Posted on 07/10/2022 9:28:05 AM PDT by Rummyfan
Zulu is the sort of film that it's become imprudent, even inadvisable, to write about. Nearly six decades since it was released, its subject matter – a battle between white colonial troops and an African army – would certainly never be attempted by a filmmaker today, and certainly not in the same manner as it was in 1964, which it's worth remembering is as far away from us today as the Civil War was from the first stirrings of the Roaring Twenties.
(These temporal comparisons are facile, to be sure, though we've certainly seen as radical a social transformation in the last six decades as the stunning technological changes that happened between the presidencies of Lincoln and Coolidge.)
When it was released, Zulu was billed as a spectacle, an epic action picture that delivered the sort of widescreen thrills that television was two generations from capably providing. Even then, it was made at probably the last plausible moment for this sort of unironic celebration of valour by British redcoats on a foreign field; Tony Richardson's The Charge of the Light Brigade, released just four years later, would cast a far more acerbic eye on another celebrated instance of Victorian military bravery, reflecting the cultural sea change that had happened on either side of the '6
(Excerpt) Read more at steynonline.com ...
IIRC from my reading of the actual history (The Washing of the Spears) decades ago, besides being caught in a horrible position out in the open, the quartermaster aspect of the problem was that the British ammunition was very stoutly crated in screwed together wooden boxes, and they simply couldn’t unscrew the crates quickly enough to get at enough ammunition. No one had DeWalt electric screwdrivers back then.
I have ZULU, ZULU DAWN, and THE NAKED PREY in my DVD collection. Along with many other great epics from the 1960s!
EL CID
KHARTOUM
THE LONGEST DAY
THE TRAIN
THE WAR LORD
The Russian version of WAR AND PEACE
WATERLOO.
And many other not so famous epic movies.
I keep saying that when I run out of canvas I will cease painting and start watching up all those great movies.
Then I find a sale on painting canvas and stock up again!
So, In the evening I watch a movie, then paint.
Good choices on the movies. Keep painting, my friend.
And remember the “Men of Cornwall” version from the World Trade Center on 9/11.
Both the British Army and the Zulu Impis they faced were portrayed respectfully in Zulu. The only people who came off poorly were Reverend Witt and the Boer militia cavalry who abandoned the British to their fate.
Single shot rifles too! 😎
“Also I love the Naked Prey with Cornel Wilde..”
Saw that 1966 or so in the base theater at El Toro.
Race crap was just starting to percolate nicely.
All the negros in the audience cheered when the natives chucked spears at the white guy.
Whites in the audience cheered when the white guy nailed a native with a spear.
Different times for a 19 year old.
I met Donald Morris at a book-signing 25+ years ago and he signed my copy of his book. He used to be a newspaper columnist here for the Houston Post when they had a slate of good conservative writers before they went over to the dark side. He said he liked the movie Zulu which he felt was "true to the spirit of the event". He had not seen Zulu Dawn.
Another good book on the 1879 Zulu War with info that was not in Morris' book is Like Lions They Fought by Robert Edgerton.
Curiously, Custer didn’t fare quite so well under roughly similar circumstances.
Try going to see Blazing Saddles in 1974 with a mixed crowd.
I went to the British Army Museum back in 2018 and saw three of the Victoria Crosses given out for the memorable men of the engagement. I'm betting I watch this movie at least four times a year. I have an original Martini Henry with several hundred rounds.
ZULU ping.
Wow!
Another ‘funeral’ haka:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M6Qtc_zlGhc
The transition from the “roar” & sheer energy of the haka to the quiet respect at the end is stunning.
Portraying the Zulus that way was done deliberately by the producers, directors, and cast...and was not appreciated by the South African government. When the movie premiered in South Africa, all the black cast members were banned and the movie itself was banned from any theater that blacks could go to on the grounds that it might promote rioting.
Maoris were extremely fierce fighters..like the Haka expresses.
Similar except that a fair number, perhaps most, of the Indians Custer was up against had smoothbore muzzleloaders, rifled Springfields and Enfields, and Henrys, Spencers Winchester and Sharps repeaters.
The Haka just “stirs” something in me ... the fierceness, the energy, the (ok, let’s just say it) testosterone! The roar of those voices ... anyway, I would be scared to death facing about 100 (typical ‘war’ party) of Maori warriors.
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