英文故事片： Elizabeth (1998 film)

Elizabeth (1998 film) From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia Elizabeth is a 1998 film loosely based on the early reign of Queen Elizabeth I of England. The film was written by Michael Hirst and directed by Shekhar Kapur. It stars Cate Blanchett, Geoffrey Rush, Joseph Fiennes, Christopher Eccleston, and Richard Attenborough. It was the final film of acclaimed British actor Sir John Gielgud. It also stars a 12-year-old Lily Allen as a lady in waiting, Manchester United legend Eric Cantona as the French ambassador, future Doctor Who Christopher Eccleston as the Duke of Norfolk, and Daniel Craig, who would later portray James Bond, as a member of the Vatican who is heavily involved in the film's central plot. A sequel, Elizabeth: The Golden Age was released by Focus Features on October 12, 2007. Synopsis In 1558, the Roman Catholic Mary I of England dies of a cancerous tumor in her uterus, leaving her Protestant half sister Elizabeth as Queen. Elizabeth had previously been jailed for a supposed conspiracy to murder Mary, but has now been freed for her coronation. The film shows Elizabeth being courted by suitors (including Henri, Duc d'Anjou, the future King Henry III of France, whom she rejects) and urged by William Cecil, 1st Baron Burghley to marry, which, as he states, would secure her throne. Instead, she has a secret affair with her childhood sweetheart, Robert Dudley, Earl of Leicester. The affair is, however, no secret from Cecil - who makes clear that a Monarch has no private life (having an affair with a queen confers considerable power on the lover - all the more as it might result in pregnancy). Elizabeth deals with various threats to her reign, including The Duke of Norfolk, a Catholic in her court who conspires to have her murdered, and the effective ruler of Scotland, Mary of Guise, who allies with France to attack England's forces. At the end of the film, Norfolk is executed for his conspiracy and Mary is assassinated by Elizabeth's advisor, Francis Walsingham. Elizabeth permanently banishes Dudley from her private presence when she finds out that he is married; as depicted in the sequel, Elizabeth then gives up ever having sex again, feeling that such relations could give a man too much power over her. Moreover, cutting off her relations with Dudley is part of the process by which she becomes increasingly tough and assertive - in one scene she carefully prepares and rehearses the speech she would deliver to a recalcitrant Parliament and force through her religious reforms. She also becomes capable of occasional ruthless behaviour - as in unflinchingly ordering the execution of people which she considers dangerous to her rule, as well taking up as her right-hand man the Machiavellian Walshingham, who thinks nothing of torturing people or killing with his own hands. All this is a considerable change from the warm-hearted, rather romantic girl which Elizabeth was in the early parts of the film; remaining such would have been incompatible with being a Queen who actually ruled and dominated the men around her, and her transformation is a major theme of the film. The film ends with Elizabeth assuming the persona of 'The Virgin Queen', and initiating England's Golden Age. Claims of Anti-Catholicism The Catholic League for Religious and Civil Rights stated that the film gives "impression that the religious strife was all the doing of the Catholic Church", noting that the New York Times review considered it "resolutely anti-Catholic" complete with a "scheming pope" and repeating the charge made in the Buffalo News that "[e]very single Catholic in the film is dark, cruel and devious".[1] Reference 1.  Elizabeth is "resolutely anti-Catholic" Catholic League for Religious and Civil Rights, January-February 1999 Retrieved from and/or for more: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elizabeth_(film)