The 2017 war drama Gary Oldman has played many real people in his career, but it is his transformative turn as Churchill that earned him the Oscar for Best Actor. Oldman’s performance was universally acclaimed and contributed greatly to Darkest Hour’s success.
The period piece was penned by biopic genre veteran Anthony McCarten (The Two Popes, The Theory of Everything, Bohemian Rhapsody). Even though McCarten didn’t rely on a particular book to pen Darkest Hour, the Oscar-nominated screenwriter did his fair share of research. In a press interview for Darkest Hour, McCarten added, “you have to get the facts straight and you have to work within the tolerances of history, but also the tolerances of what audiences will handle.” Understandably, a few crucial scenes in Darkest Hour were fabricated or exaggerated all the while humanizing its larger-than-life central figure during a crucial point of history.
Elizabeth Layton's Employment
Churchill's personal secretary Elizabeth Layton is a crucial character in the movie and is constantly shown to be adjusting to the whims and fancies of her hot-headed employer. However, a major Darkest Hour change is with regard to the chronology of her employment. As declared in her 1958 memoir Mr. Churchill’s Secretary, Layton establishes that she first met Churchill in May 1941, following which she worked for him till 1945. However, Darkest Hour is set in the year 1940, suggesting Layton had known and worked for Churchill much longer than she did.
The Timing Of The Dunkirk Speech
Operation Dynamo was the name given to the British effort to evacuate troops from the beaches of Dunkirk. Along with releases like Dunkirk and Their Finest, Darkest Hour completed 2017’s unofficial Dunkirk trilogy. When Operation Dynamo concluded on 4 June 1940, Churchill delivered one of his greatest speeches on the same day (as per BBC). Addressing the British Parliament’s House of Commons, the PM boldly declared “We shall fight on the beaches”. This speech concludes the Darkest Hour, but it is delivered on May 28 instead, when Operation Dynamo was still in progress. The speech is accurately recreated in the movie, but it is the timing that differs.
The Role Of Clement Attlee And The Labour Party
A noteworthy Darkest Hour change from actual history is the underrepresentation of the Labour Party. While the Conservative Churchill did protest against a peace treaty with , the anti-Nazi sentiments echoed within the Labour parliamentarians like Clement Attlee were also crucial. Darkest Hour deserves credit for accurately portraying the Conservative in-fighting between Churchill and other party supremos like Lord Halifax but it hardly puts the spotlight on the other party in question. As Adam Gopnik wrote in The New Yorker, “it was the steadfast anti-Nazism of [Clement] Attlee and his Labour colleagues that saved the day – a vital truth badly underdramatized in Darkest Hour...”
Despite their ideological differences with the Conservatives, the Labour representatives did vocally Churchill as opposed to Halifax who still believed a deal could be brokered with Adolf Hitler. This is the argument forwarded by modern history professor Adrian Smith in The New Statesman. He adds, “in May 1940 its [Labour Party] leaders gave Churchill the unequivocal he needed when refusing to surrender. Ignoring Attlee’s vital role is just one more failing in a deeply flawed film”. While David Schofield plays Attlee in the movie, his role is very limited and he hardly has any speaking parts during the parliamentary arguments.
The Underground War Rooms Were Used Later
Located near the Parliament were underground bunkers simply known as Underground War Rooms. Darkest Hour features such rooms where Churchill and his advisers discuss war strategies. While these rooms did exist to double as map rooms and air-raid shelters, they couldn’t have been used in May 1940 as the movie shows. Darkest Hour historical adviser Phil Reed and the director emeritus of the War Rooms told TIME that even though these rooms were opened in August 1939, they weren’t used by Churchill and his staff until September 1940. The reason behind this Darkest Hour change is that there just weren’t any bomb raids happening in the UK before September.
The Dunkirk Speech Wasn’t Broadcast On Radio
In Darkest Hour, Churchill’s “We shall fight on the beaches” speech creates an uproar in the Parliament and even draws emotional reactions from his wife Clementine Churchill, King George VI, and the British populace when it is heard on the radio. It is a glaring historical inaccuracy as radio broadcasts from the Parliament started only from the 1970s onwards. The official blog of the UK Government mentions that sections of the 1940 speech were read aloud by a BBC announcer during the nightly news. While Churchill usually repeated his speeches on the radio moments after delivering them, he recorded this particular speech much later in 1949 for posterity’s sake.
The Call With Roosevelt Was A Letter
Many of the best World War II movies dramatize wartime action but Darkest Hour gets into the strategy and diplomacy that went behind the battles. Facing pressure from his own Cabinet and the rest of the Allied powers, Churchill is even shown to have a phone call with then-American President Franklin D Roosevelt where he begs him for loaning out military infrastructure. Slate mentions that this couldn’t have been a possibility as the scrambled phone line shown in the movie did not exist until 1943. While Churchill did ask Roosevelt for help in May 1940, it was through a letter addressed to him (as per History vs. Hollywood).
Churchill Wasn’t That Indecisive
Darkest Hour paints Churchill as an indecisive leader conflicted between continuing the British war effort or entering a deal with the Germans. However, the truth is that Churchill was way more determined in his resolve to not negotiate with the enemy. While May 1940 in the British Parliament was indeed characterized by chaos as shown in the movie, Churchill was determined that Hitler could not be trusted. National Review disputes the Darkest Hour change by mentioning that Churchill instructed his War Cabinet in May that “every man of you would rise up and tear me down from my place if I were for one moment to contemplate parley or surrender”.
Elizabeth Layton’s Brother And Accent
In the movie, Churchill’s personal secretary tells him that her brother died during a war campaign in Dunkirk. The scene is clearly played out for emotional purposes as the death is fabricated. In her book Mr. Churchill’s Secretary, Layton did mention her brother Michael as a pilot during World War II but didn’t write about any such death. While many of Lily James' movies are period dramas, the actress often retains her original British accent. The same is the case with her role as Layton in Darkest Hour. However, it is highly possible that the real-life secretary sounded different as she was born in South Africa and raised in Canada.
Churchill's Subway Ride Was Made Up
A particularly dramatic scene from Darkest Hour finds the cigar-smoking Prime Minister taking the London Underground for the first time. Still conflicted over his decision not to surrender to , Churchill asks the startled engers on the train about what they feel. His compatriots express their desire to still fight Hitler. This scene is perhaps the biggest Darkest Hour change as there is no historical evidence to this interaction. However, as reported by The Wrap, screenwriter McCarten felt that such a moment could have happened in real life as Churchill had the tendency to disappear suddenly and talk to the public.
However, as Churchill’s grandson Lord Soames told Daily Express, “The idea of my grandfather on the Underground is absolutely preposterous.” It is also doubtful that the working-class population would have readily nodded in agreement with Churchill and even cheered for his decisions as shown in Darkest Hour. An essay from The Complete Works of George Orwell: A Patriot After All, 1940-1941 finds journalist and writer George Orwell mentioning that some British people were dubious or didn’t bother much whether Britain made peace with the Germans or not. Orwell added that the possibility of negotiations didn’t matter further as the working class already felt subordinated by the parliamentary elite.
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