as providing memorable quotes which may be a mark of authenticity or a symptom of cliché depending on personal viewpoint. For someone who is not British the evocation of the British Imperial establishment in the movie has an air of historical accuracy as far as manners and ways of life are concerned, the veracity of which I can not check since neither me nor my ancestors had experience of that environment. The movie is picturesque and has aura of adventure when describing the various imperial fronts that it's dashing hero traversed in his young adventurous days. It also emphasizes the importance that social connections played in British society for the advancement of a young aspiring politician. The movie shows the development of a human, if extraordinary, character in the manner of a novel, that Germans call Bildungsroman, that is a story about the evolution and crystallization of a human character. I would compare it in cinematic terms with Abel Ganz's Napoleon, an other earlier movie that explores the formative years of an other Titan of European history, Bonaparte. Young Winston of course relates to a smaller part of it's subject's life in the sense that it ends with his break into politics and also covers barely 4 chapters in Roy Jenkinks massive book from a total of over fifty such devoted to the great man. Clearly it strives to portray solely the early beginning but that it does so very ably. P.S. After I had written the above part of the review I read Churchill's own "My Early Life" on which the movie is based according to the titles of the beginning. I have to admit that it follows "My Early Life" in the content of the events described although not in the sequence since there exist numerous flashbacks. The important thing to point out is that having as a previous written source Roy Jenkins' biographical study I had a sympathetic although supposedly neutral source, while "My Early Life" is as all autobiographies a unabashedly self-justifying piece of writing and that quality is reproduced in the movie. One has to note that the filmic text follows the written text and many narrations in the movie supposedly made by Churchill speaking as an old man, are verbatim reproductions of the text of "My Early Life" which serves as inspiration. Truly reading the book and watching the film is an experience that marries two different forms of art. Also the content of the movie, not only the verbal narrations follows the book and memorable incidents, such as the report to General Kitchener and the presence of the wife of Mr. Dewsnap in the Oldham election meeting stand out. One of course has to observe that everything had been exceptional about Churchill's early life, including his boyish naiveté before the master of his first school, to exclaim that he never speaks to a table as Latin grammar would have him do-an incident described in the book where a small board containing the first declension of the noun mensa=table in Latin is contained. Clearly it offers a lot of insight to it's subject.