Keith Michell (I) Henry VIII Donald Pleasence Thomas Cromwell Charlotte Rampling Anne Boleyn Jane Asher Jane Seymour Frances Cuka Katherine of Aragon Lynne Frederick Catherine Howard Jenny Bos Anne of Cleves Barbara Leigh-Hunt Catherine Parr Michael Gough Norfolk Brian Blessed Suffolk Michael Goodliffe Thomas More Bernard Hepton Cranmer Garfield Morgan Cardiner Directed by Waris Hussein
Based on the successful BBC TV
series, Henry VIII and His Six Wives
actually surpasses the original. For
one thing, one doesn't have to wait a
whole week in between wives. For
another, Keith Michell's majestic
performance at last has a screen big
enough to hold it.
Though the film doesn't go deeply into historical complexities, Michell's success at suggesting wilful magnificence shows how much experience a man can cram into one body, never mind one reign. Starting with Henry as a cleft-chinned young blood, it shows him sobered up by the lack of a son from Catherine of Aragon (Frances Cuka), hooked again by Anne Boleyn (Charlotte Rampling), diverted to Jane Seymour (Jane Asher), not at all amused by Ann of Cleves (Jenny Bos), deceived in love by Catherine Howard (Lynne Frederick) and ultimately consoled in his gouty senescence by Catherine Parr (Barbara Leigh-Hunt).
Told in flashback from the Royal death-bed, it is frankly no wonder the King's strength fails him when confession time arrives. Michell is marvellously made-up: not just padded with years, but even appearing to be disintegrated by the profligate's life he has led, so that one sees the man diminishing in stages inside the huge bolster of his corporeal authority.
Most screen Henrys are based on Holbein: Michell's suggests the utter frankness of Rembrandt. Not least when Henry, for the sixth and last time, asks a woman to be his wife - not for the sake of proud posterity, but simply for a little company.
Filmed by Waris Hussein in 1972, in the middle of a vogue for Elizabethan and Tudor themes, the movie gains a period authenticity from the rich but restrained photography by Peter Suschitsky of the masques, dances, stag hunts and picnics, not to mention the hangings and beheadings that inevitably accompanied Henry's wife-questing.
ALEXANDER WALKER
'This is a real film, made by a director who
will always try for something better than the
obvious:
THE GUARDIAN
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Distributed by: EMI |
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This page was last updated 02 Dec 2002
