#7 in my ranking of the Best Picture winners at the Oscars.
This feels like something of a throwback, not for today but for the contemporary period in which it was released. A Man for All Seasons feels like the kind of prestige pictures that Hollywood was making mainly in the 1930s, costume dramas centered around great performances that used minimal musical cues. Chop off the edges of the frame to make it Academy ratio and drain the color from the image, and it would look like it too. Based on the play by Robert Bolt, Fred Zinneman won his second Best Director Oscar bringing the stage play to the screen with intelligence on transferring the visuals to a more cinematic medium while managing the actors rather perfectly. The tale of a man trying to protect himself with silence in the face of a growing tyranny ends up having a surprising emotional quality and dimension.
Sir Thomas More (Paul Schofield) is a lawyer, member of the court of Henry VIII (Robert Shaw), and considered one of the only honest men in the upper crust of England. He is caught in the middle of Henry’s desire to divorce his wife Catherine in favor of Anne Boleyn (Vanessa Redgrave, in a cameo), and Cardinal Wolsey (Orson Welles) cannot convince him to break from the opinion of the pope in Rome about the legality of the original marriage as well as Henry’s new opinion that the old dispensation must be countered with a new dispensation. The whole nation steadily breaks in favor of Henry’s argument, but More holds fast, telling Henry himself that he cannot break with his conscience, even after Henry grants More the position of Lord Chancellor of England. More’s approval is important to Henry because of his status as an honest man.
More’s home life is full and happy before all of this begins. His wife Alice (Wendy Hiller) is an illiterate woman who only wants the best for More in his profession and for his children (she was actually the children’s stepmother, though it never gets mentioned in the film), and the chief of his children is Margaret (Susannah York), an educated young woman who can easily outwit Henry in Latin, only playfully, of course. He was king, after all. Margaret loves a young Lutheran William Roper (Corin Redgrave), and the relationship between Roper and More is one of those key smaller relationships that really help highlight important parts of More’s character. More is steadfast in everything from his faith to his opinion on Henry’s marriage to his family life, and Roper flits between passionate belief in Catholicism to Lutheranism and back to something in between (perhaps done to get More’s approval to clear the way for his marriage to Margaret). The contrast is important, but, more importantly, is how it highlights More’s own constancy. It’s not just a detail from real life to include in the narrative. It is about deepening the depiction of the central character.
The movement of the film is a state of steady progress towards disaster as More’s obstinacy in the face of pressure from all corners of his life grows. First is the appeal of the king himself. That is followed by More resigning his position as Lord Chancellor as his friend, Norfolk (Nigel Davenport), demands that More give up his silence in the face of the question and just join in with the rest. More gets a great moment where he outlines the nature of the times with a simple pair of questions, asking Norfolk if he would have his confidence of his opinion even if the king asked him about it. If Norfolk would keep that confidence, then what means his oath to the king? More is afraid. He will not violate his conscience, but also knows the law and will not step in any trap willingly.
There’s a contrasting character in the form of Richard Rich (John Hurt), a young student who starts the film in admiration of More, wanting to use More’s influence to find a position at court, a request that More refuses because he sees that Rich could not resist the temptations of court life (he’s right, of course). Rebuked, Rich seeks out Thomas Cromwell (Leo McKern), Wolsey’s former assistant, and starts his rise to power by submitting false evidence that More accepted bribes. Rich ends up being everything that More sees the ruling class as: venal, unbelieving, and power mad.
Things just get worse as More’s silence becomes a symbol for larger powers. More’s only ambition is to live a quiet life, but Cromwell will not let it go. He sees More as a threat that must be destroyed. Cromwell is the true antagonist of the film and the key to understanding what is perhaps the most famous speech in the film about cutting down the forest of laws to get at the devil only to find nowhere to hide once the devil turns back at you.
More’s belief in the protection of the law ends up being almost utopian in the face of the mad dash for power sweeping over England at the time. He underestimates the need to destroy him, and the cutting down of the forest of laws is exactly what happens to get to him. I’ve seen this movie more than once, and I’ve never really connected the speech about the forest of laws to the actual action of the film until now, noting the ironic coda of the final voiceover talking about the violent fates of the three men who worked to condemn More (Cromwell, Norfolk (saved by Henry’s death before his own execution), and Cranmer (Cyril Luckham)), all executed in the same environment that they helped create, the land of England without laws.
The film is anchored by Schofield who is in almost every scene, and the degradation of his state is told in his face exquisitely. His easy features at the beginning as his household makes jokes about the sad state of the Church morphs into worry and finally fear by the end as he faces his trial, hearing the perjury of Rich in exchange for the attorney generalship of Wales. It’s a great performance, one he originated on the stage, and it’s exactly what this film needs in order to fly. His breakdown as he faces his family one last time is a composed man finally facing the fact that everything he held up about his country, his king, and his profession were lies, but at least he has his family and his God.
The Academy had been awarding large entertainments almost exclusively (Tom Jones being the only real exception based only on scale) for more than a decade. All of the British films that win the award end up feeling slightly out of place, but A Man for All Seasons feels doubly so because it really feels like it comes from the 30s and not the 60s. Sure, there’s probably a subtext here about McCarthyism (Bolt was a communist), but the story itself is too timeless to be pigeonholed into that reading in the same way that’s harder to escape from a film like Zinneman’s High Noon. This stands apart from that, telling a timeless tale of a man standing true to his conscience in the face of pressure from all corners of his life. It’s a great film and one of the best to win Best Picture.
Rating: 4/4
David Vining, Author 
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