The original culture war: why modern-day film-makers are still drawn to 17th-century England

A nation divided and thrown into chaos, the old regime under threat, new dreams of freedom, equality and justice checked by violent oppression masquerading as righteousness. No, not today; I’m talking about 17th-century England, one of the most febrile times in British history, and one of the most cinematic, too. 

Thomas Clay’s new movie, Fanny Lye Deliver’d, reminds us of that. Set in 1657, during Oliver Cromwell’s reign, this artful little siege horror brings a runaway couple (Freddie Fox and Tanya Reynolds) into the Puritan household of Charles Dance’s John Lye and his servile wife, Fanny (Maxine Peake). The fusion of earthy rural splendour, monochrome garb, blade-assisted violence and exuberantly oversized hats brings to mind 70s folk horrors such as Witchfinder General and The Blood on Satan’s Claw, but Fanny Lye wants to talk about the ideas, too. 

This is the English revolution in microcosm. As the opening crawl puts it, “it was during this brief and violent time that our modern notions of personal, political and sexual freedoms were formed”. The interlopers bring with them dangerous ideas of a “new Jerusalem”: a Christian society minus the sin, the guilt and the patriarchy, with added partying and hallucinogens. Weighed against her husband’s joyless, patriarchal model of society, you can see why Fanny is tempted. 

Those radical ideas have percolated into many a political movement since, from anarchy to communism to the rave movement and Occupy; not least the ideas of groups such as the Levellers and the Diggers (you’d probably classify Fanny Lye’s free spirits as Ranters). The Diggers were commemorated in Kevin Brownlow’s 1975 docudrama Winstanley, which cast them as proto-socialists and proto-hippies, who took the law and the land into their own hands and attempted to create an egalitarian, rural utopia. You can guess how that panned out. 

Set against these dreamers – at least in the movies – there’s invariably a Puritan regime driven by zealotry, superstition and sadism, yet purporting to represent God’s word. This was a time of literal witch-hunts. Vincent Price’s witchfinder general, who foams against “the foul ungodliness that is womankind”, is not the hero of the piece. Nor were his counterparts in the New World, where Puritanism found space to thrive.

No wonder film-makers were drawn to this period in the 1970s, and why it’s being revisited now. It’s got it all: horror, violence, sex and drama, but also a seismic clash of political philosophies. Alongside Fanny Lye Deliver’d you could put Ben Wheatley’s shroom-fuelled civil war freakout A Field in England, 2008 miniseries The Devil’s Whore and Robert Eggers’s The Witch. This was the original culture war. Three centuries later, it’s still playing out.