March 21, 2009   Gerard Winstanley was an English radical who
thrived in the immediate aftermath of Charles I's execution. His
acts have become famous because the group that Winstanley led-
the Diggers- were a communalist group that held property in
common. Many have therefore seen Winstanley as a proto communist
of some sort. The 1975 film about Winstanley falls into some of
these traps: but it avoids them mainly and it as a work of
historical filming it is actually fairly impressive. The detail
of the history is less important than the impression that the
film makes, the argument of the camera which is the key to the
film is double: it shows Winstanley's radicalism and the
conditions against which he campaigned and argued.  The figure
of Winstanley in the film does have good features. The script is
largely taken from Winstanley's own works, recited over the
action, and at points the film almost becomes a silent film, in
which the words are like captions rather than being, as in most
modern films, part of th