A Man for All Seasons (1966)
Bro dresses in layers.
Director Fred Zinnemann tells stories about heroes that stick by their ideals when the whole world is set against them. This time it’s historical figure Thomas More (Paul Scofield) who gets to give the big speeches about standing behind your beliefs:
If we lived in a state where virtue was profitable, common sense would make us saintly. But since we see that avarice, anger, pride, and stupidity commonly profit far beyond charity, modesty, justice, and thought, perhaps we must stand fast a little…even at the risk of being heroes.
“Even at the risk of being heroes.” Just awesome.
A Man for All Seasons is set against the backdrop of “the great matter”: the quest King Henry VIII (Robert Shaw) takes to annul his marriage with Catherine of Aragon. As the pope seems to think Catherine is Henry’s lawful wife, Henry’s subjects are in a bind. Most have chosen to support the king, but More is instead following his conscience.
Henry respects More’s honesty and appoints him Lord Chancellor, requesting only that More stay silent on the great matter. Meanwhile, Thomas Cromwell (Leo McKern) figures out how to get around the pope: have Parliament pass the Act of Supremacy, declaring Henry the head of the Church of England. More sees this as war against the pope and resigns his post, but because the contents of his mind are treasonous, he’s careful to not tell anyone why he’s resigning.
More believes his silence will protect him but the Crown sees silence as dissent. As such, Cromwell demands More take the Oath of Supremacy, which will make him acknowledge the king as the head of the church. More refuses the oath and is imprisoned in the Tower of London.
To have More executed, Cromwell has to prove More explicitly denied the king’s supremacy. More’s silence is not an explicit denial1 so Cromwell has to get tricky. He bribes someone close to More to say that More once said Parliament didn’t have the right to declare Henry the head of the church. That’s the final nail in More’s coffin.
Having been found guilty, More finally breaks his long silence. Why not, right? So he lets the court know that, yep, the whole time, he thought all those things you thought he thought. That act of Parliament was repugnant! And at his execution, he declares, “I die the king’s good servant, but God’s first.”
Rating: 9/10. Yes, this is the same movie as Becket, who cares, I liked Becket.
Cast and Crew
Paul Scofield’s one of just a few actors who have won both a Tony and an Oscar for playing the same role.2 More is clearly the role Scofield is most associated with, and it’s almost a Pavlov: hear “Scofield,” yelp out “More.” But one of the reasons you might not know Scofield well is that he was primarily a stage actor, renowned for his Shakespeare. He also originated the role of Salieri in Peter Shaffer’s “Amadeus,” though he didn’t make the jump to the big screen for that one. We’ll see Scofield in some upcoming supporting roles and we’ll try to add some nuance to his story then.
Cardinal Wolsey is played by Orson Welles. That’s the Orson Welles with zero Oscar wins for directing and zero Oscar wins for acting.3 The Orson Welles whose career was all downhill from his feature film debut. I guess if we’re being charitable, Welles’ Mercury Theater radio “War of the Worlds” prank was pretty funny. And he’s certainly a great spokesman for Paul Masson. So yeah, Orson Welles.
Okay, let’s be real: Orson Welles is such a huge name in film that he’d typically win the spot in our Trivia section. I’d watch Citizen Kane (1941) and The Magnificent Ambersons (1942) and Jane Eyre (1943) and The Lady from Shanghai (1947) and The Third Man (1949) and Touch of Evil (1958) and The Trial (1962) and break them all into bite-sized trivia chunks for y’all. But Henry VIII gets our Trivia section today, so Orson Welles is out of luck.4
And the rest:
Robert Shaw chews scenery as Henry VIII, much like Peter O’Toole as a different Henry in Becket. Shaw’s breakout was as the villain in the second James Bond film, From Russia with Love; his showdown on the train with Bond is iconic. We’ll discuss Shaw again, both as an actor and as a writer.
The talented Wendy Hiller and Susannah York play More’s wife and daughter, respectively, but their inclusion only gets us a third of the way to passing the Bechdel test.
John Hurt lands his first major role as the sniveling Richard Rich, whose false testimony condemns More to death. His next role will be more sympathetic.
Vanessa Redgrave is in one scene as Anne Boleyn and Vanessa’s brother Corin plays More’s son-in-law.
The film is based on a play by Robert Bolt. Bolt was also a screenwriter (he wrote Lawrence of Arabia and Doctor Zhivago) and won an Oscar for adapting “A Man for All Seasons” to the screen.
The Trivia
You know we had to do it: today, it’s the six wives (and four Thomases) of Henry VIII.
First of all, Henry wasn’t even supposed to be king. It was Henry’s older brother, Arthur, to whom the fate of the new Tudor dynasty5 was tied. It was Arthur who was raised to be king and Arthur who was married off to Catherine of Aragon, daughter of Ferdinand and Isabella, to forge an alliance with Catholic Spain. But when Arthur died in 1502, it was Henry who had to step into Arthur’s shoes…
…and into his bed, as Henry’s father wanted Henry to marry his dead brother’s widow.6 Henry and Catherine #1 were wed in 1508, the year Henry ascended to the throne. But their marriage would have an issue: Catherine wasn’t able to produce a male heir for Henry.7 Henry understood that a dynasty lives and dies by its male heirs and that not having one might lead to a resumption of the dynastic wars his father had so recently ended. As such, after twenty years of marriage, Henry decided to trade Catherine in for a newer model—and this decision, which typically would just be part of a midlife crisis, ended up being the most important thing that has ever happened.
Remember, divorce was a big no-no in the church, but there was a loophole: the pope could annul a marriage if it could be shown the marriage wasn’t valid from the start. That’s where we meet Cardinal Thomas Wolsey (1473–1530), Archbishop of York and Lord Chancellor. Wolsey was tasked with getting Henry’s marriage annulled but was stonewalled by the pope and made no progress.8 This got Wolsey charged with treason, but he died of natural causes en route to his likely execution. One Thomas down.
Chief minister Thomas Cromwell (1485–1540) succeeded where Wolsey didn’t. Cromwell’s unique insight was that if the pope wouldn’t give the king an annulment, Parliament could just name the king the head of the Church of England. That would mean Thomas Cranmer (1489–1556), Archbishop of Canterbury, would be able to annul the marriage without having to ask his boss for permission.9 Soon enough, Henry was the head of the church, his marriage was annulled, and he was married to Anne Boleyn. This was when the whole Oath of Supremacy thing happened and Thomas More (1478–1535) was imprisoned and executed.
But swapping out his wife didn’t fix Henry’s problem. Anne Boleyn had a daughter (oops) and a miscarriage (whoopsie daisy) and Henry, impatient, sought a way out of the marriage. Brilliant Cromwell was on the case, and he once again had an elegant solution: just execute her. He trumped up charges of adultery and incest and whoosh, Anne was beheaded at the Tower of London.
So on to #3: Henry married his mistress Jane Seymour (one of Anne’s ladies-in-waiting) and she bore him a son: the future Edward VI. The childbirth killed Jane, but not to worry, genius Cromwell was ready to find Henry’s next wife. Cromwell chose Anne of Cleves, but this was a fatal mistake. You see, Anne was ugly. Henry married her but ended up annulling the marriage10 and executing Cromwell. (Imagine killing your best bud because he set you up on a bad blind date!)
Two ladies to go. After the second Anne, Henry married a second Catherine, Catherine Howard. Here’s where we should talk about mistresses. You see, Henry was allowed to have mistresses, but the queen was not under any circumstances allowed to have any of whatever the male version of a mistress is. As such, when the king discovered Catherine’s ongoing relationship with courtier Thomas Culpeper11, he severed both their relationship and her head from her body. Henry then moved onto his sixth and final wife, Catherine Parr.12
You might’ve noticed that three of our Thomases (Wolsey, More, and Cromwell) died as traitors during Henry’s reign. The last, Thomas Cranmer, survived Henry, but that doesn’t mean he met a peaceful end. When Mary, a Catholic, became queen, she burned him at the stake.
Anyway, here’s a cheat sheet on the wives.
Odds and Ends
Two more Thomas More facts: he’s the patron saint of statesmen and he wrote “Utopia” (1516)…Henry VIII wrote “A Defense of the Seven Sacraments” in 1521, for which Pope Leo X named him Defender of the Faith (“Fidei Defensor”); Henry didn’t defend that faith for long…Leo McKern, who played Cromwell, was most famous for starring as the titular barrister on the British TV show “Rumpole of the Bailey”…Richard Rich became Lord Chancellor under Edward VI…Thomas Cranmer wrote the Book of Common Prayer, a liturgy for the English church.
And Fred Zinnemann’s four best films (this, High Noon, From Here to Eternity, and A Nun’s Story) stack up against any other director’s top four, fight me.
CORRECTION: In last week’s post, we asserted that Nathaniel Benchley, author of “The Off-Islanders,” was part of the Algonquin Round Table. Nope—we were thinking of his father, Robert Benchley. As always, a big thanks to Yogesh for the catch.
More states the maxim of the law is “qui tacet consentire,” silence gives consent.
We’ve seen a few of the others: José Ferrer in Cyrano de Bergerac, Yul Brynner in The King and I, Lila Kedrova in Zorba the Greek, and Rex Harrison in My Fair Lady.
Sure, he won an Oscar for writing, but 1) it was shared, and 2) some don’t even think he did any of the writing.
During this newsletter’s year-end break, we might put together a little Welles supplement as an act of contrition for slighting one of the greats.
Remember at the end of Richard III when Henry Tudor wins at the Battle of Bosworth Field, ends the Wars of the Roses, and establishes the Tudor dynasty? Well, he’s Henry VII, father of Henry VIII.
Don’t worry: Catherine said she and Arthur had never consummated their marriage. Still, allowing Henry to marry his brother’s widow required a dispensation from the pope.
Not for lack of trying: Catherine was pregnant six times. Alas, the only child to survive was Mary, and Mary was notably not male.
The king’s request put Pope Clement VII in a tricky spot. Regardless of what he thought, he was the prisoner of Holy Roman Emperor Charles V, who was Catherine of Aragon’s nephew—hence the stonewalling.
Remember Thomas Becket, another Archbishop of Canterbury? He got in trouble by telling Henry II that the king wasn’t the boss of the church. Cranmer didn’t make that mistake.
Yeah, he can do that now.
Yes, his name is also Thomas, but no, he’s not one of the important Thomases.
Catherine Parr, who had been married twice before her marriage with Henry, married again after he died. Her new husband was Thomas Seymour, brother to Henry’s third wife. She died after giving birth to the couple’s first child, outliving Henry by less than two years.
Paul Scofield gave two excellent performances opposite Burt Lancaster, in the otherwise unrelated "The Train" and "Scorpio."
I was approaching the end and was about to be like, "Whew, no factual errors, so no need for me to be a pedantic nitpicker!" But then you had to go and say that one of my all-time favorite TV shows, "Rumpole of the Bailey," is about a judge. :( To quote Rumpole's motto, "Always defend!"