THE FILM
FILM DIRECTOR: Richard Lester
SCREENWRITER: George MacDonald Fraser
FILM STARS: Malcolm McDowell, Alan Bates, Florinda Bolkan, Oliver Reed, Tom Bell, Joss Ackland, Christopher Cazenove, Henry Cooper, Lionel Jeffries, Alastair Sim, Michael Hordern, Britt Ekland, Bob Hoskins
COUNTRY: England
THIS BOOK
AUTHOR: George Macdonald Fraser
TYPE: Novel PUBLISHER: Pan
THIS EDITION PUBLISHED: 1980
COUNTRY: Great Britain
COVER: Paperback
THE ORIGINAL BOOK
ORIGINAL AUTHOR: As Above
YEAR FIRST PUBLISHED: 1970
ORIGINAL BOOK TITLE: The film title
NOTES
GENRE: Adventure
WORDS: You have to love the Flashman books (or anything by George MacDonald Fraser). Fraser writes faction and occasionally history but where the fiction is rooted in real places, times and historical events (with some liberties taken and a modern (satirical) sensibility). And his is not just a lip service historical backdrop. There is a lot of detail in the historical events. His books are so accurate that my Modern History teacher at school would on occasion read chapters to us in lieu of the regular syllabus. Of course he (the teacher) had a sense of humour as does Fraser who is quite cynical, sharp and able to make you laugh out load.
His central “hero” is Capt. Harry Flashman who is an unapologetic rogue who’ll stop at nothing to advance himself. Sir Harry Paget Flashman VC, KCB, KCIE is a fictional character created by Thomas Hughes (1822–1896) in the semi-autobiographical Tom Brown’s School Days (1857). Fraser took that character and created adventures for him which, perhaps, are very satirically 70s in tone but are historically accurate (with some liberties) in time and place. Here Flashman gets swept up in the revolutions of 1848 and meets Prince Edward, Lola Montez, Ludwig I of Bavaria. Richard Wagner, Franz Liszt, Oscar Wilde, Karl Marx and German Chancellor Otto Von Bismark and gets involved in the British war in Afghanistan. The book is loosely based on the plot of The Prisoner of Zenda (1894) by Anthony Hope. Flashman explains that this is because the story was plagiarised from him by its author, Anthony Hope. Harrr, meta before meta? Harry Flashman appears in 12 of Fraser’s books.
The film directed by Richard Lester, who (as a satirical comedy director not adverse to humorous anachronisms) is a right fit for the subject matter (he had brought Fraser in to write the screenplay to his his enormously successful comedy adventure films based on the Alexandre Dumas novel of the same name, “The Three Musketeers” (1973) and “The Four Musketeers” (1974)). The film stars the always wonderful Malcolm McDowell who again is a perfect fit and unrelenting in his portrayal of Flashman. Lester said subsequently (in “Getting away with it : or, The further adventures of the luckiest bastard you ever saw” (2011) ), “that equivocal anti hero wasn’t easy to take. They wanted a real hero, a hero that was a bounder as well as a hero. And Malcolm McDowell was absolutely 100% bounder – the sleaze was coming through to the film.” I saw the film so long ago I don’t recall the specifics of the film but I do recall laughing and being amused by the mix of history and humour. I was also on a Malcolm McDowell kick at the time (still am though it’s hard work).
Interestingly, Fraser also wrote the non fiction “The Hollywood History of the World: From One Million Years B.C. to Apocalypse Now” (1988). A book that everyone should read as a tonic to the boring overused trope about Hollywood bastardising history and getting it wrong. Fraser concludes that the standard of historical analysis in most movies is a lot better than the popular conception.
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It’s been many years since I saw the film, but I remember it as being great fun.
As you say it has a terrific cast- Malcolm McDowall, Oliver Reed, Britt Ekland, Alan Bates amongst others. It’s a shame they couldn’t have cast Trevor Howard as Lord Cardigan in the movie (Cardigan was a important character in two of the Flashman books, but not Royal Flash), he could have reprised his role in The Charge of the Light Brigade. Britt Ekland was perfectly cast as Duchess Irma. Thinking back, she seemed to be in almost every big budget British movie of the early 1970s.
The movie is pretty true to the book, as I remember. It’s the only Flashman novel set in a fictitious country, and apart from a novella he wrote late in the series, the inly one set in western Europe. The book is set against the political tumult of 1848, and actually features Karl Marx as minor character.
GMF was often criticised as being a reactionary conservative , but the books are quite unflinching in their depiction of the brutality of white rule in the 19thcentury. Basically GMF was an old fashioned newspaper reported who didn’t believe in sanitizing things. Historically, most of his works are accurate, though the latter ones dropped off a bit in overall quality. As you say he had a long standing interest in the movies, and in addition to the Musketeer movies, he wrote the screenplay for one of the Roger Moore Bond films.
There was talk in the early 2000s of making a big budget tv mini series adaptation of some of the books, similar to the Bernard Cornwall’s Sharpe novels. Personally I think the Flashman books would be perfect for the Netflix treatment.
Flashman’s cynicism would be perfect for Netflix though his sexism, casual racism and bullying nature will probably be watered down for fear of the audience misinterpreting the same (ie: some punters will no doubt think that producers are promoting those values rather than making humour of them).
I agree re trevor Howard … one of the best of all English actors in my book