Film clip of Royals banned by the Queen 40 years ago is to be shown

Blackleaf

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The Queen has given permission for a film clip of her and her family, which was supposedly banned decades ago by the Royals, to be shown as part of an exhibition for her Diamond Jubilee.

The 1969 film, entitled Royal Family, was watched by an incredible two-thirds of the British population, who had never before seen "behind the scenes" of the Royal Family. But it was supposedly banned by the Royals for making them look too ordinary.

The film forms part of The Queen: Art And Image, an unprecedented touring exhibition organised by the National Portrait Gallery of around 60 official and unofficial images spanning the Queen's reign.

The clip from the film to be shown at the exhibition is that of the Queen regaling her husband and Prince Charles with an anecdote about Queen Victoria, her great-great-grandmother.

The 60 exhibition images range from provocative and controversial depictions by the likes of the Sex Pistols and Gilbert and George to majestic portraits from Pietro Annigoni and Annie Leibovitz.

The exhibition also includes a striking photograph of the Queen with her eyes closed converted to a hologram to be projected on to art gallery walls.

The monarch is probably the most visually represented person in the history of mankind.

The Diamond Jubilee, which will celebrate 60 years of Queen Elizabeth II being on the Throne, takes place next year. It will only be the second Diamond Jubilee for a British monarch. The one and only previous time was that of Queen Victoria in 1897.

If Elizabeth II is still on the Throne on 9th September 2015, she will have overtaken Queen Victoria as Britain's longest reigning monarch, although she is now the oldest ever British monarch.

2012 is to be a busy year in Britain, as it's also the year that London hosts the Summer Olympics for a world record third time.

Film clip of Royals 'banned by the Queen 40 years ago for making them look too ordinary' to be shown


By Daily Mail Reporter
13th January 2011
Daily Mail

The Queen has given permission for an intimate film clip of her and her family to be shown for the first time in decades, as part of an exhibition to celebrate her Diamond Jubilee.

The excerpt, in which she regales her husband and Prince Charles with an anecdote about Queen Victoria, is from the groundbreaking TV programme, Royal Family, which was the first time they let documentary cameras in to their lives.

The film was watched in 1969 by two-thirds of the British population, but has been seen little since, prompting speculation the Royal Family did not want repeats shown because it made them look too ordinary.


Intimate: Princess Anne, Queen Elizabeth II, Prince Charles and The Duke of Edinburgh sitting around the table at Windsor Castle, in a scene from the 'Royal Family' TV film

The film forms part of The Queen: Art And Image, an unprecedented touring exhibition organised by the National Portrait Gallery of around 60 official and unofficial images spanning the Queen's reign.

Exhibition curator Paul Moorhouse said: 'The film redefined the nation's view of the Queen. ...I wish we could show it in its entirety.

'We were invited to make a selection between two excerpts, one showing the Royal Family having a picnic and the other having a conversation around a table, with the Queen talking to the Duke of Edinburgh and Prince Charles and other members of her family (telling a story about Queen Victoria).

'We selected this one, it tells you rather a lot about family life.'

He added on the apparent reticence of the Royals to allow it to be repeated: 'There's a reluctance for these things to be revisited. I don't know why.

'1969 was the last time it was shown and it was repeated endlessly between channels but by the end of that process it had disappeared.

'It gave enormous exposure. It's done its work. It's part of history.'

The exhibition also includes a striking photograph of the Queen with her eyes closed converted to a hologram to be projected on to art gallery walls.

Photographer Chris Levine was asked to make his unusual portrait three-dimensional – and larger than life – to mark next year’s Diamond Jubilee.


Unseen Queen: Chris Levine's Lightness of Being features in The Queen: Art and Image exhibition to mark the monarch's Diamond Jubilee

But Her Majesty will also appear in a variety of more conventional formats as 60 images spanning her six decades on the throne are unveiled by the National Portrait Gallery today.

They range from provocative and controversial depictions by the likes of the Sex Pistols and Gilbert and George to majestic portraits from Pietro Annigoni and Annie Leibovitz.

Her Majesty is shown looking youthful and glamorous in a 1952 photograph by Dorothy Wilding, and cradling the Duke of York as a baby in an intimate shot captured by Cecil Beaton in 1960.

A picture from 1971 by Patrick Lichfield shows a casual, laughing woman on board HMY Britannia, while Andy Warhol’s 1985 portrait of the monarch is a twist on a much more familiar pose.


Yellow fever: Justin Mortimer's unusual portrait of the Queen disembodies the sovereign ruler


Despair: The Queen after the fire at Windsor Castle in 1992 and an image from the 1980s created by Andy Warhol


Through the ages: Elizabeth on HMY Britannia in the 1970s and the Queen holding Prince Andrew in the 1960s

Justin Mortimer painted the Queen’s head floating away from her body in 1998, and her disbelief and despair over the fire that destroyed large parts of Windsor Castle is captured in a striking Reuters press photograph from 1992. A clip from the behind-the-scenes documentary Royal Family will also be shown publicly at the exhibition for what is believed to be the first time in 40 years.

Curator Paul Moorhouse said the Queen was ‘probably the most visually represented person ever to have lived in the whole of human history’ and described the collection as ‘far from being a formal or official view’.


Elegant: Dorothy Wilding's portrait


Regal: Another Dorothy Wilding portrait reveals the youthful monarch's radiance

He added: ‘You get a sense of the mask beginning to slip after the [Brixton] riots and an intruder [in the Queen’s bedroom in 1982].

‘Warhol [in 1985] shows the fracture between her public and private image.

‘In an uncertain time, she is a reassuring presence perhaps.’

The Queen: Art and Image exhibition will open at the National Gallery Complex in Edinburgh later this year and then go on show at the Ulster Museum in Belfast, the National Museum in Cardiff and London’s National Portrait Gallery until October 2012.


Royal in the rain: Eve Arnold snaps a smiling Queen despite the gloomy weather


Classic Queen: Pietro Annigoni's haunting 1969 image captures the monarch in a defiant pose

dailymail.co.uk
 
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CurioToo

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Nov 22, 2010
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I loved the Royal in the Rain photo!

Elizabeth had the most enchanting smile - not a bit "royal" and I think she has a great sense of humor tucked away behind it.
 

petros

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I loved the Royal in the Rain photo!

Elizabeth had the most enchanting smile - not a bit "royal" and I think she has a great sense of humor tucked away behind it.
I have a few fantastic personal pictures of her in the rain from a couple years back. Charles too from a few years before that. Even shook his hand.
 

CurioToo

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Nov 22, 2010
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I have a few fantastic personal pictures of her in the rain from a couple years back. Charles too from a few years before that. Even shook his hand.
Petros

Aw you lucky guy - how many months was it before you washed that hand?????

I always grumble about "royals" but if I was ever up close I'd probably faint - my mother always cried when she visited England to see her family and hang around where she might see "a royal or two"....

Elizabeth has a most wonderful unrestrained smile - her whole face lights up - not just her mouth.
 

#juan

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Photos were banned because they made them look too ordinary???? Agreed....Couldn't have shots that showed the queen stopping bullets or leaping tall buildings could we. I'm a royalist in principal but I'm pretty sure the royals are as ordinary as they can be when you consider they've been waited on hand and foot since they were weaned. I'm sure they get zits and boils just like everyone else and bad breath occasionally as well but who cares.
 

Trotz

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May 20, 2010
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The same Elizabeth that was known to run off during the 1940s and 1950s (as an underage drinker no less) and slept with men she met in bars.

Maybe Monarchs should be entitled to have some resemblence of a proper life but it's hypocrisy when monarchist institutions were stressing traditional morals in the 1940s while the monarch in question is running around sleeping with men twice her age.

Her successors are no better, you wouldn't think there would be a monarch worse than the Empire dismantler Elizabeth but Charles is a pig and his sons, while they try to hide it well, usually spend most of them time playing "bros before hoes", drinking with military buddies and visiting strippers (see Dirty Harry's Lap Dance).
Worse is that tax payers are paying for all this and/or their estates, which sustain their existence, were originally purchased with tax payer's funds.

People are suckered into believing that being British is the same as having a monarch; when in reality, it's more than possible now to have a British identity without tying it directly to an aging head of state (the same goes for Canada and Australia).
 

petros

The Central Scrutinizer
Nov 21, 2008
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Photos were banned because they made them look too ordinary???? Agreed....Couldn't have shots that showed the queen stopping bullets or leaping tall buildings could we. I'm a royalist in principal but I'm pretty sure the royals are as ordinary as they can be when you consider they've been waited on hand and foot since they were weaned. I'm sure they get zits and boils just like everyone else and bad breath occasionally as well but who cares.
My wife dragged me off to watch what turned out to be an incredible film called The King's Speech. It was about Prince Albert and his speech therapist and how they became friends.

It gave an honest perspective into royal life from post WW1 to the beginning of WW2. Albert didn't have a very good life from abuse and starvation from his nanny who favoured his brother David.

One of the best films I've seen in a long time. Highly recomended and I'm not a royal fan, it's just one helluva good story and very well done film.