LOS ANGELES— Since it became the frontrunner by picking up a dozen Oscar nominations, it seems all the awards news has been about “The King’s Speech.” The latest to enter circulation is a video showing rare footage of the real King George VI speaking.
His oration is not perfect, but it’s is much better than what Colin Firth delivers on screen.
Does that matter? It’s just a movie, after all. But the greater veracity of the film has also been in question. In Slate, Christopher Hitchens argues that it’s a good movie, but not very good history. The “miscast” Timothy Spall, as Winston Churchill, “is shown as a consistent friend of the stuttering prince and his loyal princess
and as a man generally in favor of a statesmanlike solution to the crisis of the abdication,” Mr. Hitchens writes. “In point of fact, Churchill was — for as long as he dared — a consistent
friend of conceited, spoiled, Hitler-sympathizing Edward VIII.”
Throughout his life, Edward “remained what is only lightly hinted in the film: a firm admirer of the Third Reich who took his honeymoon there with Mrs. Simpson and was photographed
both receiving and giving the Hitler salute,” Mr. Hitchens writes. When he acceded the throne, King George himself was a crony to Neville Chamberlain, whom Mr. Hitchens derides as an appeaser for signing
over parts of Czechoslovakia to Germany in the Munich Agreement in 1938. The whole “finest hour” reputation of post-World War II Britain, he argues, is built on a lie.
Will this stop Mr. Firth from, as expected, picking up the best actor Oscar? Likely not. In fact, playing real people helps a performer’s chances, statistically, according to the Bagger’s loyal reader John Dillon, a writer in New Haven, Conn. “So far this millennium, 12 of the 20 Oscars for Best Actor and Best Actress honored biographical portrayals,” he wrote to us in an email. That’s also good news, then, for Jesse Eisenberg (“The Social Network”) and James Franco (“127 Hours”) – two other films, particularly “The Social Network,” whose relationship to the truth has been greatly exaggerated.