Drama queen | 7 December 2017

If cinema is propaganda, Elizabeth II can be grateful to it. Film is a conservative art form, and almost nothing has attempted to thwart or mock her. (The Daily Star once printed that Princess Margaret would appear in Crossroads, but Crossroads was not cinema, and it was not true. Instead the award for tabloid lie of the year was named the Princess Margaret Award.) I could not find an art film with the Queen weeping under a table in her nightgown, although she did appear in The Naked Gun: From the Files of Police Squad! (1988), and was mounted by Leslie Nielsen. She also appeared in the disaster film 2012 (2009), attempting to flee a tsunami in an ark built by China, with the dogs. This is less preposterous than the Leslie Nielsen scene. She would not go to China to die. But that is it. Spitting Image did more to damage her than Hollywood. A lot more.

The King’s Speech (2010), in which she appeared as a child, was mere submission. ‘Halting at first, but you got much better, papa,’ says the 13-year-old Princess Elizabeth (Freya Wilson) to her father George VI (Colin Firth) after he makes a speech to the empire without stuttering.

In The King’s Speech, Wilson establishes what is believed to be the Queen’s abiding characteristic, which she inherited from George VI: duty. She curtseys to her father and looks sadly at him, for she knows they are both cursed. The privilege is irrelevant. They exist for our benefit, and it is painful for them. There is also the usual subplot, in support of the ‘good Windsors’ — dreadful David (Edward VIII) and creepy Wallis — who did not do their duty and are consigned, as punishment, to the hell of café society and foreigners.

The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, which is also conservative, responded by giving The King’s Speech four major awards: best film, director, screenplay and actor.