London honours iconic Zulu film

A few night ago – Tuesday, June 10 – passersby taking a stroll through London’s busy Leicester Square in the late afternoon summer sunshine (yes, we do get some, occasionally) found their way channeled by the metal barriers that are habitually put up to protect a red-carpet entrance to one of the city’s best-known and prodigious cinemas there, the Odeon. 

By the time the carpet had been rolled out and burly young men in dark suits – the security – had taken up their positions, quite a few of those passersby had stopped to line the barriers, craning to work out who the visiting celebrities might be. Brad Pitt? Angelina Jolie? George Clooney, surely, at the very least? 

In fact, the only people concerned with the film production were a few dignified elderly men, most of them octogenarians, and I doubt if anyone in the crowd had more than the faintest idea who they were. Any sense of puzzlement must have been exacerbated by a group of men in the uniforms of British soldiers of the 1870s – oh, and a goat, wearing a richly-decorated blanket, and held by a smartly-clad soldier in a scarlet tunic and white sun-helmet.

For this was not the premiere of the latest Hollywood blockbuster: in fact, it was a gala showing, billed as a ‘re-premiere’, of a film first released fifty years ago this year, and which has since come to be regarded as a classic of British cinema – ‘Zulu’. 

Michael Caine
Not the recent thriller starring Orlando Bloom and Forest Whitaker, inexplicably given the same name, but the original 1964 epic about a group of British soldiers defending the mission-station at Rorke’s Drift in KwaZulu-Natal, one of the best-known incidents in the Anglo-Zulu War of 1879, and the film which effectively launched a young Michael Caine onto the world.
I always struggle to explain the high regard in which ‘Zulu’ is held in within the UK to my South African friends. Despite the local historical theme, ‘Zulu’ did not make much of an impression in South Africa when it first came out – it had a limited release and black audiences were, in any case, barred from seeing it. In the UK, however, it was very different; despite a modest budget, even by the standard of the times, it quickly proved a huge commercial success, so much so that it was re-released across the country again in 1972, and has been a TV staple ever since. 
Just last month it was voted number 3 in the ‘100 Best War Films Ever’ by viewers of a mainstream TV channel here. 

Wave of interest
It undoubtedly created a huge wave of interest in the history of KZN in the UK from which the region still reaps the rewards. I suppose I myself am one of the film’s by-products; I remember watching it first as a seven year-old schoolboy, and being gripped by the opening sequence which depicts the veld littered with dead British redcoats in the aftermath of the Battle of Isandlwana. 
I remember thinking, “What on earth has happened here?” – a question which shape my decision to become a professional historian, and to specialise in the Anglo-Zulu War, and which, in a sense, I have been trying to answer ever since. 
I have been writing about the war for over thirty years now, and have been involved in organising tours to the battlefield areas for much of that time, and I have hardly met anyone from the UK in all that time who has not had an interest in the history, and does not admit to a soft-spot for ‘Zulu’. 

Not that the film is a documentary, of course, and it does play fast and loose at times with the history, yet in its study of a small group of soldiers caught up in dramatic events beyond their understanding, it does capture a human element to the story which many academic historic accounts somehow miss.
Much of its appeal, of course, is as a pretty standard adventure film, although it benefits from lush photography and rich use of colour and landscape, which has undoubtedly been one of the most enduring adverts overseas for KZN’s charms. 

British film critic Mark Kermode (“A recent poll of film viewers voted me Britain’s most trusted film critic – but don’t worry, only three percent of those polled said they trusted my opinion; it’s just that they trust other critics even less!”) who introduced the film pointed out that his love of ‘Zulu’ began when he, too, had been taken to see it as a boy by his father – and looking around the auditorium it was clear that many of the audience were, like me, ‘of a certain age’.
“But”, he pointed out, “I’m pleased to say that coming back to it as an adult, and as a critic, I still enjoy it – beyond the Boy’s Own adventure, it is actually a very complex film.” 

And so indeed it is, providing a cynical look at British Imperialism at a time – the 1960s – when Britain was giving up its Empire, accentuating the cost and folly behind the notions of gung-ho military glory, and addressing that old British pre-occupation with class-conflict. And my, on Tuesday night did the film itself look good, digitally refreshed, crisp and clean, and shown for the first time in years as it was meant to be – on a big screen.

Crowd’s curiosity
And it is some indication, too, of the film’s enduring popularity here that the audience had to stump up a fair bit just to get in. The event was being held for charity, the funds raised going to a wounded soldiers’ charity, Walking With The Wounded, the David Rattray Trust in KZN, and Price Harry’s Lesotho charity Sentabele. The cheap seats cost a cool £76 a piece, rising to £1 000 a ticket for a limited number of ‘gold class’ tickets which got you in to the bash after the screening. And the £1 000 tickets were over-subscribed – altogether, over 1 100 people attended the screening.

And was the curiosity of the crowd outside rewarded? Of course. 
They might not have recognised 88-year-old actor Dickie Owen, who had played Cpl Schiess VC in the movie – well, it was made fifty years ago, after all. They might not have realised that the men in uniform were the Die-Hards, the UK’s premiere re-enacting group, themselves no stranger to the battlefields, nor that the goat is the mascot of the Royal Welsh regiment, who took part in the real battle. 
But they certainly recognised one of the guests of honour, Prince Mangosuthu Buthelezi, whose arrival was heralded by songs from a Zulu singing group. 

As a young man Prince Buthelezi played his ‘maternal great-grandfather’, King Cetshwayo, in the film, and in interviews given last week he acknowledged the huge contribution made by the film to understanding Zulu history overseas. And the crowd recognised more royalty, too – the last of the VIPs to arrive – Prince Harry himself – who is patron of Walking With the Wounded, and who admitted that ‘Zulu’ is one of his favourite films. 

Sadly Michael Caine could not be there – fifty years on he’s still working – but he sent a video message acknowledging the debt he owes to the film. And when it was over, the more enthusiastic people in the audience did their best to liberate as souvenirs the placades which had been taped to the barriers outside – not bad for a film that is now over half a century old, and which has become an imaginative part of the way Britain regards its history in South Africa.