“A Man for All Seasons” (1966)
After I read Hilary Mantel’s Wolf Hall, I looked up reviews. I sometimes do this after I finish a book to try to better understand it. Nearly every review of Wolf Hall mentioned the 1966 film A Man for All Seasons. Wolf Hall’s main character and Renaissance man was Thomas Cromwell, while Thomas More was something of a narrow-minded nuisance. The film, in contrast, presents More as the upstanding Renaissance man, and Cromwell as a grasping, ugly little man.
A Man for All Seasons won 6 Academy awards, including Best Picture, and Best Actor for Paul Scofield who played More. But it was the too-brief screen time of Orson Welles as the ailing Cardinal Wolsey and a silent Lynn Redgrave as the lovely Anne Boleyn, that made the bigger impression on me. The film was good, skillfully made and acted. But I wish it had been less earnest, and a little more fun.
May 8th, 2010 at 7:44 am
It was Vanessa, not Lynn, as Anne — notable because she later played another (somewhat) doomed queen in Camelot.
Have you read the play, by the way? It was a chapbook entry a little bit ago:
http://mentalmultivitamin.blogspot.com/2010/02/man-for-all-seasons-robert-bolt-p.html
Now you’ve motivated me to move Wolf Hall up a bit on the TBR.
Happy Mother’s Day!
May 9th, 2010 at 3:16 pm
This is probably my favorite movie ever . . . but you’re right, it’s not very fun. I just love the story, and all that it has to say about integrity.