4. 4. – 6. 4. 2025

Alfred the Great

While Old England is being ransacked by roving Danes in the ninth century, Alfred is planning to join the priesthood. But observing the rape of his land, he puts away his religious vows, to take up arms against the invaders, leading the English Christians to fight for their country. Alfred soundly defeats the Danes and becomes a hero. Although Alfred still longs for the priesthood, he is torn between his passion for God and his lust for blood.

Original title: Alfred the Great
Director: Clive Donner
Production: 1969, UK
Length: 122 min.

Screened:

KRRR! 2020: 70mm 2.2:1, Colours faded, Digital Sync, Spoken language: English, Subtitles: Czech
KRRR! 2022: 70mm 2.2:1, Colours faded, Digital Sync, Spoken language: English, Subtitles: Czech

Annotation for KRRR! 2022 by Dana Licehamrová

We find ourselves at a critical moment in 871 in an united England, when Alfred, Prince of Wessex, moments before reciting his priestly vows and dedicating himself to God, is forced to take up the sword instead of the rosary and defend the Saxon people from the Danish invaders, to decide and act. This is not only a historical epic, but above all a melodrama about internal struggles, questions of religion, nation and antimilitarism, which visually reflects its dilemma in the omnipresent colour red.

Alfred the Great entered British cinemas in the late 1960s, a time when historical big budget films had been on the screens for some time. These included Spartacus (1960), directed by Stanley Kubrick, Lawrence of Arabia (1962), directed by David Lean, and the magnificent Cleopatra (1963), directed primarily by Joseph L. Mankiewicz. It was in the shadow of these works that Alfred the Great, an ambitious British epic about British history, was created. Director Clive Donner, who has so far made a particularly mischievous comedy from a script by Woody Allen, What's New, Pussycat, 1965, collaborated on the film with the British branch of the leading Hollywood film studio MGM and American producer Bernard Smith. However, the film remains purely British in terms of the casting of the lead role, which was played by David Hemmings, who was most famous in Michelangelo Antonioni's Blow-Up (1966).

However, it is not only Hemmings who is associated with Alfred the Great, but also Jocelyn Rickards, who contributed to the costumes in both films. Alfred the Great owes its large units of epic battles, as well as its thoughtful work with depth of space, to the excellent cinematographer Alex Thomson, who returned to historical or historically themed films in later years, for example in Excalibur (1981), Legend (1985) and Hamlet (1996). Alfred the Great's appeal was greatly aided by the extensive Irish locations of County Galway, where it was filmed with the help of the Irish army. From today's point of view, it is noteworthy that Sir Ian McKellen, now associated mainly with the role of Gandalf in The Lord of the Rings (2001-2003), appeared in Alfred the Great in one of his first film roles.