Queen Elizabeth I - Who's The Best/Your Favorite?

[rudeboy]

I haven't seen Fire Over England but I love Flora Robson's performance in The Sea Hawk, so I gave her a boost. Mirren was wonderful as was Anne-Marie Duff.

[Big Magilla]

I voted for Mirren.

I never thought I'd see a better Elizabeth than Glenda Jackson in Elizabeth R, but Mirren's ferocious performance goes her one better.

Robson and Eldgredge were also fine, as was Judith Anderson in Elizabeth the Queen, her great stage performance, which she reprised on TV in the late 60s.

Bette Davis was less than adequate in the film version of Elizabeth the Queen, renamed The Private Lives of Elizabeth and Essex and even less so in The Virgin Queen.

Jean Simmons was lovely as Young Bess, but she didn;t really have that much to do.

Dench was fun in Shakespeare in Love, but her portrayal was ultimately too cartoonish to be considered one of the great ones.

Blanchett may have been good in Elizabeth, but the woefully historically inaccurate script was so awful it tarnished everything else in the film for me.

[Aceisgreat]

All the boisterous praise drove me into blind-buying the Emmy-winning, Golden Globe-winning, and inevitable SAG-winning “Elizabeth I” last weekend. I’m happy I did one sitting later, but it’s still incredibly overrated. The look is scrumptious. The sets are beautiful. Mirren, Irons, and Dancy are all excellent. And there was something about Emperor Palpatine as Lord Burghley that struck me as a stroke of genius.

But the other recent Gloriana epic, “The Virgin Queen,” is much more satisfying in my opinion. The story is more moving (Elizabeth’s relationship with Robert Dudley in particular), Duff’s portrayal of the queen in old age seems more realistic (the outstanding makeup helps), and it covers a wider timeline (and I do realize that there was no way Mirren could have played the queen if they had not dropped us into the story twenty years into her reign).

The graphic flaying and beheading in “Elizabeth I” (the brutality itself and the highly stylized nature of it) was distracting. Even Shekhar Kapur’s blood-spattered version was less violent. And speaking of that much debated film, historical accuracy aside, Cate Blanchett was terrific. A beautiful score. Fine supporting performances from Eccleston, Attenborough, Fiennes, and Rush (and in my opinion, if the Academy just had to give him a nomination that year, it should have been for this and not for “Shakespeare In Love”). I can’t wait for “The Golden Age.”

I don’t think Katharine Hepburn has ever been more lovingly photographed than in “Mary of Scotland” (except for possibly “The Philadelphia Story”). But her film and the other future undertaking that focuses exclusively on Mary of Scotland, Vanessa Redgrave’s “Mary, Queen of Scots,” portrays Elizabeth as a snappish nitwit with barely a shred of humanity. Eldridge and Jackson are fine with what they had, but Jackson is truly splendid in "Elizabeth R."

I haven’t seen “The Sea Hawk” in years, but the majestic Flora Robson easily steals “Fire Over England” from Laurence Olivier and Vivien Leigh in their first screen pairing. Jean Simmons was radiant (and when was she ever not?) as a pre-crowned Elizabeth in “Young Bess” (and I also enjoy Charles Laughton’s continuation of his performance from “The Private Life of Henry VIII”). I love Bette Davis, but something about her in white face and heavy costume still strikes me as ridiculous. And then there’s Judi Dench in “Shakespeare In Love.” Despite her minuscule screen time and the notion that it’ll cost her a deserved Best Actress win somewhere down the road (perhaps even this year), this is still one of my favorite Oscar wins ever.

Dench, Jackson, and Robson are tempting, but I'll go with Blanchett.