Fire Over England

Vivian Leigh and Laurence Olivier in Fire Over England

William K. Howard's Fire Over England is a mildly engaging period piece set in 1588 amidst the turmoil of the Spanish Armada's unsuccessful campaign to invade England. The film's historical accuracy is dubious at best, a fact that bothered critics such as Graham Greene at the time, but this is a handsome production with an impressive crew and cast that boasted many luminaries. Erich Pommer and Alexander Korda lent their considerable skills as producers. James Wong Howe was the cinematographer.

The film has become most famous as the nesting ground of the famous romance between on-screen lovers Vivian Leigh and Laurence Olivier. Leigh plays a lady in waiting to Elizabeth I. We first glimpse her scurrying around court searching for a lost pearl from her queen's dress. She often supplies a spriteliness that keeps this historical epic from becoming too stodgy. It was this role that led Myron Selznick to suggest to his brother David that Ms. Leigh might make an ideal Scarlett O'Hara for the upcoming Gone With The Wind. Leigh has too little to do here. The scenes between the two lovers find them mooning over each other, with predictable remonstrances from Elizabeth, and I don't think much acting was involved. 

Olivier is merely serviceable as the romantic lead. He is great when declaiming dialogue with Leigh or Flora Robson as Elizabeth or Raymond Massey as Philip V of Spain. However, Olivier is playing a character ten years younger than himself and, when he has to display his character's youthful rashness, the effect is histrionic rather than passionate. Also, I suspect the producer's wanted to duplicate the success of Warner Brothers' Captain Blood in the swashbuckler sweepstakes. Olivier was certainly adept at theatrical swordplay, but lacks the romantic dash of Errol Flynn. He was better with characters who had a cold core, like Maxim de Winter or Richard III. This film's naval miniatures are also inferior to the ones in Captain Blood. 

This reminds me of an anecdote related by Herb Caen in his San Francisco Chronicle column. Olivier and Leigh were starring in a production of Romeo and Juliet in San Francisco that eventually made its way to New York for an unsuccessful 1940 run. Olivier's entrance as Romeo involved a magnificent leap with sword brandished onto the stage, but on opening night it resulted in a pratfall. Caen spied Olivier at the Palace Hotel bar three hours later nursing a drink and a sulk. So profound seemed the actor's misery, that Caen ignored his journalistic instincts and did not attempt to nab a quote.

The real star of Fire Over England is Flora Robson who captures the majesty and vanity of the monarch better than anyone except Glenda Jackson in Elizabeth R. It is an indomitable performance which Robson reprised in The Sea Hawk. Equally good is Leslie Banks as Elizabeth's favorite, Leicester, who was, actually, quite dead by the time the Armada launched. Raymond Massey, who had starred in Korda's Things to Come the previous year, is suitably chilly as Philip. Robert Newton is surprisingly adept as a Spanish noble. I forget what a nimble actor he was before he became sodden with drink. James Mason is well cast in his brief role as a spy.

In retrospect, Fire Over England seems a fairly obvious allegory about the rise of Naziism and its subsequent threat to Great Britain. Korda was a Hungarian Jew and Pommer had fled Germany after Hitler rose to power. The film makes an attempt to link the inhumanity of the Spanish Inquisition with the then current scourge besetting Europe. Like Sergei Eisenstein's Alexander Nevsky, Fire Over England is a historical drama that portends World War 2 and its attendant Holocaust.