THAT HAMILTON WOMAN (1941) ** Vivien Leigh is quite believable as "the most most beautiful woman in the world"-don't laugh it's not an easy part to pull off, fewer can be credible in it than, say, Susan B. Anthony or MacBeth. She also has a vein of opportunism that fits the character, exhibited somehow despite an overtly white-washing script, and she carries herself with the not subtle confidence of one who has been assured of her beauty by others her entire life. It really is a role that demands an element of type-casting. Laurence Olivier banters about heroically as Lord Nelson, but she over-acts circles around him. Is over-acting a virtue in representation of a melodramatic character? Concocted as a strange hybrid distraction/propaganda piece during the darkness of Britain in World War II some of the propaganda (Leigh's diplomat husband's explanation-oh yes the film glorifies adultry but what was that compared to the Nazis?-of why local lunatics would ever want the British out...some of the propaganda is either wonderfully ironic or gloriously and insanely myopic and culturocentric). It's said that this was Winston Churchill's favorite film, and that he wrote the excellent speech made in it by Lord Nelson to the House of Lords. Vivien Leigh steals a bottle of wine and the fucking moron frog cops are vulgar enough to chase her and make her fall down and break it.
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