Royal Family

~ Intimate portrait of the daily life of the British Royal Family ~

Overview:

Intimate portrait of the daily life of the British Royal Family drawn from 18 months of filming within Buckingham Palace, Windsor Castle and Balmoral.

Director:

Richard Cawston

Status:

Released

Language:

English

Buget:

$0.00

Revenue:

$0.00

Key words:

queen
royal family
queen of england

Cast

Michael Flanders

~ as ~

Self - Narrator (voice)

Elizabeth II of the United Kingdom

~ as ~

Self

Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh

~ as ~

Self

King Charles III of the United Kingdom

~ as ~

Self

Anne, Princess Royal

~ as ~

Self

Prince Edward, Duke of Edinburgh

~ as ~

Self

Andrew Mountbatten Windsor

~ as ~

Self

Richard Nixon

~ as ~

Self

Robert Graves

~ as ~

Self

Arthur da Costa e Silva

~ as ~

Self

View full cast & crew

Reviews (1)

CinemaSerf
Written 1 year(s) ago
7
This original fly-on-the-wall Royal documentary is quite interesting on a number of fronts. It's access to the private life of the Queen and her family is sometimes quite tedious to watch - as would be, I suspect, a documentary on most of us; but this serves as more of a social anthropology too. Looking back to the end of the supposedly profligate 1960s in the most establishment manner possible, we see a Queen who is relaxed and natural in front of the camera, and though the set piece scenarios are a little dry, we do get a slight sense of just what the job entails. It's not overly deferential which helps, and as we follow the season over which this is set, we get to meet and observe quite a few of those she meets and wonder perhaps if it's the subjects who expect the monarch to behave in a certain fashion rather than she actually choosing to. The usual tours, visits, banquets all feature - an opportunity to take a look at what we wore, drove and even ate fifty years ago and it's topped by a family chat with President Nixon that shows the ultimate mundanity of a job that struggles with endless diplomatic small talk (and family snaps). The photography is effectively discreet and though I'm sure nothing was left to chance, it does offer us a semblance of what might pass for "spontaneity" at court. It's probably more notable in 2024 for being an archive source for so many subsequent programmes, but I imagine that in 1969 when most people knew little about the monarchy they didn't read in the papers, it proved insightful.