McCarthy was right, again!
The Zulus are shown in the best possible light and the British, though ultimately victorious, as in history, are dogged by counterfactual slanders.
In the latest issue of Bournbrook, Issue XXX, I was glad to contribute my latest musings on film, “Modern Cinema and why McCarthy was right”. I made the case that the breaking of the blacklist on Communists in Hollywood burst a great cultural damn, and that the torrid state of modern cinema is an echo of that famous cry, “I’m Spartacus!”.
I picked out 1964’s Zulu for particular attention. That’s because a few years ago while fitting a kitchen, I had LBC playing, and the topic of discussion stuck with me for all that time. Nick Ferrari was debating some do-gooders amid a row over whether the film should be screened at a fundraiser for British veterans, or if it should ever be screened at all – in other words, banned. One caller complained it was jingoistic and racist. Ferrari retorted that it was made with the full support of the Zulu people, and that the tribe leader is played in the film by the grandson of the historical chieftain. The next time the film cropped up on telly, I watched it with an eye to see who was right.
It was Ferrari. As I detail more thoroughly in the piece, the Zulus are shown in the best possible light and the British, though ultimately victorious, as in history, are dogged by counterfactual slanders on the characters of the troops. Often this is subtle, as with the way the camera captures the aristocratic Bromhead, played by Michael Caine, from a low angle, as though he is looking down on you, as much as his own men.
The entire film takes a dim view of the audience, for whom Caine is essentially a stand in, displaying arrogance toward the Zulu’s apparent tactical prowess. By the film’s end, he is born again through fire and does admittedly cut a heroic figure, but as one who has come to respect his enemy and their bravery.
I did argue this was probably for the best, if we’re showing off a military victory, it's good to be magnanimous. But it does go too far in places and bears many of the hallmarks which would go on to define and make unwatchable many modern films.
I mentioned this to my dad, who doesn’t really watch films but has certainly seen Zulu. He seemed sceptical. He asked who directed it and guessed that it might have been Richard Attenborough. I Googled it and found an unfamiliar name: Cyril Raker Endfield. I checked his Wikipedia page, and lo and behold, McCarthy was right, again. He’d had an anti-capitalist film rejected in 1942. One of his most famous films, The Underworld Story was an allegorical assault on McCarthyism. In 1951 he was named as a Communist at a House Un-American Activities Committee, blacklisted, and moved to the UK.
But it gets even better, because Cyril would later write the screenplay for Zulu Dawn, a prequel to Zulu detailing the British defeat at the hands of the Zulus at Isandlwana. In Zulu Dawn, British troops, while being overrun by the Zulus, are forced to stand in line and queue for ammunition under the watch of an irredeemably stupid quartermaster. At one point, a young boy setting out range markers is shot dead by friendly fire. The officer class make racist jokes about an Irishman, who objects to feasting while the battle rages. As far as I can tell from researching the historical battle, all of these are inventions to make the British look foolish and inept, and those are just the ones that occur to me, bearing in mind I haven’t watched the film in some time.
It's often said that modern conservatives are liberals from ten years ago. Well, in the case of film, the conservatives hosting flagship radio programmes are defending the films of blacklisted Communists from sixty years ago, against modern Communists who are waging a perpetual revolution against the cultural totems they are themselves responsible for creating. Unless you want to go back and watch Metropolis over and over, you’re getting Communism. It might be 1960’s style, or it might be 2020’s style, but in one way or another, it’s exactly what McCarthy said it was.
