That Hamilton Woman, also known as Lady Hamilton and The Enchantress, is a 1941 black-and-white historical film drama, produced and directed by Alexander Korda for his British company during his exile in the United States.
Set during the Napoleonic…
That Hamilton Woman, also known as Lady Hamilton and The Enchantress, is a 1941 black-and-white historical film drama, produced and directed by Alexander Korda for his British company during his exile in the United States.
Set during the Napoleonic Wars, the film tells the story of the rise and fall of Emma Hamilton, dance-hall girl and courtesan, who married Sir William Hamilton, British ambassador to the Kingdom of Naples. She later became mistress to Admiral Horatio Nelson.
The film was a critical and financial success, and while on the surface the plot is both a war story and a romance set in Napoleonic times, it was also intended to function as a deliberately pro-British film that would portray Britain positively within the context of World War II which was being fought at that time.
Shot in the United States during September and October 1940, That Hamilton Woman defines Britain's struggle against Napoleon in terms of resistance to a dictator who seeks to dominate the world. At the time the film was released France, Belgium, the Netherlands, Norway, Poland and Denmark had all surrendered to the Nazis and the Soviet Union was still officially allied to them, correspondingly the British were fighting against the Nazis alone and felt the need to produce films that would both boost their own morale, and also portray them sympathetically to the foreign world, and in particular, to the United States, before the attack on Pearl Harbor when the United States was still formally neutral.
Cast:
Vivien Leigh as Emma, Lady Hamilton
Laurence Olivier as Admiral Horatio Nelson
Alan Mowbray as Sir William Hamilton
Gladys Cooper as Lady Frances Nelson
Heather Angel as a street girl
Gilbert Emery as Lord Spencer
Ronald Sinclair as Josiah
Norma Drury as Queen of Naples
Juliette Compton as Lady Spencer
Sara Allgood as Mrs Cadogan-Lyon
Henry Wilcoxon as Captain Hardy
Halliwell Hobbes as Rev. Edmund Nelson
Miles Mander as Lord Keith
Luis Alberni as King of Naples
Olaf Hytten as Gavin
Guy Kingsford as Captain Troubridge
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0034272/
