Zulu (1964)

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Movie
German title Zulu
Original title Zulu
Country of production Great Britain
original language English
Publishing year 1964
length 138 minutes
Age rating FSK 16
Rod
Director Cyril Endfield
script Cyril Endfield ,
John Prebble
production Cyril Endfield ,
Stanley Baker
music John Barry
camera Stephen Dade
cut John Jympson
occupation

Zulu is a British war film by director Cyril Endfield from 1964. The background to the film is the fight at Rorke's Drift in 1879. The German premiere was on August 21, 1964.

action

In 1879 the British government was informed that their army was defeated by the Zulu in the Battle of Isandhlwana . The Zulu king Cetshwayo is informed of the great victory at a wedding ceremony, which the Swedish missionary Otto Witt and his daughter also attend.

The Rorke's Drift mission station in Natal is used by the British Army as a supply depot and hospital . The Lieutenant of the Royal Engineers John Chard and the camp commander Lieutenant Gonville Bromhead receive news of the destruction of the British column and also learn that a large Zulu force of 4,000 warriors is on the march. As the senior, the pioneer Chard takes command, which is initially not in the interests of the infantryman Bromhead. Chard decides that the mission station should be defended as there are many wounded from the previous battle in the hospital. The camp is fortified, around a hundred soldiers and thirty wounded men with limited combat capability stand ready for defense. They are joined by some volunteers such as Bure Adendorf, who acts as a consultant. They make do with carts, sacks of grain and boxes of ship's biscuits to erect barricades and await the attack. A detachment of Boer horsemen cannot be persuaded by Chard to stay, but at least he manages to send off a messenger to request reinforcements. The missionary Witt, who has since returned, tries to persuade the soldiers not to fight. His pacifism and defeatism , proclaimed with religious fire, prompted the local auxiliary troops to flee, after which he was imprisoned by the officers. Witt is banished from the station with his daughter, the Zulu let them go. In the meantime the barricades have advanced so far that they cannot be easily overcome.

The Zulu, who have now arrived, demonstrate a high degree of organization and discipline towards the British, and the defenders realize that they are dealing with opponents to be taken seriously. The skillfully carried out attacks of the numerically far superior warriors fail, however, because of the British fortifications, the firepower of the soldiers and the flexible leadership by their officers. Zulu shooters with rifles captured from Isandhlwana cause trouble for the defenders, but are hardly trained in handling firearms. Nevertheless, the British suffer losses, several soldiers are killed and many injured in close combat. In the next few hours, the Zulu attack wave after attack wave, which can be repulsed. However, the hospital is set on fire, after which the wounded are drawn into fighting with the Zulu as they try to escape the flames. The attacks continued until late at night. The British had to withdraw and hide behind a barricade made of sacks of grain that was piled higher and higher during the breaks. Chard intends to defy the expected assault from a high-piled redoubt , and lets the exhausted soldiers entrench the whole night.

The Zulu, however, have also suffered considerable losses due to the firepower of the defenders and want to end the siege quickly, also knowing that reinforcements are coming. The next morning they parade a few hundred meters in front of the station and begin a war song that precedes the final attack. The British, for their part, respond with “Men of Harlech”, a Welsh military march. A last huge onslaught broke out against the station, but Chard and Bromhead form a triple line of fire at the redoubt, and the attack collapsed in rapid volley fire. After the last attack by the Zulu was repulsed, the latter withdrew, singing the praises of the heroism of the British defenders. In the final sequence of the film, Richard Burton reads out the list of recipients of the Victoria Cross for this fight.

Reviews

"Elaborately produced film that strives for documentary authenticity, which is very ambivalent in its distant depiction of the persistence tendency."

- Lexicon of international film

background

  • The film was shot in Natal, South Africa, approx. 90 km from the original location of the fighting.
  • The war song of the Zulu was used as the war song of the Teutons in Gladiator by Ridley Scott .
  • The text of the Men of Harlech march was specially rewritten for the film.
  • In the original English version, Richard Burton speaks a prologue and an epilogue.
  • Mangosuthu Buthelezi, who played the Zulu King, founded the Inkatha Freedom Party in 1975 , became its chairman and in 1994, after the end of the apartheid regime, under Nelson Mandela, South African interior minister. He held the office until 2004.
  • Michael Caine got his first leading role in a major feature film here. However, he should play the "private hook" first.
  • Composer Barry later won a total of five Academy Awards , art director Ernest Archer one.
  • In 1979 Douglas Hickox staged the previous battle at Isandhlwana under the title "Zulu Dawn" (Eng .: The Last Offensive ), to which Cyril Endfield contributed the script based on his novel.

Historical facts

The fighting described in the film is an attack by 4000 Zulu on a Swedish mission station in Natal on January 22, 1879. The station was defended by 139 British people. The Zulu casualties amounted to around 350 dead and the British to 17 dead. Eleven men were honored with the Victoria Cross, the largest number of such medals awarded for fighting in a day. The Swiss Christian Ferdinand Schiess was among the award winners .

Previously, the Zulu had inflicted a disastrous defeat on the British army at the Battle of Isandhlwana , in which more than 1,300 British and African auxiliaries were killed. Of the 22,000 Zulu, an estimated 1,000 died, and up to 2,000 more Zulu warriors are believed to have been wounded.

Awards

The British Film Institute chose Zulu in 1999 at number 31 of the best British films of all time .

Web links

literature

  • Ian Knight : Rorke's Drift, 1879 . Osprey, Oxford 1996, ISBN 1-85532-506-3
  • James Chapman: Past and Present: National Identity and the British Historical Film (Cinema and Society) . IB Tauris & Co, London 2005, ISBN 1-85043-807-2

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ cf. Lexicon of International Films 2000/2001 (CD-ROM)
  2. ↑ cf. English Wikipedia: Men of Harlech