A Man For All Seasons, directed by Fred Zinnemann is the story of Sir Thomas More, an English scholar from the sixteenth century, a Man who died for a principle. His death did not change the ways of his world, or even served future justice. No, as Tolstoy said, much later, where there is a court justice is lost. Such was the case of Sir Thomas More.
The Plot:
Henry VIII wishes to divorce Catherine of Aragon and marry Anne Boleyn a whim that partly contributed to the independence of England from the Catholic Church. For every drastic change, old laws must be destroyed and new laws written. But new laws must be created for valid reasons, not for personal interests. The system is transformed when its ways no longer support justice. Henry VIII wants a new world that holds his whish and not necessarily England’s. Only one Man stands between the king and that change, and that is Sir Thomas More, respected by all, followed by all, the monarch’s conscience. But a king of few principles needs only to eliminate that conscience. Sir Thomas is taken to trial as traitor. He is condemned.
Paul Scofield plays Sir Thomas More with the brilliancy that makes one substitute the real character by the fictional in one’s mind. Leo Genn achieved the same mastery playing Petronius in Mervyn LeRoy’s Qvo-Vadis (1951). Orson Welles played a very credible Cardinal Wolsey. John Hurt became Richard Rich, undistinguished from a true villain. Robert Shaw was wisely discrete playing the grotesque Henry VIII.
Why then, a film that enhances the curse that hits men who are defenders of noble principles, integrity, honesty becomes not dark but a redeemer of Mankind? For the same reason martyrs do: Death adds immortality to that courage, and above all to those principles.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6nSx0_9TZww
Cast and crew:
1966
Directed by Fred Zinnemann
Based on a play by Robert Bolt A Man For All Seasons
Music by Georges Delerue
Cast: Paul Scofield (Sir Thomas More), Robert Shaw (Henry VIII), Orson Welles (Cardinal Wolsey), John Hurt (Richard Rich), Nigel Davenport (the Duke of Norfolk), Leo McKern (Thomas Cromwell), Wendy Hiller (Sir Thomas’ wife Alice), Susannah York (Sit Thomas’ daughter Margaret)…
