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10 films that shed light on the late Queen

A royal enigma: Stella Gonet as Queen Elizabeth II in Spencer - Alamy
A royal enigma: Stella Gonet as Queen Elizabeth II in Spencer - Alamy

Perhaps the most revealing aspect of cinema’s thinking on the subject of Queen Elizabeth II is that cinema has done so little of it. When the Queen was depicted on film during her lifetime, it was typically in short, sharp, cameo-like doses: she was the embodiment of Britishness, regality and/or dignity, there either to help set a scene, or – in the likes of Austin Powers and National Lampoon’s European Vacation – vertiginously raise the comic stakes.

Portrayals of substance, on the other hand, have been few and far between – and on the fiction side, also overwhelmingly recent. Compared to Queen Victoria, Winston Churchill, William Shakespeare, or any other number of major historical figures, Elizabeth II was a figure whose inner life remained largely unprobed by actors and filmmakers – perhaps partly out of deference, perhaps partly because the real thing had very cannily given them so little to go on. Here are the 10 most illuminating depictions – six in fictional features, four in documentaries – that the medium has mustered to date.

A Queen is Crowned

(Michael Waldman, 1953)

The Rank Organisation’s 1953 documentary of Elizabeth’s coronation was newsreel with the sumptuousness and sweep of a historical epic. Resonantly narrated by Laurence Olivier from a script by the playwright Christopher Fry, this unhurried record of the ceremony proved a substantial domestic box office hit: it was also nominated for an Oscar and won a Bafta and a Golden Globe. The general perception that it had done justice to the event also helped pave the way for commercial broadcasting in the UK, and it was commended in Parliament for “increas[ing] the renown which this country and the Royal Family have throughout the world.”

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A camera set up to film the royals in 1969 for Richard Cawston's BBC documentary Royal Family - Hulton Royals Collection
A camera set up to film the royals in 1969 for Richard Cawston's BBC documentary Royal Family - Hulton Royals Collection

Royal Family

(Richard Cawston, 1969)

Richard Cawston's 1969 documentary was a PR exercise that backfired, and is all the richer for it. Commissioned by Elizabeth herself to mark Charles’s investiture as Prince of Wales, this BBC-ITV co-production was an attempt to humanise the Windsors: royal duties are depicted as a job – and a paperwork-heavy one at that – while family life is shown to be much the same as anyone else’s, with evenings around the television, barbecues in the garden, and (courtesy of Prince Philip) no shortage of dad jokes. Made long before the era of media training, it shows the Royals in a startlingly natural, unguarded light: David Attenborough, then the controller of BBC Two, feared that its candour could end up “killing the monarchy”. It was broadcast only a handful of times before a seemingly rueful Elizabeth ordered it to be locked away indefinitely, though last year a complete copy of the film surfaced on YouTube.

Sometimes available on YouTube

Her Majesty

(Mark J Gordon, 2001)

Mark J Gordon’s amiable 2001 drama takes place in the lead-up to the Royal Visit to New Zealand of 1953-54. But the Elizabeth at its core is a 13-year-old girl whose impassioned letter-writing campaign encourages the Queen to stop off at her small rural town during the trip. The Kiwi actress Rachel Wallis plays the much-anticipated guest, whose impending arrival serves as a deadline for the place to resolve its various racial and intra-community quarrels.

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The Queen

(Stephen Frears, 2006)

It was only in 2006 that cinema gave us the first screen portrayal of Elizabeth that dug deep into her human psychology – aptly enough in a film that was all about the isolation of monarchy, and the importance of knowing when to pull the curtain back. Directed by Stephen Frears, Helen Mirren took on this onerous task, and won an Oscar, a Bafta and considerable public acclaim for her efforts. Even after four series of The Crown (which, like Frears’s film, was written by Peter Morgan), Mirren’s meticulous balancing of warmth and frost still feels like the definitive portrait. The Palace is believed to have regarded the film as a positive – and given the rise in pro-monarchy public sentiment it apparently prompted, why not? – though it was never conclusively established whether or not its subject had watched it herself.

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The King’s Speech

(Tom Hooper, 2010)

It is, however, widely understood that she saw and loved this one. A private screening of Tom Hooper’s unlikely Oscar juggernaut took place at Sandringham House towards the end of 2010: reports at the time described the Queen as having been deeply moved by its portrayal of her father George VI’s struggle with a stammer, which screenwriter David Seidler described as “the highest honour” the film could possibly receive. Elizabeth herself, then just a princess played by the 11-year-old Freya Wilson, has relatively little screen time. But the film wryly acknowledges the presence of this young girl in the wings of history, reminding us that her own move into the spotlight was not that far off.

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Sarah Gadon is brilliant as a teenage Princess Elizabeth in A Royal Night Out - Alamy
Sarah Gadon is brilliant as a teenage Princess Elizabeth in A Royal Night Out - Alamy

A Royal Night Out

(Jullian Jarold, 2015)

Around 18 months before The Crown arrived on Netflix, this brisk yet contemplative period piece opened in cinemas, and served as something of an accidental bridge between The King’s Speech’s crowd-pleasing Britflickery and sombrely expansive historical Morganing ahead. The Canadian actress Sarah Gadon is terrific as the 19-year-old Princess Elizabeth, who slips out of Buckingham Palace with her 14-year-old sibling Margaret (Bel Powley) on VE Day to experience the public celebrations as just two more members of the crowd. Fun and peril lie ahead, as do the flickerings of romance, plus a sharpened awareness of the gravity of the title and lifelong responsibilities which await.

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The BFG

(Steven Spielberg, 2016)

Steven Spielberg’s adaptation of Roald Dahl beloved children’s novel always felt strangely undervalued on its release in 2016: its lolloping, episodic rhythms felt like the storytelling instincts of an earlier, less plot-addled age. Perhaps its most purely pleasurable section is the Buckingham Palace detour, in which Mark Rylance’s big, friendly, slightly tragicomic giant introduces Penelope Wilton’s Queen to the flatulent pleasures of frobscottle, his beverage of choice. Though notionally set back in 1982, Wilton’s wonderfully playful performance seemed to anticipate Elizabeth’s own two later-life screen roles, opposite Daniel Craig and Paddington Bear. There was poise and ceremony to it, but also a twinkle.

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Spencer

(Pablo Larraín, 2021)

“The only picture of you that matters is the one on the ten-pound note,” Stella Gonet’s Queen Elizabeth tells her wayward daughter-in-law (Kristen Stewart) before she heads off on a Christmas morning stroll. “That’s when you realise you’re only currency.” Though Pablo Larraín’s apocryphal drama about the breakdown of Princess Diana’s marriage didn’t exactly cast the royals in the rosiest light, Elizabeth was an exception. In Stephen Knight’s screenplay she’s an enigma, always a few steps removed from the soap-opera tensions spilling out into public view, and sharply conscious of the strangeness of this great piece of stately machinery over which she – theoretically – presides.

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Elizabeth: The Unseen Queen

(Simon Finch, 2022)

The first of two major documentaries produced for the 2022 Platinum Jubilee was this masterfully assembled archive piece, made of footage from the Queen’s own personal archive which had largely never before been screened in public. Focusing on Elizabeth’s life prior to her coronation, the revelatory intimacy of the footage is enriched by the voice that talks us through it: Elizabeth’s own, some of it culled from historical speeches and the rest taken from a dedicated recording session which took place at Windsor Castle in May this year.

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Elizabeth: A Portrait in Parts
Elizabeth: A Portrait in Parts

Elizabeth: A Portrait in Parts

(Roger Michell, 2022)

What followed, meanwhile, was chronicled by Roger Michell in the Notting Hill director’s final project before his painfully premature death last year. A non-chronological patchwork of news footage and sundry clips, A Portrait in Parts is full of playful juxtapositions that undercut the magnitude of its subject, and turn the film into a sidelong commentary on Britain itself during the 70 years of Elizabeth’s reign, as well her ever-shifting yet somehow also steadfast place in the national consciousness.

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