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Royal Family

3 votes

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

Status: Released

Released Date: 1969-06-21

Runtime: 110 mins

Director: Richard Cawston

Spoken language: English

Genres: Documentary, TV Movie

Original title: Royal Family

Production Companies: BBC, ITV

Production Countries: United Kingdom

Cast

Self - Narrator (voice)

Michael Flanders

Self

Elizabeth II of the United Kingdom

Self

Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh

Self

King Charles III of the United Kingdom

Self

Anne, Princess Royal

Self

Prince Edward, Duke of Edinburgh

Self

Prince Andrew, Duke of York

Self

Richard Nixon

Self

Robert Graves

Self

Arthur da Costa e Silva

Self

Eduardo Frei Montalva

Self

Cameron "Kim" Cobbold

Self

Walter Annenberg

Self

Antony Armstrong-Jones Snowdon

Reviews

Geronimo1967

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.

2024-03-31

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