A Man For All Seasons (1966)

From my understanding, it is as good as Becket, The Lion in Winter, and Cromwell

And Mary. Queen of Scots

You may find this thread of interest.

I thought it was pretty dull, op. Nowhere near as compelling as The Lion in Winter; I would agree that it's comparable to Cromwell, however.

R3 It didn't appear in the search and the thread is blurred out.

R4 Why is that?

I had such issues about the connonization of Thomas More and all the "revisions" to his history, I couldn't watch this Catholic version of his story. Thoomas More was a Relgious conservative, Catholic and even was guilty of burning "heretics." He had his whole family praying and reading scriptures and talking shit about God and Grace and Sin it was nauseating. The he took a stand against the king, and he was killed. He deserved to be killed.He betrayed his office. He served the King. He was arrogant. Pompous. A POS.

I found Cromwell a fascinating figure in the storie of Henry the VIII. I watched Wolf Hall and Mark Rylance was wonderful. I don't recall if it wasThe Tudors or Wolf Hall but at least one of them showed the treachery and self righteousness of More.

R7 In this or the movie Cromwell?

I agree with R4.

Orson Welles is the best thing about the movie, but he unfortunately doesn't have a lot of screen time.

I find more than a few Zinneman's films to be boring, although I know I'm in the minority of people who feel that way.

I love this movie and story. It's one of my favorites. I hated The Lion in Winter due to the hammy acting.

This is a stage play meant to be seen on stage .

Zinnemann loves "worthy" ponderous films and this is it.

R10 Hammy acting?

I never thought Peter O'Toole, Katharine Hepburn, Anthony Hopkins, Nigel Terry, John Castle, Nigel Stock, and Timothy Dalton were classifies as "hammy acting."

[quote] I have been wanting to watch this film for a while. Is it worth it?

No it isn't.

OP, we know you love to cut-and-paste long lists from IMDB but why have you listed 'Thomas Heathcote' and 'Jack Gwillim'?

You have no idea who they are.

SCTV disagrees with you R12

Yes, R14 is right. PeterO'Toole's ranting is insupportable.

Look at 'Becket' again and you will notice that both the stars AND the director were either drunk AND /OR hung over.

R15 I think Becket is one of the best acting films ever.

Peter O'Toole, Richard Burton, John Gielgud, and Donald Wolfit were damn fine actors.

I know you like lists, R16, but you're not so good on subtlety.

Ranting ≠ Acting.

Wolfit = a joke.

OK if you can stand Paul Scofield's hammy, pious acting.

[quote] one of the best acting films ever.

Why haven't you listed Martita Hunt and Pamela Brown?

This is a master class in film acting...

I always get Thomas Becket and Thomas More mixed up. (Are all Englishmen named Thomas?) Those religious guys who got all principled and stuff with ruthless kings and got themselves killed in the process.

Becket’s the one killed by the pointy helmeted guys in chainmail I think, and More had his head chopped off by a guy in a doublet with slashed sleeves. The end.

Zinnemann is tone-deaf when it comes to casting.

'The Day of the Jackal' was full of Brits pretending to be French.

This Tudor drama has a fat American pretending to be an English cardinal.

And Thomas More is unhappily married to a woman who's a full decade older than him.

Zinnemann has made some wonderful films though this one can be a bore. And his one off musical like Wyler's is pretty good. Unlike Huston's or Fleischer's.

You know who had a very unique oeuvre? Frank Perry

Unique! No very!

I absolutely love this movie. One of the few I actually bought on Amazon, along with the Lion in Winter. I can rewatch both over and over.

The play is better

[quote] very unique oeuvre

R24 Something is either unique or NOT unique. It can't be moderated.

Just like 'iconic'; it is OR it isn't.

THANK YOU R10!

“The Lion in Winter” is preposterously miscast in its two leads, both of whom were notorious hams unless properly directed and whose age difference was glaring.

The movie’s dialog is artificial and the whole thing is tiresomely stage-bound - talk, talk, talk that worked on Broadway but not as a film.

(Can you tell I hate it?)

R21, but see the premise was the same. Henry the 8th and Henry the Second were viewed as evil for challenging the Catholic Church and both guys acted on the Pope's behalf, got executed, and then became saints. Personally I enjoyed Becket and Lion in Winter far more than Man for All Seasons. I found More's self righteous hypocrisy odious. As I said earlier, if you watch Wolf Hall or The Tudors you get a better sense of More. I think Wold Hall is the one I preferred.

In the case of Becket and Henry II, they were close. but once Becket became Archbishop he "found his honor." What was at issue was the separation of church and state. The Pope said if a priest broke the law, the Church would "handle it." The King said no, if he breaks my laws he gets arrested and I handle it. Sound f amiliar? It was that very philosophy that allowed the church hierarchy to "handle" the sexual abuse of children by priests by hiding it and coercing the victims into silence. The Catholic Church back then was very corrupt.

Now fast forward to Henry the VIII. More was a very extreme, conservative Catholic who was known for his punitive measures against "heretics." When the issue became one of annulling the King's marriage to Catherine of Aragon More refused to support him. FIne. But then More, while still in his employ, intrigued against the King with Catherine, and her nephew who was Holy Roman emperor. She was petitioning the Pope to block Henry.

The Pope and Henry VIII were at odds because the CatholicChurch owned estates, monasteries, and Abbeys, vineyards, and all kinds of valuable holdings and paid no taxes. Henry began seizing these holdings when he had an excuse. So the Pope attempted to discipline Henry by excommunicating him which was humiliating and public, and had huge ramifications for Henry's relationships with other European Monarchs. Trade, etc. Henry wanted to start his own Church to counter balance the Pope. More was on the wrong side, yet he wanted to continue to hold a place at court. It all came to a head, and More was arrested. The Pope made him a saint after he was executed.

[quote] More was a very extreme, conservative Catholic

I think if you do some googling you will find that Robert Bolt used this play as an intellectual exercise.

His exercise was to find a principled but unsympathetic man with whom he had no intellectual compatibility and 'sell' him as a sympathetic character to a modern bourgeois, middle class, self-satisfied, theatre-going audience.

[quote] But then More, while still in his employ, intrigued against the King with Catherine, and her nephew who was Holy Roman emperor.

r30, I have an MA in Henrician politics - I studied nothing else for two years - and I have never read this about Thomas More. Do you have a source?

Zinnemann messed up Robert Bolt's original conceit.

The original play had a 'Brechtian character' called 'The Common Man' who spoke to the audience and set up the intellectual argument for the audience and made commentary on the argument as they churned through to a conclusion.

Zinnemann allowed Scofield a chance to shine in the centre but messed up almost everything else.

Paul Scofield did what he was asked to do. But he was quite cold in this role and most of his screen roles.

Some of you're think he was the standard British sentimental luvvie or alcoholic. But he was quite the opposite.

The idea that More tortured protestants in his home is a canard that comes from Foxes Book of Martyrs, a tome that is about as anti-Catholic and biased as anything ever written. No one in the Academic world takes it seriously, except for fundamentalists. Amazing how Hilary Mantel used a book written by a religious fanatic to make her attacks on St. Thomas More more juicy.

Good.article.

Also worth reading.

Moore burned people alive. He was a sadist - just like Mother Teresa, another ghastly Catholic saint. It's a pity no one was able to hack off Teresa's head.

Getting Moore beheaded was a triumph of Anne Boleyn, though it was short lived, wasn't it.

[quote] a triumph of Anne Boleyn

i.e. Vanessa Redgrave

THe kinds of things "in fashion " in those days like self abnegation, scourging, and burning people at the stake for arbitrary declarations of "heresy" were extreme in any age. It is hard to "demonize" or "malign" someone who embraced those actions with such enthusiasm. The fact is More wanted it both ways. He wanted to be a counselor to the King, even after he physically removed himself from court, and still work against the King on behalf of the Pope. He paid the price.

No love for the great Wendy Hiller in SEASONS? She was magnificent.

Geez, Hilary Mantel gets bludgeoned on DL before her body is even cold. (I realize those critiques were written before her death, but still . . .)

Besides, she's allowed to create her own take on Thomas More. Poetic license.

The Lion in Winter might get a bit hammy but it does have one of the most glorious John Barry scores he ever wrote and deserves its Orignal Score Oscar

Original *

[quote]and whose age difference was glaring.

Eleanor was 11 years older than Henry, r29, take it up with them.

I do r41, and I love this scene.

Thank the gods someone lopped the head of this smug, sanctimonious killer creep. Too bad he didn't get hung, drawn and quartered- he deserved it and the Catholics would be creaming over their "saint" 's noble death.

The sad thing is it was in no way unusual for Thomas More to believe in executing "heretics" often horribly. That was pretty much a universal belief, and not just from Kings and Popes and bishops. When the good and godly people of Paris got a chance to slaughter a bunch of Protestants in the St. Bartholomew's Day Massacre, they did so eagerly and brutally. From a modern perspective, 16th and 17th Century Europe was a time when pretty much everybody was a homicidal religious maniac.

[quote] No love for the great Wendy Hiller

Why all these bandages? Was this a requirement for Catholic wives?

Oh, look at this picture.

Anne Boleyn is NOT Nigerian,

A diseased orange?

Or a freaky pin cushion?

Well, r49, there was an unfortunate tendency for heads to fall off during that time period.

R38, go fuck yourself. We all know Protestants were saints who never killed anyone. Fuck Cromwell and Luther. Two monsters dripping with the blood of thousands.

I hate Katherine Hepburn. I have never been able to finish a movie she stars in.

R53 You sound like an Irishman.

Hurt, age 26

More was a very unhappy man (and this is an unhappy movie, with no lessons for us today).

And to think Hiller was the ideal Eliza Doolittle decades earlier.

"Why Richard, it profits a man nothing to give his soul for the whole world... but for Wales?"

I watch this film at least once a year, it’s still one of my favorites. Brilliant, nuanced performance by Scofield (who beat Richard Burton in Virginia Woolf this year for the lead actor Oscar) whose More pierces through the entire film with his soulfulness, intellect, disdain for corruption, with that rich baritone of a voice and quiet authority. Entire cast and script plus direction is exceptional. One of the top five best pic winners.

[quotes] it’s still one of my favorites

What are your other favorites, R60?

Is More a moral paragon?

I wonder how many people who hate all the intolerance and violence of it all are just dying to cut off the heads of their political enemies. I don't think people have actually changed all that much in 500 years, not really.

R62 what made More ugly is that along with all the excesses of piety, he betrayed his King...even as he continued in his employ. He was all along giving aid and support to Katherine of Aragon . So he was a duplicitous POS as well as a hypocrite and a sadistic "burn them all" kind of guy.

[quote] Katherine of Aragon

Was she in this movie? I don't remember seeing her.

Ahh yes, all of the Anti-Catholic screeds here… All original and all first rate… It’s a thread about a movie, so maybe create a new thread about your issues with Catholicism…

A Man For All Seasons #3 favorite…Gettysburg #2 favorite…Beckett #1 favorite. This is based on cinematography, script and actors.

So he was loyal to his Queen actually r63. Henry VIII was being a self centered twat and trying to upend everything for his benefit, is what it all really comes down to. And as I was trying to explain, he was particularly sadistic. He agreed with a sadistic age that torturing people to death because they disagreed with you about the Bible was pretty much what everybody agreed should happen. That is the real craziness here.

oh fucking christ, meant "he wasn't particularly sadistic." He was the norm, which is actually horrifying in itself.

She was played by Jane Seymour, r64.

I remember Beckett being kind of boring overall. Maybe I should try that one again.

It's Becket.

fine, but it seemed like a boring movie. Both Man for All Seasons and Lion in Winter were just more fun overall. Especially Lion in Winter. People complain about the hamminess as if that weren't a huge part of the fun.

People back then had all sorts of reserves in strength we today cannot begin to imagine.

Thomas Moore's daughter not only witnessed her adoptive father's judicial murder, but assisted in burying the corpse.

Margaret Moore later rescued her father's severed head from a pike on London Bridge after it had been there for about a month. Secreted beneath her cloak the good lady ensured her father's head was given a proper burial.

Sorry, Thomas Moore's adopted daughter was named Margaret Roper.

It's Thomas MORE not Moore. It's Thomas Becket, Archbishop of Canterbury, not Beckett, as in Samuel Beckett, the playwright. You may continue...

"Thomas More was beheaded in 1535 for his refusal to accept the Acts of Supremacy and the Act of Succession (1534) of Henry VIII of England and swear allegiance to Henry as head of the English Church. Afterwards, More's head was displayed on a pike at London Bridge for a month. Roper bribed the man whose business it was to throw the head into the river to give it to her instead. She preserved it by pickling it in spices until her own death at the age of 39 in 1544. After her death, William Roper took charge of the head, and it is buried with him.[3][13]"

Sounds gruesome.

True, r72, but it was mainly that people were used to death and misery and violence, up close and personal. It just wasn't nearly the shock it would be to find a severed head in your driveway these days. Today, it would be so bizarre and horrifying and terrifying that anybody would cut off a head (although of course, Dahmer is our very near contemporary). But then, it was what happened, and actually that was a mercy. The horrors of hanging and drawing and quartering were much worse, really.

And the worst of course was burning alive. Damn, that is some crazy shit. Hey, somebody doesn't agree about Jesus. Let's burn them alive. Damn.

R77, it was a religious matter for More, of course, but it was als a much larger issue. Because clearly More regarded the Church as the absolute Supreme Authority on earth, and felt his King was subject to the Pope. But back then Popes had access to armies and waged wars, and sanctioned political assasinations. They were not "Holy Men." And they were corrupt. Anyone who has ever read about the way offices were purchased including the papacy, and the warring families like the Borgias, De Medicis, d'Estes, and others vying to hold the office of Pope, can see hoow the stench of corruption led to the Reformation. Put simply, Henry was waging a conflict with the Pope and Thomas More was on the wrong side of it, and his professions of the supremacy of the Faith conferred Sainthood on him and his death was regarded as martyrdom instead of Treason.

The reason More got involved as an ally to Katherine is because her nephew was Holy Roman Emperor, and More and Katherine believed he would actively intervene. He did not.