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Our Columnists Reflect on Oscar's Best Films |
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Seasons" |
 PAUL SCOFIELD in his Oscar-winning performance as SirThomas More. |
Henry VIII vs. Thomas More equals drama
of TheColumnists.com
When Hollywood offers us history like that in "A Man for All Seasons," it’s always a gamble. Would it make money at the box office or become a great flop? Being considered great art, historically correct, or an Academy Award contender was something nice to consider, but not the principal concern of Highland Films when it decided to produce the film in England. The budget for this 120-minute feature film was $2-million, which was serious money even for l966.
Getting big crowds into movie theaters was how the great dream factory of the world got built in the first place. In the Golden Era of the l930s, 40s, and 50s, the major studios--like MGM, 20th Century Fox, and Paramount–employed scores of people as “readers” to find good subject matter to attract audiences. They read everything from dime novels to great works of literature in search of good stories.
Whether an idea for a movie was found in newspapers, magazines, or books, it didn’t matter as long it could be turned into a moneymaking film. Success or failure depended on box office returns. History had to promise to be good entertainment before it could be chosen.
In this instance the producers of "A Man for All Seasons" believed they’d found it in the play of the same name written by Robert Bolt, who wrote it for the stage and then adapted it for the screen. But first he had to go into the history books and try to piece together what actually happened more than 400 years earlier.
History has been put on film only recently. When the Lumiere brothers first showed workers leaving a French factory in 1895 in what today we would call a newsreel, that gave us a satisfying reality because it pictured life as it really was. But when D.W. Griffith turned a novel called "The Klansman" into a film called "The Birth of a Nation" in l915, this corruption of history was racist propaganda and ultimately was condemned. Since then, Hollywood’s attempts at putting history on screen has annoyed the experts more often than satisfying them.
Consequently "A Man for All Seasons" had to deal with events of the past in an entertaining but truthful way with what became an historic dispute between Catholics and Protestants in 16th century England. The matter came to a head when King Henry VIII sought a divorce because his wife seemed unable to give him a male heir.
When The Pope refused to grant a divorce, the king broke with Rome and declared himself the head of the Church of England, which, according to the king, gave him the authority to marry Anne Boleyn, giving him also a new chance for a royal dynasty. However, when the new queen produced a girl instead of a boy, the king’s hopes were dashed and Anne was beheaded. Neither could have suspected their daughter would become England’s greatest monarch, Queen Elizabeth I.
After Henry’s break with Rome in 1534, everyone had to approve of the king’s move to remain in his good graces. As a lawyer, political philosopher, and faithful Catholic, this placed Sir Thomas More in a dangerous situation and he resigned his position as the king’s Chief Counselor in an effort to avoid having to express his opinion on the matter, especially when the king announced his plan to marry Anne Boleyn.
When finally pressed to do so, Sir Thomas More refused to take an oath swearing loyalty to the king, was thrown into the tower, placed on trial, and by remaining silent to the end, he was beheaded. Since he could easily have lived by taking the oath, why did he stubbornly refuse to do so? That’s what "A Man for All Seasons" achieves in telling, which is done so effectively that the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences honored the film with six Academy Awards, including that of Best Picture which put it on the road toward becoming a true film classic.
When the Oscars were handed out by the Academy, here’s what happened: Paul Scofield, the man who played Sir Thomas More on the stage, again took the part on screen and walked away with the Best Actor Oscar. Fred Zinnemann, well known for directing great movies like "From Here to Eternity" and "High Noon," took the Oscar as Best Director.
Robert Bolt walked off with an Oscar for the Best Adapted Screenplay; Robert Shaw, who played King Henry VIII, was nominated in the Supporting Actor category and Wendy Hiller, who played More's wife, earned a supporting actress nomination. Oscars also were given for the picture’s cinematography and costume design.
Whenever a film comes along as beautiful and Shakespearean as this one, where its characters seem so real and English archicture and countryside so appealing, I’m tempted to find out as much about these times and places as I can. So I began digging into history books at the library and came to the conclusion this film stuck to the truth as best it could. I came to appreciate "A Man for All Seasons" not only for its historical accuracy but also for its riveting true-to-life plot.
Checking my opinion with the experts, I turned, for example, to historian Robert Marius who was asked to review the film as a contributor to "Past Imperfect: History According to the Movies" (1995). Although he found some errors and distortions in the film, they were, in his opinion, “harmless concessions to theatricality.” The few “plausible inferences he could find came from the Life of More written by More’s son-in-law William Roper two decades after the lord chancellor was executed.”
It’s a wonderful thing when anyone attempts to show us what life is all about, whether today or in the past. According to critic John Podhoretz, writing in The Weekly Standard, the problem is that moviegoers are seldom “offered character-driven dramas about the kinds of difficulties and problems people face in the real world.” But whenever they do come along, we should note and appreciate them.
That movies need to be entertaining must also be remembered. The case for enjoyment is argued by Joseph Epstein, who writes in The Washington Post, “Why would anyone go the movies expecting to find, of all things, the truth?”
What moviegoers want, he argues, is something that is effortless to attend to. Movies should be interesting, clever, and compelling. They can be frightening, ridiculous, or even shocking, but above all they must avoid being boring. As long as a movie holds an audience’s attention, truth doesn’t seem to matter.
Movies that really matter make you want to learn more. They inspire you to find out more in books and archives and talking with family, friends, and neighbors. When they make you do that, you’ve stumbled upon the very best from the creative world of cinema and you should consider yourself lucky it gave you a new kind of human understanding. That’s what "A Man for All Seasons" did for me.
OTHER 1966 BEST PICTURE NOMINEES: "Alfie," "The Russians Are Coming, The Russians Are Coming," "The Sand Pebbles," "Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?"
OSCAR TRIVIA: Paul Scofield didn't attend the Academy Awards ceremonies, so his Oscar was picked up by Wendy Hiller, who didn't win in her own supporting actress category....Presentation of the Oscar for Best Picture was made by Audrey Hepburn, who gave the award to director Fred Zinnemann, who had directed her in "The Nun's Story" in 1959.
©2011 by Gordon Greb. The caricature of the author is by the author. The illustration is courtesy of Columbia Pictures. This column first posted March 2, 2011.
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