Amazon.com essential videoAlexander Korda often enlisted Tinseltown talent to lend his British productions some Hollywood pizzazz. For this spirited historical film about the intrigues and counter-intrigues leading up to the Spanish Armada's assault against Queen Elizabeth's brave little island, William K. Howard directed and the cameraman was the great James Wong Howe. Still, it's the Russian French art director Lazare Meerson who takes top honors with his ethereal sets. The swashbuckling pales beside Captain Blood or The Prisoner of Zenda, but the diplomatic crosstalk and young Larry Olivier's James-Bond-in-a-ruff act are delicious. Vivien Leigh is Olivier's love interest (on screen and off), and royalty is royally served by Flora Robson's gusty Good Queen Bess (a role she reprised in The Sea Hawk) and Raymond Massey's wonderfully lugubrious Philip of Spain. Robert Newton plays another Spaniard, and if you don't blink you'll glimpse James Mason as the traitorous Hillary Vane. --Richard T. Jameson
