That Hamilton Woman (1941) Movie Review, Cast & Crew, Film Summary

There’s hardly an historical romance in less need of fictionalization than that of Lord Nelson and Emma Hamilton. It’s got everything. Passion. Drama. Infidelity. Nelson’s big gun firing often. This flick from ’41 was apparently Winston Churchill’s favorite. It’s propaganda, no question. It displays the qualities and negatives of Alexander Korda’s films (he directed too). Chintzy production values, a solid script that sadly devolves into oh dearest darling I love yous in its red-hot love scenes. For clean dramatic purposes, Nelson’s admirably even-tempered, realistic wife is turned into a shrew, played by professional vineger aunt Gladys Cooper. The film can’t escape the drawing room. Nelson’s swashbuckling rescue of the Hamiltons and the Neapolitan royal family isn’t even shown, nor is any other of the events that made him famous, until the finale’s Trafalgar, which is, actually, pretty neat. Viven Leigh does well by her character, with occasional moments of fiddle-de-dee; Laurence Olivier phones in his Nelson, reducing the spry, spare, infamously egotistical hero to a male model minus an arm. Love that painted Vesuvius and tinsel-moonlight effect.