The Gathering Storm
                                                                                           
Director: Herbert Wise
Year: 1974
Rating: 5.5
Richard Burton as Winston Churchill in the lead-up to WW2. The 2002 film of the same title covered the same territory with Albert Finney as Churchill and then Gary Oldman as Churchill takes over where both those films ended in the 2017 Darkest Hour. This was a TV movie and looks it with nearly every scene shot with interior sets and not very interesting ones. Burton's salary must have cost more than everything else combined. But what matters here is the story and the lesson that many seem to have forgotten. As much as we moan and groan about the global world today - try and imagine a world truly on fire, bombs dropping, fear of invasion, and you stand by yourself against the forces of tyranny. A small island stands alone. American Firsters in Congress doing what they could to hinder aid to England.



Does the fact that Churchill saved democracy outweigh all the horrors of the things he did previously. Perhaps that is for God to judge. He was a voice in the wilderness in the 1930s constantly warning against the arms build-up of Germany and that war was coming. His colleagues in Parliament laughed at him - crazy old Winnie. He was told that it was time for him to quietly leave the public square. That he would soon be forgotten. He kept writing and making speeches. And of course he was proven right.



Dictators never stop unless they are stopped. Anything else is seen as a sign of weakness. France along with England could have stopped Hitler early on but looked the other way when he marched into The Rhineland, then Austria, then Czechoslovakia - cowardly politicians who kept thinking if they fed the monster enough he would be satisfied. With the invasion of Poland, England finally had to declare war - and turn to Churchill. In small parts are Thorley Walters as Prime Minister Baldwin, Ian Bannen as Hitler, Patrick Stewart as Clement Attlee and Virginia McKenna as Clementine Churchill.  A bit dull but still of interest. It ends with Churchill giving his Blood, toil, tears and sweat speech.

"We have before us an ordeal of the most grievous kind. We have before us many, many long months of struggle and of suffering. You ask, what is our policy? I can say: It is to wage war, by sea, land and air, with all our might and with all the strength that God can give us; to wage war against a monstrous tyranny, never surpassed in the dark, lamentable catalogue of human crime. That is our policy. You ask, what is our aim? I can answer in one word: It is victory, victory at all costs, victory in spite of all terror, victory, however long and hard the road may be; for without victory, there is no survival."

Those were great moments for Churchill. Burton though wrote this about the man he portrays:

‘In the course of preparing myself to act the part of Winston Churchill in the television drama based on the first volume of his war memoirs, The Gathering Storm, I realised afresh that I hate Churchill and all his kind. I hate them virulently.’