The Madness of King George: the only insanity is Nigel Hawthorne losing out on the Oscar to Forrest Gump | Reel history | Film | The Guardian
Reel history
The Madness of King George: the only insanity is Nigel Hawthorne losing out on the Oscar to Forrest Gump
The 1994 film of the play by Alan Bennett is a model of historical accuracy and psychological tact. Only an error involving a curate leaves director Nicholas Hytner with egg on his face
Nigel Hawthorne's King George runs riot. All photographs: The Ronald Grant Archive
Thursday 18 February 2010 03.54 EST
First published on Thursday 18 February 2010 03.54 EST
Entertainment grade: A–
History grade: A–
In 1788, not long after losing his American colonies, King George III of Great Britain and Ireland lost his sanity.
Politics
To play the king … George gets the hang of the crown
King George III (Nigel Hawthorne) is opening parliament, and prime minister William Pitt the Younger is sparring with Whig leader Charles James Fox. "Do you enjoy all this flummery, Mr Pitt?" "No, Mr Fox." "Do you enjoy anything, Mr Pitt?" "A balance-sheet, Mr Fox." Pitt did make himself somewhat unpopular by raising taxes to pay the national debt, but since everyone's doing that these days we may judge him less harshly now than they did back in 1994. In addition to balance-sheets, a thing Pitt enjoyed was a bottle of port (sometimes two) a day, which may have contributed to his death, possibly from cirrhosis, aged 46.
Health
Wigging out … Helen Mirren consoles Hawthorne
The king crashes children's cricket matches, pretends a shrubbery is the Americans and wallops it with his stick, runs around in his pyjamas, and launches himself upon ladies-in-waiting. These seem like the sort of things a lot of people might do were they king for a day. But in the film, and in real life, they were taken to indicate that George III was going mad. The famous story that he mistook an oak tree for the King of Prussia does not make it to the screen: correctly, because it was almost certainly not true. The film doesn't mention porphyria as a likely cause of the king's condition until the closing title cards. This, too, is quite correct. The diagnosis is a modern one, suggested by some historians, but not provable. It does, however, lay into George's doctors, depicting them as a bunch of wackos obsessed with scrutinising his effluvia and inflicting blistering, cupping and purgatives. Unfortunately, this is accurate.
Scandal
'The fat one?' … Rupert Everett as the then Prince of Wales
The Prince of Wales (Rupert Everett) prances around in a shantung dressing-gown and conspires to have his father declared mad, so he can become Prince Regent. But he has compromised himself by his secret marriage to Maria Fitzherbert. This was illegal because he didn't have his father's consent, and because she was a Catholic. "You performed an illegal marriage!" says the king's agent to the guilty curate. "And he only gave me £10," moans the curate. Robert Burt, the curate who really married the pair, got £500 and a never-fulfilled promise of appointment as a royal chaplain.
Medicine
Giving me the Willis … George is treated by the good doctors
The mean Dr Willis turns up to torture the king. (In fact, there were two Doctors Willis – father and son.) "Get away from me, you scabby bumsucker!" bellows his majesty. But Willis won't go away. Instead, he straps the king into a restraint chair, while the king struggles and howls. In a stroke ­of cinematic genius, while George III is being forced on to this horrible parody of a throne, the soundtrack fires up Handel's Zadok the Priest – the music usually played at the anointing of a British monarch. "I hate all the physicians, but most the Willises," complained the king in real life.
Regency
I know a shortcut … the final reel dash
Parliament is having a ding-dong over the regency, and it looks like the Prince of Wales ("The fat one?" exclaims the king, crossly) may get his way. But the king regains his senses and, in a frantic carriage-ride, just manages to get himself there in time to scupper his son's ploy. There's a touch of dramatic licence here – the king didn't actually have to race to parliament at the 11th hour – but it is true that his recovery sank the bill. It was temporary, and the Prince of Wales would become regent in 1811.
Verdict
They gave it to Forrest Gump? Really?
A triumph. Shockingly, Nigel Hawthorne lost the Oscar to Tom Hanks for Forrest Gump. Since that makes even less sense than mistaking an oak tree for the King of Prussia, perhaps it was a final act of revenge by what the film calls those "ramshackle colonists in America" on their last and unlamented king.