Zulu (1964)
Synopsis
Zulu is a 1964 war epic written by Cy Enfield and John Prebble, directed by Enfield,
and produced by Enfield and Stanley Baker. Starring Stanley Baker and Michael
Caine, the film depicts the Battle of Rorke’s Drift ( January 1879) when a small Brit-
ish Army detachment held off a much larger force of Zulu warriors during the
Anglo- Zulu War.
Background
On 22–23 January 1879, during the Anglo- Zulu War (in the Natal Province of Cape
Colony, part of present- day South Africa), a small British garrison of 150 men at
Rorke’s Drift— many of them sick and wounded— successfully held off a force of
some 4,000 Zulu warriors bent on annihilating them. British casualties numbered
17 killed and 15 wounded, whereas the Zulus lost some 350 dead and 500 wounded.
Ultimately 11 Victoria Crosses were awarded to the defenders of Rorke’s Drift— a
rec ord number for a single engagement up to that time. Britain’s Alamo- like vic-
tory was trumpeted in the home press, especially because it offset a humiliating
defeat at the Battle of Isandlwana, which immediately preceded it. In that encoun-
ter a Zulu army of 20,000 attacked and destroyed a force of 1,800 British and colo-
nial troops. Seventy- nine years later British journalist and popu lar historian John
Prebble (writing under the pseudonym John Curtis) revived the memory of Rorke’s
Drift with an article entitled “A Slaughter in the Sun” (Lilliput magazine, April 1958).
Inspired by Prebble’s account, blacklisted expatriate American screenwriter- director
Cyril “Cy” Enfield approached his friend and filmmaking colleague, Welsh actor
Stanley Baker, and won Baker’s enthusiastic support. After Endfield and Prebble
completed a script, Baker showed it to American movie mogul Joseph E. Levine
while both men were making Robert Aldrich’s The Last Days of Sodom and Gomor-
rah in Italy in 1961. Seeing the potential for a blockbuster epic, Levine agreed to
supply the lion’s share of the picture’s $1.75 million production bud get under the
aegis of Baker’s production com pany, Diamond Films, Ltd.
Production
Photographed in “Super Technirama 70,” an anamorphic pro cess less grainy than
Cinemascope that uses a wide- screen 2.35:1 aspect ratio, most of Zulu was shot on
location in Royal Natal National Park in South Africa, about 90 miles southwest of
the actual battle site, during the spring and summer of 1963. A replica of the