Michael Caine goes after “bullshit” criticism of ‘Zulu’
Sir Michael Caine, one of the greatest British actors of his generation, has responded to claims that his 1964 movie Zulu allows the message of the far-right leaning to be spread, saying that any such suggestion is “bullshit”, standing up to those who want to criticise his work.
It was earlier in the year that Zulu was referred to as a “key text” for “white nationalists/supremacists” when the government reviewed their counter-terrorism programme Prevent. According to a recent interview with The Spectator, Caine revealed that he got the part in the film after he played “a cockney bloke in the West End in a play called Next Time I’ll Sing To You.”
He added, “An American director who was in the audience saw me and gave me a part in the film Zulu as a posh officer. This made me a star, and I never went back on the stage again.” He then went on to respond to suggestions that Zulu is a film that “incites the far-right”.
“That is the biggest load of bullshit I have ever heard,” Caine said, before adding later in the interview, “there are no films I wish I hadn’t made. I got paid for all of them”. Caine also admitted that he finds his career something of a “miracle” and said that he had enjoyed it “without the slightest difficulty”.
The film Zulu was released in 1964, directed by Cy Enfield. It told of the Battle of Rorke’s Drift, in which 150 British Army soldiers fought against 4,000 Zulu warriors in the 1879 Anglo-Zulu War. It has been flagged as a “possible source of inspiration for terrorist groups and far-right extremists” alongside several other widely-admired cinematic works, including The Bridge On The River Kwai, Brave New World, Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy. However, we can certainly gather what Caine makes of the news.
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