“Young Winston,” an epic of the “Patton” and “A Bridge Too Far” era, was a big hit in 1972 Britain, where nostalgia for “The War” was nearing its peak and the memory of the titanic figure, Winston Churchill, was still fresh as he’d only passed away seven years before.

The story goes that Churchill was a fan of writer-producer Carl Foreman’s “The Guns of Navarone,” summoned him for an audience, and pitched him on how good a movie his swashbuckling memoir of his youth, “My Early Life: A Roving Commission” would make.

And whatever Winston wants, Winston gets.

Actor turned director Richard Attenborough had impressed with his own blast of WWII remembered, “Oh! What a Lovely War.” Foreman pitched him this project and offered him the role of Churchill’s father in the bargain. Attenborough turned down the acting gig, recognizing the responsibility of his first real “epic” and first historical biography.

The list of actors who turned down leads in the film is legion — Malcolm McDowell was offered the title role, Albert Finney as well. Attenborough and Dirk Bogarde were the first choices to play Lord Randolph, Churchill’s quixotic and syphilitic father, a role eventually taken by Robert Shaw.

But it all came together, a sprawling, “Zhivago” length epic with a star-littered cast (Oscar winner Anne Bancroft is Lady Churchill, Winston’s American mother, with John Mills, Jack Hawkins and Anthony Hopkins in support, and future stars Ian Holm, Edward Woodward, Nigel Hawthorne and Jane Seymour also on the payroll).

Yet box office success aside, “Young Winston” was always a stiff, a movie too stately, choppy and staid in its first half (pre “intermission”), a picture that picks up with more action in its later acts only to peter out by the finale.

The aim was to tell of a privileged-birth-to-more-privileged rise to immortality tale, setting up our nanny/boarding school Winston as the victim of a neglected childhood and unremarkable, distracted academic career that turned into a driven pursuit of fame, military and political glory, all to atone for the fall of his father.

Relatively unknown Simon Ward plays Churchill from his college years, through service (usually as a “correspondent” in uniform) in three conflict zones in the late 19th century. Ward’s not bad, and he also convincingly narrates as the elderly Churchill, discounting his “bravery,” admitting his need for attention and “medals medals medals” with which to launch a political career.

But that narration, almost incessant, weighs on the film and just kills its narrative momentum and any sense that the visuals and actions are “telling” the story. No, it’s just a young actor doing your standard issue Winston impersonation. Attenborough would later include such narration in “Gandhi” and “Chaplin,” but never to the degree he lets this script rely on it here.

Young Churchill relies on his father’s influence to get him into schools, sometimes taking two or three attempts to succeed, and family connections to get him an Army commission in the last epic overreaches of British imperialism of the late 1890s — the Indian frontier, Sudan and the Boer War in South Africa.

We see a young man whom other officers sniff “wants to get noticed,” and hear Churchill admit as much. His father was a second son of an aristocrat, and thus he grew up in a family on a lower tier of “rich” and “privileged.”

Taking “Young Winston” from age 7 to 27 — 1881-1901 — required three actors (Russell Lewis and Michael Audreson precede Ward) — as we’re treated to that challenging childhood, school canings, a speech impediment to overcome if he ever wants to be an orator in Parliament like his father. All of this is cast as under the disinterested disapproval of that House of Commons Tory tyro father who almost reached the very pinnacle of British government before a rapid, self-induced fall.

The most interesting material in this epic has to do with Churchill’s early mastery of self-promotion and burnishing his brand. As a correspondent, he could cover military actions and write about them from a first person perspective. As an officer, he could inject himself into that action and ensure he is “mentioned” in the dispatches. And as a child of privilege, he can get a book about his exploits into print, with a few criticisms of military leadership adding to his notoriety.

But for all that, all his hustling and medals-craving comes to little. The fortunes of war — a timely capture and prisoner-of-war imprisonment after some admittedly heroic derring do — accomplishes what all his scheming and publishing never could, giving him notoriety and a fame based on heroism that he can ride into public office.

Foreman’s script delicately dances around honorarily-titled Lord Randolph Churchill’s fatal sexually transmitted disease and the fact that Winston was born somewhat less than eight months after his parents’ marriage. He manages to squeeze in a blunt suggestion of Jeanette Jerome Spencer-Churchill’s indiscretions. A bit sexist, actually.

Hopkins makes a dark impression as the future PM and Lady Churchill-ogler David Lloyd George. Holm plays the Conservative newspaper editor who advises and declines to support Lord Randolph Churchill in a final gamble on “Tory Democracy” re-branding. Seymour plays Winston’s first love, an actress a year away from her James Bond “Live and Let Die” big break, and Attenborough’s daughter-in-law at the time this film was made.

The pre-blockbuster cinema got a tad drunk on epics in the ’50s and ’60s, trying to lure back moviegoers from their new TV-addiction with long, historical, Biblical or literary epics filmed in wider, wider and widest screen processes. But for every “Sound of Music,” “Doctor Zhivago” or “Patton,” there were plenty of “Cromwell,” “Star!” and “El Cid” overreaches.

“Young Winston” was too close to its subject, too trusting of its narrator and too serious to find the silliness of some vainglorious striver risking his neck on the battlefield to ensure future immortality. “Oh! What a Lovely War” hints at the touch Attenborough might have been hired to deliver, but didn’t.

But taken as another bit of on-the-job training from the epic actor (“The Great Escape”) turned director Attenborough, one can see this big cast, scenic vistas, sprawling humanity (and combat) period piece as one more trial run — he’d also helm “A Bridge too Far” — on the road to making the movie he devoted years to planning, the one he’d be most remembered for as a filmmaker, his long-planned life of “Gandhi.”

I dare say he could never have pulled that off without the lumbering stumbles that led up to it, “Young Winston” included.

Rating: PG, violence

Cast: Simon Ward, Anne Bancroft, Robert Shaw, Jack Hawkins, Anthony Hopkins, Ian Holm, Patrick McGee, Jane Seymour and John Mills.

Credits: Directed by Richard Attenborough, scripted by Carl Foreman, based on “My Early Life” memoir by Winston Churchill. A Columbia Pictures release on Tubi, Amazon, etc.

Running time: 2:04, 2:25 or 2:37