MovieChat Forums > Young Winston (1972) Discussion > I have the chopped, 124-minute VHS versi...

I have the chopped, 124-minute VHS version

posted 14 years ago by jeffyoung1
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Imagine my delight when I purchased and received the VHS tape, "Young Winston", from Amazon.com.

Then after reading these imdb posts I became upset to realize the original movie is 157 minutes long. The VHS tape is severely truncated and I'm annoyed because I don't know how much of the original is missing. My VHS tape version is only 124 minutes long. I'm missing 33 minutes from the original. The VHS tape producers should have decided to go with a two vhs tape unit.

When I watched the videotape, I was saddened to see the decline of young Winston's father due to...syphillis. At the time the only treatment available was painful injections of arsenic. The treatment was highly expensive and reserved only for the wealthy. The treatment could only slow the deterioration of syphillis but not cure it. One side effect is that the patient's body odor smelled of apricots. This is all part of medical history oddities. Winston senior continues his slow deterioration, forgetting young Winston's age, inaccurately remembering old facts.

One thing I don't understand. Young Winston failed to gain admission into the Royal infantry. But he was able to gain entrance into the Royal cavalry. From what I recall, the Royal cavalry was an elite force, not inferior to the infantry. Perhaps I am inaccurate but maybe someone out there knows better.

[–] caracallac 14 years ago

While the cavalry regiments of the British army were indeed an elite force with many of them having additional ceremonial duties, a cavalry officer had to pay most of his own very considerable expenses including his horse. These expenses were often a lot more than an officers pay, so therefore cavalry officers mostly came from the very richest families in the empire who could support such expense. Infantry officers on the other hand had the same pay and benefits, but none of the expenses so they could recruit from a much wider pool including young men from the middle classes. Hence the competition for places as an officer cadet in the infantry (or the Navy) was intense. Lord Randolph Churchill was the son of the Duke of Marlborough and an MP, so he was very wealthy, but he was not the Duke's eldest son so wouldn't inherit the estates and the bulk of the family wealth. He also knew that his health was failing and that the burden of supporting Winston's career in the cavalry would be considerable.