A Man For All Seasons 1966

The Film:

This is the first of a sub-group of Oscar winners that I know certain chunks of in far too much detail because they've been shown in my lessons. (The others in that group are Gandhi, Schindler's List and Million Dollar Baby!). I used to work at a school called Thomas More and our school motto was "God's Servant First" - so, naturally, this film was compulsory viewing.

I tried a bit of it on Year 8 last year when we were looking at British church history. Not having the Thomas More connection completely lost it for them. They couldn't get their heads round the double historical thing of a 1966 film set in the 1530s. They'd never heard of Orson Welles and just thought he was a silly fat man. And they found the whole thing slow and dated (and didn't like the background music....). I'm not sure if this is a damning indictment of the youth of today or if it just goes to show how filmmaking has changed in fifty years. But I didn't subject them to too much of it - once Henry had said his bit we went back to the textbooks!

I'm looking forward to seeing the rest of the film again, outside the context of the classroom. It's a story I know well (and have studied the nuances of) and we've also seen the play live, with Martin Shaw as Thomas. Can I watch this film as Filmfan-Kath or will it forever be associated too much with Teacher-Kath?

The Ceremony:

Fred Zinnemann adding to his Oscar haul

10th April 1967 at the Santa Monica Auditorium - and hosted again by Bob Hope.

In terms of nominations, it was all about two films - A Man For All Seasons and Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf (both of them filmed versions of successful stage dramas!). They were the only two films to also be nominated for Best Director - and Fred Zinnemann took both of them.

The broadcast of the ceremony was threatened with cancellation/postponement due to a Union strike which was settled with just three hours to go - which was just as well, or we may have been deprived of Mitzi Gaynor's finest hour (see below!)

Other Notable Winners That Night:

Liz Taylor (and some fabulous jewels). By this time
she was on husband number five, and Oscar number two

The two favourites scooped up eleven awards between them, with Paul Schofield taking Best Actor  and Elizabeth Taylor Best Actress - so, one a piece. Sandy Dennis took another for Virginia Woolf as Best Supporting Actress, with the other Supporting Award going to Walter Matthau for The Fortune Cookie (a Billy Wilder/Jack Lemmon comedy - it is a wonderful thing that such films exist!!)

The other notable winner that year, as far as I'm concerned is the Documentary Feature, which went to British film The War Game. The War Game is notorious (and brilliant) for a number of reasons. Firstly, it's not really a documentary - it's one of the first examples of what we now call a Docu-drama. It depicted, docu-style, the aftermath of a nuclear war. Secondly, it wasn't shown in the UK for nearly another 20 years, as it was banned by the BBC in 1965 shortly before it was due to be broadcast. It did, however, get a limited release in the US the following year - hence the Oscar. It was directed by Peter Watkins, who is about as arthouse as I get when I list Directors I really like. I spent far too long (in Andy's opinion) at the Tate Modern one afternoon a few years ago watching a Watkins installation that completely mesmerised me - and several decades earlier I had been similarly mesmerised (and freaked out) by his film Privilege when I caught it late on Channel 4 one night. I still find it slightly strange that Watkins has an Oscar - he probably does as well!

Best Song:

It's a classic - although I will always end up singing Fletch's version...."Born free, til somebody caught me".

It beat out two other absolute classics though - Alfie and Georgy Girl. Both of them would have got my vote over Born Free (even though Matt Munro does sound lovely). Actually, both of them were much better received when performed on the night. Although Cilla had the (slightly) more famous version of Alfie, Dionne Warwick sang her version at the ceremony. And although The Seekers version will always be the definitive Georgy Girl, Mitzi Gaynor's performance that night is the stuff of Oscars legend. So here it is in all its camp sunshiney glory!

What We Could/Should Have Been Watching:

Burton and Taylor at their finest

It was definitely a year for film versions of famous plays - three of the five in contention had been big on the stage first. The two that weren't were "The Russians are Coming, the Russians are Coming" and "The Sand Pebbles". The other two that were are "Alfie" and "Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?" The latter was the favourite to win for a lot of people - and it still holds the distinction of being the only film ever to have been nominated in every category it was eligible for. The voters eventually went for English restraint over US emotion - but I think I'd have been happy either way.

Our Verdict:

Just a silly fat man in a red dress (apparently!)

I don't think I was quite in the mood for this when we actually watched it this time. Or maybe it was just that I was still all loved-up by our previous two musical films that this one fell a bit flat. But, my verdict this time has to be that it was, well, a bit flat.

There is no denying that this is a great film. I am very pleased that it exists (not just because it helped my planning when at Thomas More, Willenhall) and I'm very pleased that it got the recognition that it did. It's really well made and really well acted. I just wasn't feeling it this time.

Rumpole playing accuser rather than defender....

There are several people that cite it as one of their favourite films (including director Kevin Smith, so that's ok by me!) and the number of gushing 10/10 reviews on IMDb surprised me. But, again, pleasantly so.

The film is beautifully well shot, using the English landscape to its full advantage. It is really well acted - particularly Paul Schofield who is a wonderfully understated and measured Thomas More, Robert Shaw who is wonderfully over-the-top as Henry VIII and Wendy Hiller who makes the most of her role as Thomas' wife. The script is superb. Bolt doesn't change a great deal from his original play, and the set piece speeches are wonderfully written - the English language used masterfully in homage to More himself, who was an expert in its nuances!

Thomas, we're going to need a bigger religion! (I know,
I know - the line was said *to* Quint, not *by* him, but hey!)

However, I totally understand why my students didn't get it. Whichever way you look at it, it is still a play that takes a very specific (and legally technical) view on a specific aspect of British history. So much of what drives Thomas is to do with his particular view on a particular part of his faith - and he tackles it with a clever legal mind. As a Catholic RE teacher with a law degree, I think this is brilliant. I'm not sure how far others would agree? (Genuinely - I'm curious. My lawyer husband is also a Catholic who knows his history, so he's not got much of a different perspective on this!)

Behind every great man.....

Clearly the mid-sixties Academy loved it - or, at least, they loved it more than Burton and Taylor drinking and shouting in a similarly clever and verbose fashion. And hooray for that! It's still a great film - and, if nothing else, it's great for spotting some future stars in earlier roles (as well as the aging Welles in one of his later roles!). A very young John Hurt plots some dastardly things with Rumpole of the Bailey and a goblet that originally belonged to Mildred Roper - for Brits of a certain age that's a bit of a weird set up in itself!