Sixty Glorious Years (1938) 5/10

Usually a sequel to a biopic continues a life story already started : the few sequels which have been made generally followed that pattern as in Jolson Sings Again (1949) and Funny Lady (1975). However when writer and director Herbert Wilcox decided to make a second film about Queen Victoria it wasn't a continuation of the first film. That would have been rather difficult as Victoria the Great (1937) mainly covered the early and final years of the queen's reign, instead he decided that her reign had been so long and eventful it couldn't be covered in one film, he had missed a fair bit out so it could go in a second film.

So here we have Sixty Glorious Years (1938) a pot pourri of events in the reign of Queen Victoria with assorted politicians played by character actors including C.Aubrey Smith as the Duke of Wellington, the only one who makes any kind of impact. Both Wilcox's films starred Anna Neagle as the Queen who gives a very reverential performance in fact in an era when criticism of the monarchy was rare they are too sycophantic and stuffy, you never get to feel you know this woman as in the more recent Mrs Brown (1997). Even less critically portrayed is Prince Albert (Anton Walbrook) who despite great efforts on his part never quite connects with the British public or the haughty English as a fairly stereotypical John Brown points out.

A lack of real drama and excitement in the end makes this pagaent fairly dull. Victoria the Great (1937) concentrated on fewer events in her life and didn't seem so episodic. Here we have many events such as the Corn Laws, the Crimean War, the murder of General Gordon inserted it seems fairly arbitralily to increase the running time. Not that its a long film at 90 minutes but it really takes a dip after the death of Albert about an hour in.

It is a handsome production in Technicolor though the print I watched was fairly ropey and faded. Still this film cost me nothing, it is available to download at archive.org  as it appears to have entered the public domain. Though made and released in Britain in 1938 it didn't appear in the US till 1940, the print retains the RKO intro with radio masthead.