Pat, I am an unashamed admirer of Churchill - as I guess you are. Whatever our private stations and the lives we each lead, it surely isn't possible for us to admire Churchill for too many disparate reasons, and so there must invariably be - present in all of us who admire him - that deep respect for courage and the unyielding allegiance to principle and honour that the great man embodied. So I absolutely respect your observations here, and thanks to you I have now bought this 3-disc set myself....and have been watching (and listening) entranced. There is however one thing about it that degrades the experience for me, and also (I feel) cheapens the production in spite of all McKellen's gravity and skill in narration: and that is the person who reads Churchill's words. He made me cringe and squirm with something very near disgust. He labours so much to reproduce the tonal qualities of the Original, that he sounded by turns like an elderly coquette attempting to make himself agreeable, and by turns like some valetudinarian monk trying to coax a juvenile congregation. His wheedling voice and abominably exaggerated lilt (done with nauseating frequency, and usually ridiculously misplaced) made a mockery of the perfectly-turned prose that he was reading. Nor did he prnounce many of his words the way Churchill did. One example is the word 'sure', which he pronounces as "shore"; whereas Churchill always said "shoo-er". There are many more.
If one listens to WSC (the real man, that is) on the many recordings available on http://archive.org/details/Winston_Churchill , one will at once recognize, I think, what a sorry counterfeit this 'stand-in' is. Churchill's voice is measured and direct. He doesn't wheedle in the slightest. And whenever he allows a lilt to shape the last words of a phrase, its aptness is self-evident, and wraps his words in a profoundness that seems to come from the Ages. I wish they'd chosen someone else to read the Great Man's words; or at least had made him study Churchill's delivery more closely. This fellow spoils it for me. On Wednesday, September 4, 2013 2:55:53 AM UTC+12, PatFinn1940 wrote: > > Greetings-- > > I'm wondering if any fellow Churchillians have seen the three-part > documentary *Churchill, *narrated by Sir Ian McKellen? It was shown on > my local PBS channel the past three Sundays. It featured interviews with > family members (Mary, Lady Soames, grandson Winston S. Churchill, and > granddaughter Celia Sandys), colleagues (Anthony Montague Browne, Evan > Davies), and descendants of colleagues (Lloyd George's great-grandson). I > noticed it was done back in 2003. > > I thought it was *very *well done. The person who read Churchill's > words was marvelous. It was like the great man had come back to life!! > > I must confess that I was very sad at the end, watching Churchill's > physical decline. There was wonderful clear footage of the funeral > procession from Parliament up through Whitehall. And when St Paul's > Cathedral choir was singing *The Battle Hymn of the Republic, *I 'lost > it'...and the tears really flowed during the procession on the River > Thames, as the dock cranes were lowered in tribute. > > I live not far from where Churchill's American grandfather, Leonard > Jerome, was born and raised. And that's a real honor to me. > > What are your thoughts on this documentary? Thanks. > > Patricia Finnegan > [email protected] <javascript:> > -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "ChurchillChat" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to [email protected]. To post to this group, send email to [email protected]. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/churchillchat. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.
