Just rented this again for the first time since they made me watch it in high school 20+ years ago. What a great movie. Everything about it is amazing. The dialogue, the scenery, the costumes, the acting, the directing, everything. Not really a movie for the masses. Think I might buy a copy.
More: You threaten like a dockside bully.
Cromwell: How should I threaten?
More: Like a Minister of State, with justice.
Cromwell: Justice is what you’re threatened with.
More: Then I’m not threatened.
More (to Roper): We must just pray that when your head’s finished turning, your face is to the front again.
More: I must in fairness add that my taste in music is reputedly deplorable.
Henry: Your taste in music is excellent. It exactly coincides with my own!
Sounds like you’d probably also like The Lion in Winter. Peter O’Toole, Katharine Hepburn, Anthony Hopkins, Timothy Dalton younger than you can believe, and a sublime script by James Goldman (They Might Be Giants, Robin and Marian) from his own play.
A Man for All Seasons is in my top 5 favorite movies. A lot of Sir Thomas More’s lines were actually taken from his writings, or were reported to have been spoken by him.
If you like More, read his Utopia, a classic bit of writing. If you want a taste of his social circle’s musings, get Deriderius Erasmus’ In Praise of Folly. Great classic stuff.
If it’s the dialogue and writing you liked, then get more Robert Bolt (who wrote the screenplay) Watch a performance of the play a Man for All Seasons, or read the play. It’s very different from the movie, and well worth looking into. Other movies he wrote:
Lawrence of Arabia
Dr. Zhivago
Ryan’s Daughter
Lady Caroline Lamb (which he also directed. I’m not a big fan, but the movie has a wonderful debate in Parliament that’s worth watching it for) The Mission
The Bounty
He also wrote some historical plays that never were filmed:
State of Revolution The Russian Revolution on stage. Lenin and Trostsky and Stalin, oh my.
Vivat! Vivat Regina! --Elizabeth I and Mary. What Mary, Queen of Scots would’ve looked like if Bolt had written it.
Some time ago The History Channel did one of their pieces comparing movies and reality with A Man for All Seasons. I’m sorry I missed it.
What a wonderful movie, definately one to watch when disruptions are at a minimum so you’ll not miss a word.
Paul Scofield is one of my absolute favorite actors. Enjoyed him very much in The Train with Burt Lancaster and Quiz Show with Ralph Feinnes too. It’s a lucky few that can so convincingly play men of great character.
This is one of my all-time favorite movies. It was the second videocassette I bought.
Orson Welles as Wolsey is absolutely brilliant. And the last lines of that scene are great: “More! You should have been a cleric!” “Like yourself, Your Grace?”
And of course: “Why, Richard, it profits a man nothing to give his soul for the whole world. But for Wales!”
And there were so many great actors and performances in this movie. Paul Scofield even looked a lot like More, although that’s never a requirement. Leo McKern as Cromwell, properly oily. Robert Shaw, as Henry VIII, showed his versatility as an actor. John Hurt, in his first screen role, as Richard Rich. Susannah York as More’s daughter. Orson Welles, as Wolsey, a real cynic.
And Wendy Hiller, as Dame Alice More. God, that’s a role I’d have loved to play. She was amazing in the prison scene, mixing love, anger, and defiance.
In Charlton Heston’s book, An Actor’s Life, he mentioned how he lusted to play More in the movie, but he more than approved of the choice of Scofield for the role. Heston played More on stage several times, then on television when TNT filmed it. One difference between the two films is that the TNT version retained the character of “The Common Man” that Robert Bolt originally wrote into the play. That was one actor who played several parts, up to and including the headsman, and who was supposed to represent, I think, we ordinary people.
Played by the late great Roy Kinnear; perfect casting. And while Scofield’s the better actor, Heston most certainly did not embarass himself in the remake- it’s one of if not his single best performances. (I understand that he and Vanessa Redgrave had to agree not to talk about politics or religion while filming.)
The usual caveat applies to Man for All Seasons, of course: don’t watch it for historical accuracy but for the drama itself.
[QUOTE=rowrrbazzle]
Orson Welles as Wolsey is absolutely brilliant. And the last lines of that scene are great: “More! You should have been a cleric!” “Like yourself, Your Grace?”
[QUOTE]
Welles also managed to work into his version a line from Shakespeare’s Henry VIII that’s not in the play Man for All Seasons: “Had I but served my god with half the zeal I served my king, he would not in mine age have left me naked before mine enemies.” (Of course the play doesn’t have Wolsey’s death scene, and by recasting the historically rotund Wolsey with the always Gaunt John Gielgud the remake missed the double humor of “If Wolsey fell the splash would drown more than a few little boats like ours”.
My favorite from the original: the ubiquitous Aussie of the 60s Leo McKern as Thomas Cromwell. (The part where he imprisons More and More screams “I am not a number!” is… oh wait, wrong Leo McKern as jailer part.)
For a minute I was trying to remember where I had seen him, then I checked the link and realized, he was a “That Guy!” Hard not to have seen him in the movies, if you look at his IMDB listing you realize the guy was never out of work.
Though I haven’t seen the movie in years, seeing it the first time made a definite impression on me. I’ve read Utopia, but not the second one. I’ll see if I can find it.
The dialogue was my favorite part, and Robert Bolt is in fact one of my favorite movie writers. Lawrence of Arabia is my favorite movie; I named my current company after a scene in it.
The Six Wives of Henry VIII- it’s a very low budget BBC miniseries (one episode per wife, not all the same length) but you’ll never get bored. (Keith Michell, long before modern make-up, somehow manages to convincingly play Henry from a handsome athletic young man to the bloated impotent tyrant of legend, and while More’s not a character lots of others from that era are [including the dread Thomas Howard, D. of Norfolk [who sent two nieces and several close friends to the headsman’s block over the years])
Elizabeth R- follow-up to the above with the same cast where applicable. Glenda Jackson follows Michell’s lead by playing Bess from a romantic and idealistic 14 year old to the spackle-painted impossibly high foreheaded charicature of her last decade.
Becket- the ultimate “English history stage drama about church & conscience v. state & duty turned movie” movie. It’s not by the same writer or producers as the play or screenplay The Lion in Winter (whose most recent revival starred Lawrence Fishburne & Stockard Channing- Whoopi Goldberg wants to stage a version as well) but Peter O’Toole starred as the same king in both. (Lion in Winter was recently remade with Patrick Stewart, Glenn Close and John Rhys “Elvis” Myers and it’s certainly not terrible, but see the original if only for Hepburn’s over-the-top still-sexy Eleanor).
The university where I work (which is also my alma mater) recently staged a production of A Man for All Seasons, and they did an excellent job. I did the play in high school, and I’d forgotten how powerful it is and how much I like it. The actor who played Sir Thomas More is only 22, but you would never have known it to watch him – he is an awe-inspiring actor, and I hope he’ll continue in the field once he graduates. I think he would even have given Scofield a run for his money, but it’s hard to compare stage and movies.
I bought a copy of the script after seeing it, and I wish I’d gone earlier in the run so I could have seen it more than once. Such a great story.
Trivia: Pope John Paul II declared More the patron saint of statesmen and politicians. He is believed to be the coiner of the word utopia (though it’s of course constructed from classical Greek words).
