Churchill: The Life and Speeches

Review If anything was sorely lacking in the just-completed series of fund-raising dinners, whistle-stop speeches and primary campaigns, it was great oratory. Rhetoric was in large supply, but almost none of it amounted to anything more substantial than hot air and convenience-store bologna. Occasionally, a keynote speaker at a political convention will stir the assembled delegates - as did Barack Obama four years ago - but candidates have become so adept at avoiding hot-button issues, they rarely say anything at all. Any resemblance between the speechifying of our current chief executive and that of Winston Churchill -- or John F. Kennedy, FDR and Martin Luther King Jr., for that matter - is strictly accidental. White Star's Churchill: The Life and Speeches is a reminder not only of what stirred a nation at a time of desperation, but also what a half-century of American leaders have sorely lacked. --Movie City News It's hard to watch this documentary about Sir Winston Churchill without thinking that something more was lost than the cigar-smoking statesman when he died at the ripe old age of 90. Churchill represented an era when statesmanship and leadership were one and the same, when oration and eloquence were the traits people admired in a leader, not commonness or someone they could identify with, as is apparently the case now. And yet this documentary, which shows a great deal of footage of the former British Prime Minister addressing various audiences, clearly proves that Churchill was no shrinking violet. In fact, the old boy had a penchant for sophisticated trash-talking. Only instead of saying such things as 'Bring it on' he addressed the enemy in front of the cameras on the eve of threats against London by beginning 'We ask no favors of the enemy' and concluding 'You do your worst . . . and we will do our best.' Later, after the Japanese had attacked Pearl Harbor and the U.S. had entered the war, we see him addressing the Canadian parliament and reaffirming 'We shall never descend to the level of the Japanese and Germans. But if anybody wants to play rough, we can play rough too!' And then, offering no high fives or in-your-face smirk, the great man hurried to sit down amid thunderous applause. This was an era when statesmen brought their notes to the table and referred to them like schoolchildren giving a report--no teleprompters, no memorized spiels, and most importantly, no speechwriters or handlers. This leader had the intelligence and intellectual curiosity not just to read books, but to write them--winning the Nobel Prize in Literature for his six-volume history of The Second World War, his History of the English-Speaking Peoples, and his four-volume history spanning Caesar's British invasion and the start of World War I. And for all that he did for Great Britain and for the world, Churchill was honored upon his death with a state funeral (there is footage here of the coffin in Westminster Hall and the long funeral cortege) and then his likeness commemorated on the British dollar-sized crown. This 60-minute biography is split into two parts, a (too) brief overview of the man's early life--including the time when he fought and escaped from the Boer war and found himself on a Wanted poster (shown here) which offered a 25 pound reward for his capture--and the World War II years, shaped largely by excerpts from his public speeches. The first clip shows a relatively young Churchill sitting at an office desk in March 1931 addressing the Indian situation; and then it's a bit of a leap to the second one, when in November 1939 he rallied the British by saying they had tried to prevent the war, but that once in it they were in it to win. As Churchill gives his speeches, his voice continues while there's frequently a cutaway to stock footage of the era, which gives this documentary a nice suggestion of speaker and audience, of the man and his times. Some of the newsreel footage shows Churchill riding a tank and reviewing his forces, while others show him standing on a chair of a warship to address the sailors, or welcoming the vanguard upon their return. There's footage of other things too, like munitions factories churning out their deadly products, pilots dropping their bombs, and London in flames. For a brief program, there's actually quite a lot packed into both the script and the visual narrative. --DVD Town.com Product Description This man who himself created history and will be remembered as long as history is read. The London Times Sir Winston Churchill was one of the most influential leaders of all time. Perhaps more than any other, he alone represented Great Britain at its very finest hour. Churchill was an aristocrat who possessed the common touch. He was a brilliant orator, a great writer and an inspiring leader whose unyielding courage helped shape the course of world history. The voice of Churchill, one of the most famous and easily identifiable in history, still today evokes visi
ASIN: B0015NR2DO
VSKU: DBV.B0015NR2DO.G
Condition: Good
Author/Artist:Winston Churchill|Robert Garofalo
Binding: Dvd
Note: Any images shown are stock photographs and product may differ from what is shown.
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