| Film Review | The American Historical Review, 108.1

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| Film Review | The American Historical Review, 108.1 | The History Cooperative

Film Review

The Gathering Storm. Directed by Richard Loncraine; produced by Frank Doelger and David M. Thompson for BBC and HBO; screenplay by Hugh Whitemore from the story by Larry Ramin and Hugh Whitemore. 2002; color; 95 minutes. Distributed in the U.S. by HBO Pictures.

The reputation of Winston Churchill has seldom been higher. In the wake of the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, New York Mayor Rudi Giuliani pointedly brandished a copy of John Lukacs's Five Days in London, May 1940 (1999) and sent that slim volume on Churchill's accession to power onto the bestseller list. A full-scale biography by Roy Jenkins (Churchill [2001]) sold well on both sides of the Atlantic, while in the United Kingdom a national television poll conducted in autumn 2002 named Churchill as the "greatest Briton of all time." Whatever the historical realities, Churchill's name has come to be a byword for political tenacity, for holding fast to one's ideals when others counsel compromise, and for standing up to aggressors. It is this image of Churchill that sits at the center of Richard Loncraine's television film The Gathering Storm.

British director Loncraine is best known for his magnificent film adaptation of William Shakespeare's Richard III (1995), but his television work has included the second (D-Day) episode of HBO's Band of Brothers (2001). Like Band of Brothers, The Gathering Storm is a transatlantic coproduction linking the BBC, HBO, and Hollywood producers on a mission to memorialize. In the case of The Gathering Storm, prime movers included the British-born brothers and star directors Ridley and Tony Scott (who served as executive producers for the film). Whereas Band of Brothers sought to tell the story of World War II from below, writing in the ordinary soldier, The Gathering Storm returns to the "great man" theory of history, redirecting attention to the central figure of Churchill. . . .

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