Zulu (1964)

A Siege on Screen

Zulu is one of the great war films, and one of the great siege films of any kind. It tells the story of the defence of Rorke’s Drift in January 1879, when a small garrison of British soldiers, most of them from a Welsh regiment, held a mission station against an enormous Zulu force for a night and a day. It’s gripping, beautifully filmed, and built around a remarkable pair of performances.

Cy Endfield directed it, and Stanley Baker, who also stars, produced it. It came out in 1964, was a big hit in Britain, and has been a fixture on British television ever since, especially around holidays. I give it a 9. It’s thrilling, it treats its Zulu warriors with more respect than most films of its era, and it also takes liberties with the real men it depicts that are worth knowing about.

The Day Before

The film begins with the aftermath of Isandlwana, where on the same day a Zulu army had wiped out a large British column, the worst defeat the British army suffered against an indigenous force in the whole colonial period. News reaches the small post at Rorke’s Drift, a mission station and hospital on the border between British Natal and the Zulu kingdom, that the Zulu army is coming.

There are about 150 men at the station, many of them sick or wounded. They could run, and the missionary living there, Otto Witt, urges them to. Instead, the two lieutenants in charge decide to stay and fortify the station with walls of mealie bags and biscuit boxes, because on foot they’d be caught in the open and slaughtered.

The film spends its first hour on the preparations and the tension of waiting, and it’s superb. You see the men building the defences, arguing about the odds, praying, joking and staring at the hills, and you know exactly what’s coming. The waiting becomes almost unbearable, and when the first Zulu scouts appear on the ridge, it’s a relief.

Chard and Bromhead

The two lieutenants are the film’s heart. John Chard, played by Stanley Baker, is a Royal Engineer who has come to the station to build a bridge. He’s practical, working class and has no experience of battle. Gonville Bromhead, played by Michael Caine, is an infantry officer from an old military family, languid, aristocratic and contemptuous of an engineer who has never fought.

Chard is senior by a matter of weeks, so he takes command, and Bromhead resents it. Their rivalry, and the respect that grows between them as the battle goes on, is the film’s emotional spine. By the end they’re exhausted, bloodied and almost friends, and Bromhead admits he feels ashamed at how much he enjoyed parts of it.

Baker is solid and commanding. He was one of the biggest British stars of the period, and he put his own money into the film. His performance is the anchor everything else moves around. Chard is not a natural hero, and Baker plays him as a man who is frightened, uncertain and determined anyway, which is far more interesting than simple bravery.

Michael Caine’s Breakthrough

Michael Caine was a working-class Londoner, a character actor who had mostly played soldiers and crooks, and he was originally considered for the role of a cockney private. He was cast instead as Bromhead, the upper-class officer, against type, and he’s superb: languid, arrogant, faintly bored and gradually shaken by what he’s living through.

It was his breakthrough. A year later he was Harry Palmer in The Ipcress File, and a year after that he was Alfie, and he never looked back. Watching Zulu now, it’s striking how completely he disappears into a character so unlike himself, down to the clipped accent and the way he stands. It’s the performance that made him, and it’s still one of his best, sixty years and more than a hundred films later.

The Battle

The Zulu attack comes in waves, across more than ten hours, through the afternoon, into the night and on to dawn. The film stages it on an enormous scale, with thousands of Zulu extras, many of them from the Zulu communities of the region, charging across the hills toward the barricades.

Endfield films the battle clearly and patiently. You understand the layout of the station, where the defenders are, where the walls are weakest and how the Zulu commanders are testing them. The fight for the hospital, where the wounded are trapped and soldiers have to hack through the walls to drag patients from room to room while the building burns, is the most harrowing sequence.

It never becomes a simple spectacle. The film shows the cost on both sides, the dead piling up, the exhausted men firing until their rifles are too hot to hold, and the constant, grinding fear. By the end, the defenders can barely stand, and the film has earned every second of their exhaustion.

Men of Harlech

The film’s most famous scene comes in a pause between attacks. The Zulu warriors begin a war chant, thousands of voices across the hillside, and the terrified defenders answer by singing Men of Harlech, the Welsh battle song, one voice at a time until the whole garrison joins in.

It’s pure cinema, and it didn’t happen. There’s no record of a singing contest at Rorke’s Drift. It’s the most stirring moment in the film, and it works because it captures something true about the defenders’ situation: a small group of men, far from home, finding courage in each other and in the songs of their own country.

It’s also a clever piece of dramatic structure. The singing fills the one pause in the battle, and it shows both sides, for a moment, as human beings who sing before they fight. Then the attack begins again, and the song is forgotten in the noise.

The Zulus

For a British war film of 1964, Zulu treats its Zulu warriors with unusual respect. They’re shown as a disciplined, brave and intelligent army, led by commanders who use sophisticated tactics, testing the defences and learning from each attack. They’re never a faceless horde, and the film makes clear that they’re fighting to defend their own land.

Mangosuthu Buthelezi, a future South African politician and a descendant of the Zulu king, plays King Cetshwayo, his own great-grandfather, in a scene at the start. The Zulu extras were recruited locally, and the production was filmed in South Africa during apartheid, which created real tensions. Under apartheid law, the Zulu extras were reportedly not allowed to see the finished film in South African cinemas, a fact that complicates the film’s respectful portrayal.

The film’s final moment, in which the Zulu warriors line up on the hill and sing a song saluting the courage of the defenders before withdrawing, is another invention. It’s moving, and it gives the Zulus a dignity the film’s makers clearly wanted to honour, but it isn’t what happened. The real Zulu force withdrew at dawn, exhausted and short of food, as a British relief column approached, and nobody sang.

Private Hook

The film’s most serious historical failing concerns Private Henry Hook, played by James Booth as a drunken, insubordinate malingerer who shirks his duty in the hospital and only redeems himself in battle. The real Hook was a sober, well-regarded soldier and a teetotaller, and he was awarded the Victoria Cross for his courage in defending the hospital.

His family was deeply upset by the portrayal, and his daughters reportedly walked out of the premiere. It’s a reminder that a film based on real events can do real harm to the reputations of the people it depicts. The filmmakers wanted a comic rogue and a redemption story, and they borrowed a real man’s name to get one.

James Booth is very good in the role, funny and roguish, and the character works dramatically. That’s part of the problem. The fictional Hook is so memorable that for many viewers he has replaced the real one, and more than half a century later, historians are still correcting the record.

The Victoria Crosses

Eleven Victoria Crosses were awarded for Rorke’s Drift, the highest number ever awarded for a single action. The film ends with Richard Burton’s narration listing the recipients, over images of the exhausted defenders, and it’s a genuinely stirring moment. It turns the survivors from characters back into real men, and reminds the audience that this happened.

Historians have argued ever since about why so many were awarded. Some have suggested the British government wanted to celebrate a victory to distract from the disaster at Isandlwana. Whatever the reason, the courage of the defenders was real, and the film honours it.

Chard and Bromhead both received the Cross, and both became national celebrities. Neither found the fame easy. The real Chard was a reserved, rather awkward man who never quite fitted his heroic image, and the film’s picture of a reluctant, practical engineer suited to the moment is closer to the truth than some of its other portraits.

The Look and Sound

The film was shot in the Drakensberg mountains of Natal, and the landscape is magnificent: green hills, rocky outcrops and an enormous sky. Stephen Dade shot it in Technirama, a wide format that captures the scale of the Zulu army as it pours over the hills. It looks superb on a large screen, and it’s worth seeking out in the best version you can find.

John Barry wrote the score, one of his first major film scores before he became famous for James Bond. It blends a sweeping orchestral theme with Zulu rhythms, and it’s stirring without being bombastic. It’s one of the reasons the film still feels so grand, and it laid the foundations for the sweeping style Barry would bring to Bond and to Out of Africa years later.

What Keeps It at 9

The history. The Men of Harlech contest, the Zulu salute and, above all, the treatment of Private Hook are inventions, and the last of them was a real injustice to a real man. The film’s portrayal of the Zulus, respectful for its time, is still told entirely from the British point of view, and the conditions of the production under apartheid complicate it further.

As a piece of filmmaking, it’s close to perfect. The battle is superbly staged, the performances are excellent, and the tension of the long wait and the longer fight is almost unbearable. It’s a 9. Watch it as a great war film, and then read about what really happened at Rorke’s Drift, including the Zulu side of the story, which the film only glimpses.

Craft Note

Is Zulu worth watching?

Yes. It’s a 9 and one of the finest war films ever made, with Michael Caine’s breakthrough performance and a superbly staged battle. Watch it knowing that some of its most famous moments didn’t happen, and that it did a real man a real injustice.

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