The Thin Red Line

[Lachlan09]

I'm not sure where you got this bit of information, unless it was from Tony Richardson's grossly inaccurate portrayal of Mrs. Duberley in his 1968 film, Charge of the Light Brigade. While Richardson's film is visually stunning (especially the battle sequences) it is truly appalling in it's lack of historical accuracy. About the only thing the film gets right is the fact that there was a Crimean War. The portrayal of the relationship between Mrs. Duberly and Lord Cardigan has no basis in fact, what so ever.

You're right. It's been about 20 years since I last read The Thin Red Line by John Selby and I’ve obviously got mixed up with the film in that respect. For sure Selby is a good historian not given to flights of fancy, so I’ve got completely mixed up somewhere, so apologies to him. The film was disappointing indeed and with my special interest in the Argylls, where I noticed that kilted soldiers in Sergei Bonderachuk's "Waterloo" were depicted as the 92nd (with a slight whiff of the 79th in the "squares" battle scene), in “The Charge of the Light Brigade”, they were all shown as 93rd, not a 42nd or 79th in sight, even in the Alma scenes. I understand John Mollo was beside himself in frustration at times in how they butchered the accuracy of some of his historical uniforms for cost and “big-screen visuals” reasons.

Also, that film comes from the "British Acting Luvvies Anti-War" school of film production prevalent in late '60's Britain at the time of "Oh What A Lovely War !", A-Bomb protests, Vietnam protests etc etc etc. Sympathetic or factual portrayal of military history was not in their "coffee-table socialist" agenda, luvvie.

Forgive me for my error, I’m 56, I’m getting old and my mind is becoming feeble. To recall Pete Townshend’s Mod credo, to which I subscribed when I was young “Hope I die before I get old”. But I didn’t - and now I’m a late-middle-aged crumbling curmudgeon.