Zulu. 1964. UK. Directed by Cy Endfield. Screenplay by Endfield, John Prebble. With Michael Caine, Stanley Baker, Jack Hawkins. DCP courtesy Rialto Pictures. In English, Zulu; English subtitles. 138 min.
“You know, you don’t look like a Cockney. You look like one of those snotty blue-blooded English guys.” That’s how Michael Caine got his big break, when the excellent blacklisted American director Cy Endfield cast him as the “very snobbish and aristocratic lieutenant” Gonville Bromhead opposite burly, brash Welshman Stanley Baker. Filmed in the starkly beautiful Drakensberg Mountains in northern South Africa, the epicly thrilling and affecting Zulu recreates the Battle of Rorke’s Drift, a pivotal event in the 1879 Anglo-Zulu war, when a hopelessly outnumbered regiment of British and colonial soldiers stood their ground against 4,000 Zulu warriors. What distinguishes Zulu above most nostalgic paeans to the fallen British Empire is the dignity and mutual respect accorded to both sides of the conflict; Endfield personally recruited Chief Buthelezi to play the then-king of the Zulu Nation, Cetshwayo, and Caine would later say that “the lack of jingoism means that it resonates for a modern audience in a way that other British war films just don’t any longer. It has never dated—and I remain proud of it.”