Mise-En-Scene in The Madness of King George and the Illusion of Historical Authenticity

The late eighteenth century was a fascinating time. The Georgian century had been a time of relative quiescence in English History. However, as the century wound to a close, English culture would be disrupted by, amongst other things, the looming French Revolution. In the final decades of the eighteenth century, the hegemony of Enlightenment ideology slowly gave way to Romanticism. Gothic literature reached its apex with the publication of such classics as Matthew Gregory Lewis’s infamous The Monk (1796). The middle-class was experiencing its own quiet revolution with the rapid growth of its populace. The demographics of theatre audiences, for example, were increasingly middle-classed gentlemen and merchants. And King George III went mad. It is this tenor of mixed tradition and change, of urgency and ideological revolution, of constitutional monarchy, parliamentary influence, and questionable regency that director Nicholas Hytner attempts to capture in The Madness of King George (1994). Historically, sociocultural interactions and ideology are not particularly tangible and substantially ephemeral. In terms of generating historical authenticity the only recourse to stratagem remaining to the filmmaker is how things looked. Hytner relies heavily on mise-en-scene, particularly costume and setting, to create the necessary historical backdrop in which to explore George’s mental interregnum and the political intrigues that it prompted within the royal family. The Madness of King George employs a strategic combination of costuming, architecture, character, and contemporary and historical fact to develop the illusion of an authentic late eighteenth century setting.
Costuming is the most apparent of these strategies. Although the Elizabethan enforcement of sumptuary laws was long past during George’s reign, the delineation of social rank according to fashion was still a stratifying force in English culture. The costume drama has an even greater historical impact given such cultural conditions. In her book Fashioning the Nation, Pam Cook explores the cinematic British costume drama and its impact on the maintenance and construction of national identity. She claims that “Costume drama is … notoriously inauthentic, as any costume historian will testify” (Cook 6). Published in 1996 shortly after the release of The Madness of King George in 1995 (in the U.K.), Cook has underestimated costuming efforts in the costume drama as a subcategory of the historical drama. If the costume drama’s primary impetus is the drama, the historical accuracy of the costuming is a secondary agenda. By contrast, the historical drama often makes a concerted effort towards historical authenticity and the costuming is reflectively as accurate as it can be. Even in the absence of accuracy, however, the historical drama draws upon the sensibilities of the audience to create the illusion of a cinematic window to the past. Within the diegesis of the film, George highlights the importance of costume to the construction of meaning when he interrogates Dr. Willis, he states, “By your dress, sir, and general demeanor, I'd say you were a minister of God” (Madness). Cook claims that the costume drama puts an “emphasis on masquerade” (Cook 6). Certainly, in The Madness of King George, both Dr. Willis and George do just that.
Hytner takes full advantage of this powerful element of the mise-en-scene to establish the historical setting of the film. The credits list a battery of costume related experts: an Assistant Costume Designer, a Costume Supervisor, a Wardrobe Master, a Wardrobe Mistress, four Costume Assistants, seventeen individual or commercial Costume Makers, a Millinery of three, five names under the heading Production Wardrobe, and two Wardrobe Drivers. Their talents are put to work early in the film. The movie begins with a scene of George being dressed for a parliamentary address. The intercut scene pans across a sort of waiting room in the palace where other members of the royal party are in attendance while the King is readied. From left to right are seen the Queen in an elaborately ornate gown, and a stylized wig with a small, feminine crown perched aloft; several of the young royal daughters in widely frilled dresses and even more widely-rimmed ornate hats; the two eldest princes wearing a combination of traditional waistcoats, vibrant blue, and adorned with a spectacle of deep reds and gold trim, knee-length knickers and stockings, along with various regal medals; and a variety of footmen in ornately vibrant red overcoats and white gloves. The scene then follows one of the royal daughters as she runs crying for her father, only to be taken breathlessly aback upon seeing the iconically recognizable British crown placed upon George’s head in all his regal pageantry. The episode is intercut with moments of footmen accommodating various aspects of the King’s wardrobe until he is finally revealed to us in his entirety with a full red royal cloak rimmed with spotted fur and his ornate crown aloft his equally stylized eighteenth century wig. The costume of the monarchy reflects the elaborate remnants of baroque and rococo pageantry that was common at the time and still used by the monarchy today in some rituals and pageants. The entire scene is overwhelmed by the decadence of the period-specific costuming.
As the scene changes to the House of Lords, their costumes are distinctly more conservative than those of the royal family but equally period authentic. All of the peers wear generic black and brown overcoats. As they stand to depart the camera frames the two party leaders, Mr. Fox and Mr. Pitt, in witty repartee. Their clothing is at least as authentic as it is documented in paintings that have come down to us depicting the somewhat unscrupulous and often irrationally competitive two party political system. The costuming becomes even more conservative in the film’s representations of the working classes. Setting complements the costuming in this regard. Dr. Willis is first depicted in an outdoor setting on a vast agricultural field where his patients engage in manual labour. His clothes are comparatively practical and demonstrate a sort of down to earth simplicity. There is nothing in his attire of the courtly decadence seen earlier. In this way costuming and setting work in concert to create visual metaphor of the societal stratification with which history has come to characterize the late eighteenth century. All the costuming choices, even George’s less decadent undergarments – a simple, frilled, white cotton housecoat, are at least superficially indicative of an historically distant era of fashion.
The film also goes to great lengths to create the illusion of historical authenticity in its settings. The credits of the film confirm that it was shot at Shepperton Studios in London, and on location at Eton College, Bodleian Library, Arundel Castle, Syon Park, Royal Naval College Greenwich, Wilton House, Broughton Castle, Thame Park, and St. Paul’s Cathedral. Most of these locations include architectural monoliths which have seen very little change since their construction prior to George’s reign and in their use during the era in which the film plot is set. Early in the film, the temporal setting is clearly established as George addresses parliament with the phrase “In this year of our lord 1788” (Madness). Arundel Castle was restored in 1787, the year prior to the most symptomatically severe outburst of George’s illness and the established date of the plot. The castle has remained in very much the same condition since. If these locations do not represent George’s true haunts (such as Westminster Abbey, Windsor Castle, or Cheltenham Spa), they at least proximate the architectural classicism and magnitude that would be expected by modern audiences in a depiction of George’s actual residences.
Hytner further establishes the illusion of historical authenticity with the use of racial inauthenticity. The ethnicity of all characters, even the extras within the throngs on the streets, is exclusively and entirely Caucasoid. Surely even eighteenth century England was more colourful than that. In his essay “Race, Ethnicity and Film,” Robert Wiegman discusses “Alfred Hitchcock’s The Wrong Man (USA, 1957), in which scenes of New York City are devoid of people of colour” (Wiegman 165). In Framing Monsters, Joshua Bellin makes very much the same point in his chapter about King Kong (1933) in which he also specifically identifies a lack of people of colour in New York. If The Wrong Man “offers a racial discourse keyed to white visual pleasure,” as Wiegman claims, then the lack of any visible race other than Euro-caucasoid in The Madness of King George might well be a symptom of the expected demographics of the audience for a British monarchical historical drama. Such an audience might well derive pleasure from the proud depiction of an all Caucasian British cast. In this way, the filmmaker provides an inauthentic visual history that has a greater historical appeal for the audience. Cook articulates an observation that can be extended to link the power of historical costuming into this notion of a construction of national identity through film. She states that “costume plays an important part in asserting and reinforcing national identity” (Cook 41). In order to create a fantasy-desired historical authenticity around the English court of 1788, all of the characters are white and have only minor dialect variations of the British accent.
In combination with these elements of costuming and setting, Hytner makes use of character movement and idiosyncrasy to create the illusion of historical authenticity. Character movements participate closely with the narrative in generating a late-eighteenth century feel. In their duties as the royal family, George and his family appear to be incessantly rushed, with the exception of the eldest son (played by Rupert Everett) who fills the void of villain in the otherwise unmelodramatic narrative of an historical event. Where George is stout, quick, and hearty, even in the throes of the most debilitating moments of his illness, the Prince of Wales is effeminate, less refined in his wig and fashion choices, married to a harlot, and quite a fop by comparison. The polarization of George against his scheming son coincides with melodramatic interpretations of the grand narrative regarding the actual history of events. Another character strategy employed by Hytner to generate the illusion of historical authenticity emerges in the form of George’s vernacular. In order to posit George as a ‘real’ personage, his character is imbued with idiomatic phrases such as his characteristic “What-what!” This phrase is used to signify George’s sanity and return to health. It falls out of his speech during his mental illness and is quoted as evidence of his sound mind when the phrase re-emerges. The Lord Chancellor reports that the king is “better … The ‘what-what’s back” (Madness). By locating George’s sanity in idiosyncrasy, Hytner effectively superimposes a present-tense realism onto the history of the drama. By doing so he generates a palpable immediacy to the historical illness George suffered.
Hytner uses modern sensibilities regarding disease to add further authenticity to the historical truth of the film. The methods of George’s “rehabilitation” are representative of a modern sensibility regarding medieval or Gothic machinations as they ostensibly emerged in the late eighteenth century. At one point George suffers the punitive bondage of being strapped into a chair and gagged until his tourettes-like symptoms are self-regulated. Furthermore, the methods of the royal doctors are depicted as comically primitive. Much is made of their obsession with the colour of George’s feces and urine in the narrative. Late twentieth century audiences might expect such quackery from these appropriately primitive medical practitioners. Ironically, one of the closing captions attempts to reformulate the medical quackery depicted within the drama as evidence of historical truth based on modern medical knowledge. “The colour of the King’s urine suggests that he was suffering from porphyria, a physical illness that affects the nervous system” (Madness). The coincidence of modern medical knowledge with the observations of the historical doctors within the film’s diegesis lends credibility to the historical truth of the drama.
While sartorial considerations seem to dominate Hytner’s historical mise-en-scene, they do not act in isolation. The on-location settings create an equally effective illusion of historical authenticity. These two obvious and visual aspects of the mise-en-scene are combined with more subtle elements such as character behaviour and the superimposition of modern medical knowledge onto the historical record. In concert with each other and with the realist style of film (that attempts to render form invisible and continuity feasible enough to manipulate a suspension of disbelief), the effect is powerful and convincing. Behind the camera filming was done in the late twentieth century; within the diegesis of the film Hytner has been careful to create an illusion of historical accuracy that only rarely betrays the actual date of the film’s construction, but otherwise barely reveals any hint that what is depicted on-screen are not actually visual moments plucked directly from the late eighteenth century.



Works Cited
Bellin, Joshua David. Framing Monsters – Fantasy Film and Social Alienation. Southern Illinois University, 2005. Print.
Cook, Pam. Fashioning the Nation. British Film Institute, 1996. Print
Madness of King George, The. Dir. Nicholas Hytner. Samuel Goldwyn Company, 1994. DVD.
Wiegman, Robert. “Race, Ethnicity and Film.” Eds. John HillL, & Pamela C. Gibson. The Oxford Guide to Film Studies. Oxford: O.U.P., 1998. 158-168. Print.