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She has said herself that she has to be seen to be believed, and seen she certainly has been, on an almost daily basis for more than 70 years. But even though her face is almost as well known to us as our own, in many ways the Queen remains an enigma to her subjects. 

Now, a new documentary aims to provide a fresh insight into her life and reign, letting us see a little of the woman beneath the crown.

Elizabeth: A Portrait in Parts, released to coincide with the Platinum Jubilee, is the last film made by Notting Hill director Roger Michell before his untimely death, aged 65, last September.

It spans 90 years of archive footage taken from 1,000 separate pieces of film.

“The film is a playful attempt to analyse the woman beneath the crown, and to celebrate and mark the incredible range of her life,” says its producer Kevin Loader, a close friend of Roger who worked with him on six films over 30 years.

“There is a modest ordinariness to her.”

In his director’s statement, written before he died, Roger said of the Queen: “She is our collective unconscious, the stuff of our dreams? by far the most famous female face in the history of the world.

More people dream about the Queen than any other living person. She’s the Mona Lisa, instantly recognisable, and yet elusively and perpetually unknowable.”

He approached Kevin with his idea at the start of the pandemic as all planned filming projects ground to a halt.

“I said to Roger, ‘How are we going to do a documentary about the Queen that feels different and is different?'” Kevin says.

“He said, ‘We’re not going to make it chronological. We won’t have any talking heads or pundits.

We will put the footage together and incorporate things that were going on around her in the world and let people bask in it and make their own connections’.”

The film, by turns tongue-in-cheek and touching, is segmented into chapters.

Shots of her Diamond Jubilee pageant floating down the Thames to the cheers of crowds are spliced with clips of Elizabeth Taylor as Cleopatra progressing down the Nile.

The Queen’s cheerful curiosity in the face of hundreds of factory visits and a never-ending revolving door of prime ministers shine through.

“Roger said, ‘Let’s have some fun, let’s make it mischievous’,” says Kevin.

“Royal documentaries are normally very good – but they’re not fun. We wanted a little bit of wit and mischief.”

The pair previously made such acclaimed films as The Mother, Venus and Enduring Love together. Kevin also produced Alan Bennett’s The History Boys and Armando Iannucci’s political satire In The Loop.

He admits to being fascinated by the striking contrasts of the Queen’s life. “She reads her red box every day and works very hard,” he says.

“Everyone who has met her in a professional capacity says she is sharp as a tack.

“She was also incredibly glamorous as a young woman and has been a pivot around which all this history has happened – yet seems to maintain a connection to us all. It’s a paradox that’s hard to pin down so the film is an exploration of that: she’s an icon, a mystery; she’s ordinary and extraordinary.”

Although there is much humour, especially around the pomp and pageantry of her world, the difficult moments endured by the Queen are not ignored.

Her annus horribilis in 1992, which included marital woes for Charles and Andrew and the Windsor Castle fire, is documented, along with later challenges, such as Andrew’s legal battles and Prince Harry and Meghan’s move to California.

The film has been approved by the Palace. Kevin and Roger were reliant on its archives so had to share their plans in advance.

“You have to pitch it honestly,” he says. “You don’t go in and tell a fib. We told them it was going to be unusual compared to what you normally see and will probably confound you a bit. Maybe you won’t quite get what we’re up to.

“Our intentions are very much to focus it on the Queen. We’re doing it in the spirit of affection and admiration and respect. We’re not trying to do an expose.

“We said we’re not really interested in the children and their various problems and missteps over the years – we will reference them because it would be incomplete not to do so, but it’s not our interest, which is to get to the bottom of who is our Queen?”

The Palace didn’t set any conditions. The only worry about the film was the “context” of how the footage would be used, which Kevin admits was tricky to explain.

Two researchers spent months scouring home and international film libraries and obtaining music rights and foreign newsreel footage. It’s a timeline of history and culture and progress across nations.

“When you look back at the early footage, it’s like watching some kind of social anthropology, isn’t it?” Kevin says.

“I don’t just mean the Commonwealth tours from the 1950s and 60s, but also the celebrity movie premieres from the same period. They feel like a different world. Everyone is in these Audrey Hepburn-type dresses and pearls. It’s extraordinary what the Queen has lived through.

“The oldest bit of archive in this film is 90 years old. Just think about that.”

The Queen’s gender has defined her reign, he says. “It wouldn’t have been the same if she had been a king. The fact that she was a woman, Queen and mother is an extremely important part of the story.”

While there are no major revelations, there is footage rarely seen in this country which shows her courage and resolution in the face of a monarch’s challenges.

The German government supplied video of her visit to Dresden in 1992 as she sought reconciliation for the city’s bombing by Allied forces as they fought to destroy Nazi communication networks and bring the Second World War to a close.

Booing crowds can be heard as she emerges from her car and cracked eggs meant to hit the Queen lie on the floor.

But perhaps the most thrilling moments feature the Queen unguarded and unscripted. We see her dressed in a white-sequinned dress, crown aloft her head, as she cranes her neck over the staircase at Buckingham Palace as guests arrive for the state banquet of Ghana President John Kufuor in 2007.

Elsewhere, she prepares for the visit of Lech Walesa when he was President of Poland, at Windsor Castle in 1992.

“I have moved the furniture,” she tells Princess Anne, standing beside her.

“And I have lit the fire so it looks quite sort of friendly like.”

As David Attenborough prepares her for her 1990 Christmas broadcast, the Queen asks the camera crew if her rose pink suit works with the background.

She then breaks into a laugh: “It would be awful if you said no.” It’s a lovely moment.

She is most carefree at the races, waving her arms up and down in delight. The joyous footage ranks among Kevin’s favourites.

“She really looks as if she loves watching horses run,” he says.

“It’s exuberance,” says Kevin. “She really lets it go. She’s out there like any other punter. I know it’s sometimes her horse but at other times she’s just chosen a horse to follow in the race.”

Elizabeth: A Portrait In Parts is intended to appeal to all ages.

“It’s lovely to think three generations of the family can go and see this film,” Kevin says.

“That’s not true of many films. Take your granny and take your kids. Why not?”

He is relieved Roger saw the final mix of the film the day before his death in September last year. Kevin recalls their last meeting.

“I was shooting in Leavesden [at Warner Bros Studios, Herts] and had come down to watch the mix,” he says.

“I then said, ‘I’ve got to go back but have you got time for a quick lunch? He said ‘No, I’ve got to go and pick up the girls from school’.”

The girls Roger mentioned were his two daughters by his second wife, Line Of Duty starAnna Maxwell Martin. The director died later that day. He had reportedly suffered from heart problems but his family has never spoken about the cause of his death.

“The next morning I got a call at 6am as I was driving in to the studio to say, ‘Terrible news’,” remembers Kevin.

“I had to pull off the road as I couldn’t?” he falters, trying to find the words. “Really that thing where people say your legs go to jelly? luckily I had come off the motorway. I couldn’t believe it.”

Knowing Roger had finished the film has helped enormously. Was his friend satisfied? “I knew he was happy with it,” Kevin says.

“We’d done the last creative act.”

The only shame, he says, is Roger never got to watch the film with an audience.

“That’s part of the reason you do it – to sit in a dark room full of strangers and hope they like your film,” Kevin says.

He hopes audiences will come away with a “warmth” about the Queen.

“Neither Roger nor I are uber conservationist monarchists but we shared admiration and respect,” he says.

“We were slightly in awe because she’s never really put a foot wrong. She’s had to manage crises but she’s been blameless. I think people will admire her service, but I hope they will take away the sense she’s really quite fun.”

• Elizabeth: A Portrait In Parts is in Cinemas May 27 and streams on Prime Video from June 1

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