The Lion in Winter

Katherine deserved her Oscar for this but not her other 3 wins.

That movie is good fun, if a bit hammy, with O'Toole, Hepburn and Hopkins making a triple-decker ham sandwich.

With the astonishingly handsome John Castle.

Why didn't he have a bigger career?

I saw this when I was very young, possibly about 10 years old. It sparked in intense interest in the Plantagenets and then all the kings and queens of England. I read everything about them that I could get my hands on. It’s a subject I’m still fascinated by to this day. Not in a tabloid sense with all their troubles but as a system and as a function of government.

I didn’t see it for about 30 years and when I finally did I realized why I had become so interested. I had a little gay boy crush on John Castle.

I know.

You know I know.

I know you know I know.

We know Henry knows.

And Henry knows we know it.

We're a knowledgeable family.

SUCH a good movie.

John Castle also appeared in 'I, Claudius' as one of Livia's many victims.

Peter O'Toole should have won the Oscar.....he and KH are such a great pair, ripping through this big, silly, hammy movie that I could watch again right this minute.

And the young and lovely Anthony Hopkins!!!!!! Not to mention the luscious Timothy Dalton!!!!!

We did a thread on this film not two weeks ago and hard as I tried, I couldn't get any other posters much interested in John Castle. Glad to see the appreciation here. He was magnificent in a BBC series that played on Masterpiece Theatre in the 1980s called LOST EMPIRES, about the dying days of British music hall, opposite young Colin Firth.

I saw this when I was very young, possibly about 10 years old. It sparked in intense interest in the Plantagenets and then all the kings and queens of England.

Me too - and I agree it was a hamfest, but in the best way. I "The Plantagenets" and was a bit disappointed Henry & Eleanor didn't get more air time, but it was interesting to read what happened with Richard, Louis & John.

"I'd hang you from the nipples, but you'd shock the children"

R8, yes both O'Toole & Hepburn were great. Hepburn tied with Barbra for the Oscar win, and O'Toole received one of his eight nominations.

John Castle is indeed a very underrated actor. r7, I remember his role in "I, Claudius" to which you alluded. Imagine having a name like Postumus? He was also very good in the Joan Hickson Miss Marple "A Murder Is Amounted."

"The Lion in Winter" is my favorite film, and one of the the most quotable:

"My god, if I was on fire no one would stop to pee on me."

"Well, little brother, let's strike flint and see."

I'd never seen a leading man I actually loved until I saw this. To me, he was astonishing. I know I was meant to be dazzled by Philip, but I was only dazzled by Henry.

A Murder Is ANNOUNCED, not Amounted, lol.

It's the very best Marple ever filmed IMHO. John Castle is astonishingly sexy playing the police inspector to Joan Hickson's Marple.

"I've spent two years in every street in hell."

"That's odd I never saw you there."

Lion was the screen debut of both Anthony Hopkins and Timothy Dalton. That casting director was on his game.

Plus my favorite dialogue in any movie:

[bold]Henry II:[/bold] The day those stout hearts band together is the day that pigs get wings.

[bold]Eleanor:[/bold] There'll be pork in the treetops come morning.

r15 What an odd occurrence. I guess my computer doesn't read Agatha Christie. You are indeed correct. Should I blame SpellCheck(?) or merely admit to being too lazy to proofread my own copy?

About 10 or so years ago I saw this at a theater in NJ that screens old films, and it was such a blast seeing this in a crowded room of people laughing and/or clapping at key moments in the film.

I don't remember, but it wouldn't have surprised me if half the audience were gay.

What's also interesting about this film is that it was the 2nd time that O'Toole played Henry II. He had played him 4 years earlier in "Becket".

You're not MINE

We're not CONNECTED

r19, funny thing, I saw the play in a theater in NJ a few years ago and it was so creaky, we left at intermission. Those words need to be spoken by true stars. The play doesn't carry itself.

Posters might be interested to know that when the play premiered on Broadway in 1966, Robert Preston played Henry, Rosemary Harris played Eleanor (I think she won a Tony) and Christopher Walken played Philip. The show was not a financial success, lasting barely 3 months.

r20 I wonder how unique that is for an actor? To play a character at 2 very different times in their life, in separate films.

Magnificent film. Great cinematography, music, and of course great performances all combine perfectly.

Peter O'Toole is so incredible. How did he not get an Oscar for this?

R23, yeah, it doesn't happen very often that an actor plays the same character in 2 different time periods in separate films.

Cate Blanchett played Elizabeth II in 2 films about a decade apart, but they were part of the same series. 'Becket' and 'The Lion in Winter' were 2 totally different films.

A little peace? Why not eternal peace -- now there's a thought.

So your Lllust is Rrrusty

Eleanor: And when you're dead, which is regrettable but necessary, what then of pale Alais and her pruny prince? You don't think Richard's going to wait for your grotesque to grow?

Henry: You wouldn't let him do that.

Eleanor: LET him? I'd PUSH him through the nursery door!

I love this movie -- the early 00s remake doesn't hold a candle to it, despite Glenn Close, Patrick Stewart, and a very-pretty young Jonathan Rhys Myers.

"We shattered the Commandments"

I always loved that line

I've always thought O'Toole was entertaining but not that great an actor. he never made me feel anything.

"Henry"

"Madam"

"Did you *ever* love me"

"...No"

"Good.... That will make this pleasanter."

Timothy- James Bond person is GAWJUSSS

"To these aged eyes this is what winning looks like"

What's most interesting to me about this film is how the stark production design, the almost barbaric costuming, the natural lighting and the photography, all create what seems to be a very realistic depiction of the early Middle Ages. Nothing is prettified; no men tights; it's not presented as a fairy tale kingdom like Camelot.

And yet, the dialogue is as contemporary as a 1960s sitcom. Was this juxtaposition of styles intentional?

Yes, R35, it was partly intentional.

This is not a normal cinematic movie about normal English people and French people (let alone a medieval English king and a medieval French queen). It’s an imitation Edward-Albee stage exercise designed to show off the dialogue mechanics of a man from Chicago called James Adolf Goldman.

And Kate (who’s excellent playing women from Connecticut) is just jarring playing French. It's just as jarring as our 21st century fashion for forcing Nigerian and Ugandan women to play English queens.

And the house they’re dwelling is as unrealistically abstract as those in that weird movie called 'Silver Chalice'.

R23 Not very common. Bette Davis did it however. She played Elizabeth I twice. Mark Hamil did it with Star Wars. Most of the characters stayed the same sequel to sequel, but look at Luke Skywalker and compare the first film and the last.

"Listen to the LION"

"I've got a decade on the Pope"

This is my mother's favourite film, which has always stuck in my mind because my mother hates 95+% of all movies/shows she sees but I could tell when she talked about this one that she really meant what she was saying. Maybe I should see it?

R23, there are of course the likes of Pacino in the Godfather saga, or indeed Blanchet as Elizabeth who appeared in sequels made by the same filmmakers. It's rarer for actors to play the same character in different stand alone productions. Probably the most famous one is Paul Newman played Eddie Felson first in Robert Rosen's The Hustler in 1961 and than, 25 years later in Scorsese's The Color of Money, winning the Oscar he should have won for the earlier film. Bette Davis plays Elizabeth I in The Private Lives of Elizabeth and Essex in 1939 and then in The Virgin Queen in 1955. Charles Laughton revisited his signature role he originated in The Private Life of Henry VIII in 1933 20 years later in Young Bess. And then there's the case of Raymond Massey how kept playing Lincoln throughout his career.

^^ Paul Newman WHO played Eddie Felson

R31 I agree with you. O'Toole had the luck to appear in some quality stuff in the 60s but I realised on re-viewing them that he is monotonous.

He rants in a monotonous way. (And we now know that he was an irredeemable Irish alcoholic, a wife-beater and all his stage appearances were disastrous).

He modelled his ranting style on the late Donald Wolfit 1902 – 1968 who was known for his shoestring Shakespeare productions that were so hammy that the mocking play 'The Dresser' was written about him.

I can give a very minor example: William Powell played the lead as Florenz Ziegfeld, Jr. in The Great Ziegfeld (MGM, 1936) and a few years later played Ziegfeld a brief fantasy scene in Heaven in The Ziegfeld Follies (MGM, 1945).

IAN HART as John Lennon in ‘The Hours and Times’ and Backbeat.

JUDI DENCH as Queen Victoria in Mrs. Brown and Victoria & Abdul.

CHARLTON HESTON as Andrew Jackson in The President's Lady and The Buccaneer

Heston as Mark Antony in Julius Caesar and Antony and Cleopatra

RON MOODY as Merlin in Unidentified Flying Oddball and A Kid in King Arthur's Court

JAMAL WOOLARD as Christopher "Biggie" Wallace in Notorious and All Eyez on Me.

JAMES GARNER as Wyatt Earp in Hour of the Gun and Sunset

IAN HOLM as Napoleon in Time Bandits and The Emperor's New Clothes

R42 Oooohhh! I looove The Dresser!! Must rewatch!

𝐑𝐢𝐜𝐡𝐚𝐫𝐝: You haven't said you loved me.

𝐏𝐡𝐢𝐥𝐢𝐩: When the time comes.

About a week ago, I was reading some thread or other here on the DL, and someone on the thread kept saying, "when the time comes." And I thought of that line in 'The Lion in Winter.'

Glenda Jackson played Elizabeth I on the miniseries [italic]Elizabeth R[/italic] and in [italic]Mary, Queen of Scots[/italic].

PS Re R42 and Peter O'Toole and Donald Wolfit

Donald Wolfit was a hammy has-been but O'Toole got him a small role playing an old general in 'Lawrence' and an old bishop in 'Becket'.

I loved 'Becket' when I saw it as a child but I was dismayed watching the restored DVD from 2003.

Both O'Toole and Burton ranted at the same pitch throughout. The DVD's interview with the film editor (Anne V Coates) revealed both of them were drunk every night. She said the director was also drunk and lazy in that he did not get the required footage to do reaction shots, establishing or linking shots for her to make montages or 'bridges'. The camera was immobile at the front of the shooting set as the director was too drunk and/or lazy to get out of his chair.

There was an off-key Broadway revival of the original play in 1999, with Stockard Channing and Laurence Fishburne. No doubt some day they'll try another one.

"Director Anthony Harvey gained the respect and consent of the film's other star, Katharine Hepburn, leading to her third Oscar and a lifelong friendship. 'Much as I absolutely worshipped her work, I sometimes thought she rather overdid it,' Harvey recalled. 'So I said, 'Kate when you’re simple, you’re devastating.' She was adorable about it'"

This film was 1968. And it must have been then that Hepburn put out the anecdote that she paid a stipend for O'Toole back in 1959.

She said he was paid to sit around while she was filming 'Suddenly, Last Summer' at Shepperton Studios west of London just in case Monty Clift had another relapse into alcoholism and DDTs.

I don't believe this anecdote.

It's an often told story that after the last scene was shot for Suddenly Last Summer, Hepburn spat in Mankiewicz's (the director's) face and told him it was for the way he had treated Clift during the filming.

r50, are you saying that Hepburn paid O'Toole's stipend or did the producers pay it? Why would she do that?

I know, R53. I'm so sceptical about this anecdote. I'm sure she just said it to get publicity for 'Lion in Winter'.

Why would she—or the film company—pay to keep O'Toole on the payroll back in 1959 because he was a virtually unknown commodity with a very long nose.

They could have found a bigger name to replace Montgomery if he collapsed into drunken uselessness.

O'Toole's version was that he was in a successful play in London, and:

"One night after the performance, he was standing in his dressing room, peeing in the sink, when he heard an unmistakable voice behind him. "Hello," said the voice. "my name in Katherine Hepburn..."

Hepburn was in London filming SUDDENLY LAST SUMMER, and she commended the performance of this young actor O'Toole to the movie's producer, Sam Spiegel. Spiegel called O'Toole and asked him to take a screen test. A silver Jaguar arrived--driven, O'Toole recalls, by a particularly surly chauffeur--to ferry him to Shepperton Studios. There, a makeup man asked him if he wanted to darken his hair--no, he did not--and a wardrobe mistress brought him a white coat. He was puzzled, then realized the set was a doctor's office. Holding an X-ray as a prop, O'Toole's screen test consisted of his own impromptu wisecrack: "Mrs. Spiegel, your son will never play the violin again." The producer was not amused. He had wanted O'Toole to stand by for a weekly fee, ready to take over Mongomery Clift's role as a doctor in the film; he apparently doubted that the oft-ailing Clift would be able to finish it. The unfriendly driver who had fetched O'Toole worked for Clift and realized a coup was in the making. But O'Toole did not stand by, and later, the chauffeur took him to meet Clift. "He was lovely," says O'Toole. "We laughed a lot.""

Hepburn was by all accounts very motherly and protective towards Clift when they made that movie, no way she'd break movie custom and pay for an understudy to stand by ready to take his job away!

Of course the producers of the film might, they might very well when dealing with someone as unstable as Clift. But I suppose O'Toole had better things to do, even then.

With this rehearsal o'Toole should have had no problem playing Henry here.

R55 I wonder if Spiegel paid for O'Toole's nose jobs.

I saw this film on PBS one Christmas when I was a kid, and it subsequently became for me a must-watch at Yuletide ever afterwards.

Let's hear it for the John Barry soundtrack!

𝐂𝐡𝐢𝐧𝐨𝐧 / 𝐄𝐥𝐞𝐚𝐧𝐨𝐫'𝐬 𝐀𝐫𝐫𝐢𝐯𝐚𝐥:

R22 I've tried several times over the years to watch this film but never made it to the end. It feels like a combination of The Little Foxes and Who's Afraid of Virginia Wolf. Henry and Eleanor are seemingly having the same basic back and forth in every scene and it grows tiresome. The performances can only help so much. I prefer Becket and O'Toole's performance in it.

How old are you, R60?

R25 this is as close to Peter came to winning an Oscar. Cliff Robertson ended up beating him for Charly as a retarded man given an experimental treatment to make him normal, only to revert back to being retarded. Playing someone with a disability always gives you a leg up at the Oscars. Katharine just barely won having tied with Barbra. But the screenplay is a masterpiece. Probably the best one ever to win.

R61 64 years young. To me Hepburn and O'Toole can't really conceal the fact that it's not a good play and critical feeling was mixed at the time. Interestingly or tellingly O'Toole didn't receive a single vote from The National Society of Film Critics for Lion in Winter. nor did its director. The group consisted of such notables as Andrew Sarris, Pauline Kael, John Simon, Penelope Gilliatt, Richard Schickel, Harold Clurman and Stanley Kauffmann. Only one member, Arthur Knight, voted for the film, Hepburn and Dalton. The following year the same group named O'Toole Best Actor for Goodbye, Mr. Chips and again in 1980 for The Stunt Man.

R63, it's difficult to respect your opinion of the film when you admit that you've never made it through it to the end. The inability to follow the film's exchanges comes across as a species of attention deficit, more of a '𝑦𝑜𝑢' problem than any particular failure of the film or its actors. I've found it richly rewarding.

I will say this - and it's the only shade I will throw at what I've always regarded as a very satisfying, entertaining film - is that there's a number of phrases and arguments/appeals which struck me as anachronistic for the 12th century. Expressions like "there's hope for every ape in Africa," and "we are the world in small," or "we can put away the knives," had - and to some extent, still have - the effect of removing me momentarily from the film's narrative to ponder the matter. And that, I freely admit, is probably more a matter of a '𝑚𝑒' problem than that of the film. It's a lot of fun if you allow it to be.

R64 One could hope it would get more interesting but it didn't for me. It seemed hollow much ado about nothing an actor's exercise and sterile. And some of the clips I've seen over the years including a couple on DL gave me the same feeling. Pauline Kael, Renata Adler (NYTimes) and John Simon pretty much deplored the film. It's a matter of taste and opinion. I happen to share theirs. It feels like a Punch and Judy show!

"The film version from Goldman's own screenplay sticks closely to the original and suffocatingly in our craw. Vaguely literate, somewhat historical yet saucily anachronistic presented as a TV domestic comedy, dilutedly Freudian and Shavian and middle class. The basic device is the epigram." John Simon

Watching a film or play can be like eating a steak. If after a few bites you don't like, it why keep eating it? I prefer1968s The Anniversary starring Bette Davis. a modern day The Little Foxes. Campy but less heavy and pretentious than The Lion in Winter.

[quote] 'there's hope for every ape in Africa," and "we are the world in small,

That kind of annoying dialogue marks this film as being by James Adolf Goldman of 20th century Chicago.

The story is set in 12th century Chinon on the Loire in the west of France.

[quote] Seven years ago, in Pocketful of Miracles, when Bette Davis became lovable and said "God bless" to Glenn Ford with heartfelt emotion in her voice, I muttered an obscenity as I slumped down in my seat. I slumped down again during Guess Who's Coming to Dinner, because Katharine Hepburn had become sweet and lovable, too. The two great heroines of American talkies, the two who dared to play smart women (who had to), the two most specifically modern of women stars--the tough, embattled Davis and the headstrong, noble Hepburn--have both gone soft on us, have become everything we admired them for not being. They had been independent enough to fight the studios, but they have given in to themselves. The public has got them at last as it always wanted them. They have become old dears--a little crotchety, maybe, but that only makes them more harmlessly lovable. And though, of course, we can't help prizing them still--because what they once meant to us is too important a part of out lives to be relinquished--there's a feeling of dismay, and even of betrayal, when we watch them now. They make us fearful that they will humiliate us by turning piteous, and they mustn't; we've got to have a few people who know how to age gracefully in public, who don't go flabby with the joy of being loved every time there's a fan or a reporter around.

[quote] There were occasions in the past when Hepburn had poor roles and was tremulous and affected--almost a caricature of quivering sensitivity. But at her best--in the archetypal Hepburn role as the tomboy Linda in Holiday, in 1938--her wit and nonconformity made ordinary heroines seem mushy, and her angular beauty made the round-faced ingénues look piggy and stupid. She was hard where they were soft--in both head and body. (As Spencer Tracy said, in the Brooklyn accent he used in Pat and Mike, "There's not much meat on her, but what's there is cherce.") Other actresses could be weak and helpless, but Davis and Hepburn had too much vitality. Unlike Davis, Hepburn was limited to mandarin roles, although some of her finest performances were as poor girls who were mandarins by nature, as in Little Women and Alice Adams, rather than by birth or wealth, as in Bringing Up Baby and in the movie that the public liked her best in, The Philadelphia Story (even if her dedicated admirers, including me, tended to be less wild about it). Hepburn has always been inconceivable as a coarse-minded character; her bones are too fine, her diction is too crisp, she wears clothes too elegantly. And she has always been too individualistic, too singular, for common emotions. Other actresses who played career girls, like Crawford, could cop out in their roles by getting pregnant, or just by turning emotional--all womanly and ghastly. Hepburn was too hard for that, and so one could go to see her knowing that she wouldn't deteriorate into a conventional heroine; that didn't suit her style. As Rosemary Harris played the role on Broadway, Eleanor of Aquitaine was hard and funny--a tough cat who enjoyed scratching and fighting--and it might have been a good role for the brittle high priestess of modernism if she had still held her own. But Hepburn plays Eleanor as a gallant great lady. She's about as tough as Helen Hayes.

[quote] When an actress has been a star for a long time, we know too much about her; for years we have been hearing about her romances or heartbreaks, or whatever the case may be, and all this carries over into her presence on the screen. And if she uses this in a role, she's sunk. When actresses begin to use our knowledge about them and of how young and beautiful they used to be--when they offer themselves up as ruins of their former selves--they may get praise and awards (and they generally do), but it's not really for their acting, it's for capitulating and giving the public what it wants: a chance to see how the mighty have fallen. Only a few years ago, in Long Day's Journey Into Night, the crowning achievement of her career, Katharine Hepburn kept her emotions within the role, and she was truly great--ravaged and magnificent. But in Guess who's Coming to Dinner and much more in The Lion in Winter she draws upon our feelings for her, not for the character she's playing. When Hepburn, the most regal of them all, contemplates her blotches and wrinkles with tears in her anxious eyes, it's self-exploitation, and it's horrible.

R64 Here's something regarding the film film's exchanges you mentioned it's from Kael's review:

Imitation wit and imitation poetry...Goldman's dialog can't bear the weight of the film's aspirations to grandeur...it was brought to the screen as if it were poetic drama of a very high order, and the point of view is too limited and anachronistic to justify all this howling and sobbing and carrying on.

brandonjoseph/R69, you need not go to such effort. I enjoy the film, and have done so for years, and no amount of fault-finding from highbrow critics is capable of persuading me that I am wrong to do so. You have your opinion, and I have mine. Let's agree to disagree.

R70 Just letting you know it's not a me or you problem Others feel the same as I do and you could find support for your POV. Roger Ebert gave it 4 stars! By the way, 66-68 were not posted by me, and I'm not trying to persuade you but just indicate that some critics who saw the entire film felt the way I did based on the 40 minutes I watched. And I'm curious why you asked about my age?

William Goldman was a much better writer than James.

[quote]And I'm curious why you asked about my age?

I was seeking a glib explanation for why you'd lack the stamina to even sit through it, trying to find out if you were a millennial. ;)

The criticisms you've posted about the film are pretty much true. But I still enjoy it.

For instance in R68, Kael's observation about Hepburn bringing her own brand of cachet to the film is true, but I don't happen to object to it. A lot of actors do this for various roles, leaving a lasting impression that they and only they could play it. One receives such films at two levels, appreciating both the character and the actor who portrays them (for example, John Gielgud's character Hobson in the 1981 film 𝐴𝑟𝑡ℎ𝑢𝑟). I don't particularly agree with Kael that one ought to cry foul at beloved performers and downgrade the estimation of films in which they appear. I don't regard it as cheating or being manipulated, but more a case of brilliant or propitious casting. But that's just me.

Interesting reading both sides of the argument about this film. Ultimately, it's just there to enjoy and not analyze too deeply.

R73 I saw 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968) in a theater with my friend who was seeing it for the second time. Needless to say after an hour I was disinterested would have left if not for my friend and couldn't understand what the big deal about the film aside from the technological advances for 1968. And my friend went back a third time! From the same year I've watched Rosemary's Baby, Pretty Poison, Night of the Living Dead and Planet of the Apes more than once and still like them. And I've contentedly sat through films as long or longer films than 2001 and The Lion in Winter: Lawrence of Arabia, Gone with the Wind, La Dolce Vita, Nashville, the Bridge on the River Kwai, The Irishman.

People and their adjectives.

Why was his brilliant performance "astonishing"? It's not like his skills were a surprise to anyone. And he DID crib Robert Preston's performance in the play before adapting it to his own tics and habits.

Well, I've never particularly prostrated myself at the altar of Kubrick. It took decades for me to accord 2001: 𝐴 𝑆𝑝𝑎𝑐𝑒 𝑂𝑑𝑦𝑠𝑠𝑒𝑦 a modicum of respect beyond, as you say, the technical advances in film making that it represents. I have, however, encountered people who worship the entire Kubrick oeuvre, and characterize their first viewing of 2001 as a religious experience. While I don't hate 2001, I don't share that sentiment.

Has 2001: 𝐴 𝑆𝑝𝑎𝑐𝑒 𝑂𝑑𝑦𝑠𝑠𝑒𝑦 improved at all in your point of view? Do you feel closer to understanding it?

R77 I've read and heard various interpretations of the film and no two are alike. Understanding may not be key to the enjoyment of the film. The Ultimate Trip was the tagline and some would say you need to have seen it while stoned or tripping. And I've read critics who've called it brilliant while admitting they don't fully understand it's ultimate meaning. I like the Dawn of Man sequence and HAL but the film has a glacial pace and some years ago I watched part of it on HBO and it did not draw me in or compel me to continuing watching.

[quote] tics and habits.

Yes, R77. O'Toole was pretty for a few years in the early 60s but his face started wizening in the late 60s.

After that, he was a drunkard, life-abuser and (according to his biographer) indulged in "every vocal mannerism, nervous tic, and scene stealing talent",

Did they ever film the production with Lawrence Fishburne and Stockard Channing?

No, r80. It got dreadful reviews and was only a limited run at The Roundabout Theatre.

[quote] Lawrence Fishburne and Stockard Channing

Did those two fornicate?

What did their offspring look like?

Since you asked, r82, Richard was played by a black actor, Geoffrey and John by white actors. Not well-known or I'd name them. Philip was played by Roger Haworth, who I believe was a soap opera hunk for awhile. You can google for cast list at IBDB.

I'm sure one of you DL History maniacs will correct me.

It seems O'Toole spawned 3 potential heirs from his first wife.

Then O'Toole fornicated with Old Connecticut Kate and spawned one more potential heir.

And all the two hours of caterwauling and ranting was over just which of this motley collection of four potential heirs would be chosen.

I saw 2001 when I was a boy and it came to the suburbs. It was a packed Saturday matinee of mostly boys expecting a great sci fi adventure movie and it was anything but. It was the most boring and ridiculous thing we had seen and we were all hooting and hollering at the screen.

I went to see it many years later at the great old Rivoli movie theater on Broadway which had a large curved screen. It was one of two religious experiences I've had in my life where I was so stunned I was speechless. The other was an opera performance at the Met.

R84, Richard and John were the legitimate children of Eleanor and Henry, both became king after Henry (Richard died without legitimate children), and Eleanor was Henry's first and only wife. I'm less sure about Geoffrey, who I think was a legitimate son who died young in real life, in the movie I think he's presented as one of Henry's bastards by other women, and not able to inherit the throne even though he's the only smart one.

It's totally not clear why an extremely intelligent king like Henry II favored the worthless Prince John in real life, but apparently he did. The play does not clarify the issue. And if you don't know, the Prince John was the ruler during the Robin Hood legends and appears in most film versions. He was a terrible king, and was so widely despised that his nobles made him sign the Magna Carta and create the world's first constitutional monarchy, or be forcibly deposed.

"He came down from the north to Paris with a mind like Aristotle and a form like mortal sin."

"What shall we hang - the holy, or each other?"

Isn't it the 'holly?'

Roger Ebert gave the film 4 stars out of 4, writing, "One of the joys which movies provide too rarely is the opportunity to see a literate script handled intelligently. 'The Lion in Winter' triumphs at that difficult task; not since 'A Man for All Seasons' have we had such capable handling of a story about ideas. But 'The Lion in Winter' also functions at an emotional level, and is the better film, I think."

Shakespeare wrote a play about King John called....King John. Eleanor of Aquitaine is a character in it.

“Of course he has a knife, he always has a knife, we all have knives! It's 1183 and we're barbarians!”

[facepalm]

That's one of those anachronistic lines, R91. ;)

How is it anachronistic? Didn't they have knives? Were dates different? What?

Really, R93? The idea that having knives is bad reflects a modern sensibility regarding violence. People of the 12th century wouldn't have had anything like it.

Then there's the way they throw around the year designation, as if Dionysius Exiguus' year system and their own place on the timeline would have been common in peoples' awareness.

[quote]"we'll see the Second Coming first. The needlework alone will last for years."

The phrase 'Second Coming' is anachronistic for the 12th century. The whole film is littered with instances like this in the dialogue.

Anachronistic isn’t necessarily pejorative.

The jarring anachronisms, like them or not, are part of the piece's "style" and are in the original play as well. In the film the anachronistic and stagey one-liners seem even more out of place because the production and costume design appears to be so realistic to medieval times.

"Barbarian" is a very old word. Comes from Greek "barbaros" from stranger, foreigner. No reason that 12th c. people wouldn't use this word as they likely thought of culturally different people this way. Knives as basic weaponry also not that unrealistic for tribal "barbarian" types many of whom the Crusades were meant to convert!

Was Barbara Stanwyck the first famous Barbara?

It wasn't her real name, which was Ruby I guessed she changed it in the late 1920s when the former Broadway chorus girl moved out to Hollywood. I wonder how she chose the name Barbara? Who was she thinking of as inspiration?

Saint Barbara

r99 I thought Barbara had been busted to civilian, because her history could not be authenticated. Same with St. Christopher.

The Church should never interfere with perfectly good legends r100

It only confuses everyone.

Apparently Joan suddenly became a wildly popular name in the 1920s when Joan of Arc was sainted,

I visited the Cathedral of St. Barbara in Kutna Hora, Czechia so she has not been busted back to pre-saint civilian status.

[quote]"Barbarian" is a very old word. Comes from Greek "barbaros" from stranger, foreigner. No reason that 12th c. people wouldn't use this word as they likely thought of culturally different people this way. Knives as basic weaponry also not that unrealistic for tribal "barbarian" types many of whom the Crusades were meant to convert!

R97, knives were "basic weaponry" for 𝑒𝑣𝑒𝑟𝑦𝑜𝑛𝑒 in the 12th century. The notion that being a knife-wielder is 'barbaric' is reflective of a 20th century perspective (𝑤𝑒 have far more sophisticated weapons, and 𝑤𝑒 have developed the viewpoint that violence, especially with older weapons like knives, is primitive). Understandable, since it's a 20th century play. But it's not the kind of idea someone from the 12th century would express.

And how did the Crusaders convert 'barbarians,' R97? At the point of a sword. (Really, they weren't interested in converting them so much as killing them. And the proper word for such would not be 'barbarian,' but 'heretic' or 'Jew.') No one from the 12th century Christian side of things would be putting on airs, characterizing the use of knives as 'barbaric.'

Dataloungers overrate dramas that are just opportunities for lots of entertainingly bitchy one-liners, like this and Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?

Both The Lion in Winter and Virginia Woolf become tiresome because the slash/counter slash grows tedious and repetitive and I care no more about the actual sons in the former than I do the unseen son in the latter.

Try 2 other films from '68 The Killing of Sister George and The Anniversary which are also adapted from the stage and are less laborious than Lion and Woolf.

I'm less sure about Geoffrey, who I think was a legitimate son who died young in real life, in the movie I think he's presented as one of Henry's bastards by other women, and not able to inherit the throne even though he's the only smart one.

It's totally not clear why an extremely intelligent king like Henry II favored the worthless Prince John in real life, but apparently he did. The play does not clarify the issue. And if you don't know, the Prince John was the ruler during the Robin Hood legends and appears in most film versions. He was a terrible king, and was so widely despised that his nobles made him sign the Magna Carta and create the world's first constitutional monarchy, or be forcibly deposed.

I read "The Plantagenets" a couple of years ago and if I recall: - Geoffrey was a legitimate son (the author describes King Louis falling over his coffin & weeping) and his son, as a legitimate heir to the throne, was killed by John, giving the public yet another reason to hate John

- King Henry's first son (the one in the vault) started a rebellion against Henry, leading to his death and Henry encouraged rivalry among his sons. I'm guessing the KH/John connection is just a plot device. If I recall, Eleanor also played counselor to both Richard & John to protect them against their worst instincts

Was there any basis at all for the homosexual relationship of Richard and Prince Philip? Were they even platonic friends? I know Richard never married but what about Philip? What is known about him?

The basis, R108:

TCM will be showing The Lion in Winter this weekend I think.

^Thanks for the warning!

St. Barbara Macho is revered throughout Latin America.

Everyone carried a knife in 12th century England, even women and children had a basic "eating knife". It was carried at the belt or girdle, and was used for cutting meat and bread or prying things open or defending themselves or whatever. Forks didn't exist yet, and utensils were expensive and handmade by blacksmiths, so ordinary people at least carried their own knives because they were handy, and flatware wasn't laid on.

I don't know if royalty carried their own eating knives everywhere like regular schmoes did.

[quote]Forks didn't exist yet

So the scene in 𝐁𝐞𝐜𝐤𝐞𝐭 (1964), where O'Toole's Henry II is depicted as introducing forks to his court (subsequent to Thomas Becket having introduced forks to him) some years before the events of 𝐓𝐡𝐞 𝐋𝐢𝐨𝐧 𝐢𝐧 𝐖𝐢𝐧𝐭𝐞𝐫 is inaccurate?

Becket, upon examining the knife of the young man who'd just tried to kill him: "It stinks of onion, like every proper little Saxon's knife."

Becket is by far the superior film of the two O’toole movies.

And Lion in winter you either take it or leave it.

Idk, I probably should have watched Lion in winter first then my opinion might be different. But as it was I I watched Becket before hand and then the latter. Becket was the one that stood out the most. In fact, I was expecting Peter to resume his role like Becket although he still played Henry the 2nd, it just wasn’t the same calibre to me. Just my take on it is all.