This event, the coronation of the British monarch happened only three times in the previous century. One of the British monarchs, Edward VIII had a funny thing happen to him on the way to his coronation, but that's another subject. The last time this happened was 1953 because the present monarch is a bit of living history herself. What can you say about A Queen Is Crowned except that you are watching history unfold. Traditions that date back to almost a thousand years unfold before your eyes. Makes no difference that the current monarch is a constitutional one or has real ruling power. It's the spectacle that counts.From the first ride to Westminster Abbey to the coronation ceremony itself and ending with the royal family's return to Buckingham Palace you don't want to blink. This current Queen is the glue that holds the British Commonwealth together by tradition. How long will this tradition be kept, who can say. Some over across the pond want to dispense with the royals. Then we'd miss something special as we see here, a people truly united in respect and love for their ruler. Laurence Olivier's narration is part of, but never intrudes in what you are watching as all good documentary narrations should be. Color which was not as often used in Great Britain as in America is well photographed both inside the Abbey and the streets of London.Elizabeth II will shortly be 92 the oldest monarch the United Kingdom ever had and the longest reign. Many more to you old, you are a class act as the role of Queen calls for you to be. God Save The Queen.

This is a full-length documentary film of Queen Elizabeth II's 1953 coronation. Beautifully filmed in pin-sharp Technicolour, the film is book-ended by some general views of 1953 Britain followed by formal proclamations of the forthcoming coronation, and then condenses the 8-hour proceedings of the day into something over an hour. We see the coronation procession leave Buckingham Palace and make its way to Westminster Abbey, highlights of the coronation ceremony, and finally the return of the procession.Visually, this film is sumptuous - the colour is absolutely gorgeous and it is a treat to fully appreciate the colours of the pageantry. The sound is less thrilling - key parts of the ceremony are synched to the contemporaneous sound recording, but all the music is newly recorded. The limited camera positions and editing mean that the presentation is somewhat stodgy and boring by comparison to current standards. And the commentary sounds as if writer Christopher Fry was desperately pursuing a knighthood, it is so pretentious and bombastically sycophantic - the colour is lush, but the narration is lurid. Sir Laurence Olivier had already been knighted 6 years earlier, of course, so he has no excuse for his dreadful delivery of Fry's purplest of prose. He is worse than the hammiest amateur dramatic performance.Yet despite the criticism, it is wonderful that this record of that day exists - it brings the events to life far better than the more common monochrome TV recording.Thanks to the Daily Mail for making this remastered version available as a freebie.

With Queen Elizabeth's Diamond Jubilee almost upon us the film of her coronation in 1953 has been restored and given a limited cinema release.I had the opportunity to see "A Queen is Crowned" in a cinema.It jaw dropping. The brilliance of the ceremony at Westminster Abbey is shown in its full glory.Never have I seen such extraordinary images on screen.The sheer power of Great Britain's history is on show. But the star must be Technicolor at the very end of the Technicolor era.The beauty of the young Queen, the deep reds, gold, blues and greens that only Technicolor can offer are contrasted with grey exterior shots of a cold and wet London warmed by huge crowds and a massive military parade, perhaps the last flickering of an imperial Britian.This not a film for everyone and as others have noted the slightly over the top commentary is jarring to modern ears but nothing can take away from the immense power of the event.This is a film to be seen on a huge screen. The colour and detail is simply not visible on DVD even on a large television.

The Golden Jubilee of Queen Elizabeth II is a fit moment to reappraise this pioneering feature-length Technicolor newsreel/documentary of her Coronation in 1953.A fruity commentary written by Christopher Fry, whose post-war vogue as a poetic playwright was just beginning to fade, is delivered with too much ham by Laurence Olivier. He is in "Henry V" mode but without the material- his final words are "May the Queen live for ever!", which sums up the poignantly over-optimistic mood of Britain as she struggled out of austerity and socialist government, hoping that the 27 year old beauty would lead her people to prosperity while retaining great-power status.Unfortunately the day of the Queen's crowning dawned overcast and rainy, as if to dampen such hopes. Nor were the London crowds helped by a bus strike. This must have taxed the Rank Organisation, throwing every cameraman it could muster into the fray to film the procession and service in Westminster Abbey from a host of angles. A film had been made of the previous Coronation in 1937, in monochrome; but the fairly new one-strip colour cameras, light enough to be manoeuvrable, required blazing lights in the murky Abbey which made guests feel uncomfortably hot. They also had to be heavily blimped to pick up live sound without motor noise, but the track is often slightly fuzzy, and the Abbey interiors can be too dark for the viewer's comfort.In today's prints the film looks a little drab for the brilliance of its jewels, costumes and banners. But in other ways, technical limitations aid the effect. The zoom is not yet in use, so there are no close-ups of sweat beads, whiskers and open pores, trivialising what is at heart a religious rite with the "personal touch" so tempting to outside broadcast directors. Time and again we see personages from a distance or from overhead, which makes their interaction and the meaning of the ritual clearer, beside imposing a sobriety which suits the dignity of the occasion: the cameras are privileged spectators, not interlopers.Deference and solemnity were more customary then. However far the British have shifted towards intimacy and exposure in half a century, the aesthetic imposed on Castleton Knight's team by technology fitted the spirit of the "Second Elizabethan Age" in its idealistic beginning. At the time the film was cited by those who wanted commercial television in Britain: J Arthur Rank had proved that a profit-minded tycoon could turn out as handsome a souvenir as the BBC's epoch-making television relay.