Three Cheers for Captain England (1978)

D. Joseph Losey
Colour


Henry Cavill as Superman. Christian Bale as Batman. Andrew Garfield as Spiderman. Aaron Johnson as Kick-Ass. But who amongst us really remembers either Michael Crawford as Condorman, or Dirk Bogarde as Captain England? Yes, British actors have been playing superheroes for quite some time, it’s just that the heroes have got bigger.


‘Three Cheers for Captain England’ is a fascinating gem of a film, both for its searing portrayal of a certain type of Englishman, and for the way it predicts a lot that will come in more mainstream superhero adventures. At the time it was a barely released curio and maybe its influence is accidental (how many people have ever seen this after all?) but if not influential, it’s definitely prescient


Bogarde is Henry Davenport, who in the glorious 1950s fought for civilisation against chaos as Captain England. There he is: mocked up photos of the young Bogarde at the Coronation; at the Festival of Britain; and a very amusing (although not that well mocked up) snap of Captain England leading Guy Burgess and Donald McLean into custody – as if the entire spying farrago of the third man, fourth man and fifth man could have been stopped by just one super powerful and righteous Englishman. This is the kind hero Bulldog Drummond would have looked up to. This is the kind of hero James Bond would have looked up to. How he got his powers is never explained, nor really what his powers were. Clearly he could fly and was extremely strong, but we don’t know how fast he was or whether he had x-ray vision – while no lab accident or encounter with alien life is ever even hinted at. He was powerful in the same way that England was powerful and glorious. And he wasn’t alone. In the background of the fifties were other heroes – Major Tunbridge-Wells and The Cockney – but it was Captain England everyone cheered.


Now though Captain England has retired, grown into a graceful old age. Occasionally he makes chat-show appearances, but his time has gone; remembered as one of sepia, a better place when England was truly great. However he is about to gain himself a new foe, as a young man (Paul Nicholas) threatens to expose his homosexuality.


Clearly Bogarde is supposed to represent a certain type of Englishman. One who is complacent, conservative with a small c and has had rose-tinted glasses welded to his face. He is the Englishman who revels in the glorious past and doesn’t care about the present. One who knows that England is going down the toilet, but thinks there’s nothing he – even an individual as powerful as Captain England – can do about it.  Bogarde is brilliant in the role, beautifully capturing a sense of vainglorious disappointment.


Actually there are no slouches anywhere in the cast, with John Gielgud a particular hoot in his cameo as the now elderly Major Tunbridge-Wells; dressed in colonial garb and ranting at how everything these days “just isn’t on, old boy.”


And yet for all the swipes at the ruling class and middle aged and narrow minded of England, this is a superhero film. And in that brooding behind closed doors about the things he has done and what he was, we can see a lot of what Batman has become. In the cadre of costumed superheroes who have long since broken up, we see The Watchmen and The Incredibles. And in an impregnable hero with one fatal flaw, we surely substitute kryptonite for homosexuality and have a satire of Superman.


(How brilliant, though incredibly unlikely, would it be for Hollywood to fund a multi-million dollar superhero film where the hero is gay? That’s the way to reinvent your franchise right there! And no, Wonder Woman won't cut the mustard.)


This is a really perverse superhero film. One where the hero thinks decidedly small, lives in a dingy city (London has rarely looked dirtier or more provincial than this 1978 version does) and doesn’t use his powers until the end. And then we can see how much work Hollywood had to do the same year to get Christopher Reeve to fly properly as Superman. It’s not just the visible wires, it’s his shadow on the sky and the look on Bogarde’s face which seems to suggest that we all know he’s just an idiot hanging off a rig in a studio. So okay the effects don’t work, but this isn’t a film about effects. It’s a frequently brilliant superhero tale. A broken superhero, a faded superhero, an obsolete superhero, a superhero no longer that heroic or super. But a British superhero certainly, and maybe the only superhero film anywhere which doesn’t go out of its way to ape the Americans.