This movie is the adaption of Robert Bolt\u2019s play of the same name.\u00a0 It is the story of Sir Thomas More.\u00a0 He was a politician and a scholar who lived during the reign of King Henry the Eighth of England.\u00a0 But most of all he was a principled and deeply religious man. \u00a0Being a personal friend of the King, he rose to the rank of Lord Chancellor but when Henry desired to divorce Katherine of Aragon and marry Anne Boleyn it put him on a collision course with the Pope.\u00a0 And when Henry declared himself the Head of the Christian church in England, Thomas More had to resign from his office.\u00a0 But the powerful and unscrupulous Thomas Cromwell, Henry\u2019s chief minister, conspires to use More\u2019s piety as a means of destroying him and ultimately have him executed.<\/p>\n
And that is the plot of the movie.\u00a0 Thomas More uses his considerable intelligence to walk the tight rope between maintaining his loyalty to the King and honoring his religious convictions.\u00a0 But slowly and inexorably Cromwell cuts through that rope.<\/p>\n
The movie is excellent.\u00a0 The dialog is wonderful and intelligent.\u00a0 The cast is great.\u00a0 Cameos by Orson Welles as Cardinal Wolsey and Robert Shaw as Henry the Eighth are memorable but the main actors are Paul Scofield as Thomas More, Wendy Hiller as his wife Alice, Susannah York as his daughter Margaret and Leo McKern as the villainous Thomas Cromwell.\u00a0 And there are other strong performances.\u00a0 John Hurt plays the traitorous Richard Rich and Nigel Davenport is the colorful Duke of Norfolk.<\/p>\n
The movie won the academy awards among others for Best Movie, Best Director and Best Actor for Paul Scofield.\u00a0 And I think it deserved all of that.\u00a0 I will caution the reader that I do enjoy theater and this is undoubtedly a play adapted for cinema.\u00a0 It\u2019s all about the dialog and the relationships of the principal character to the others.\u00a0 And it is a tour de force for Scofield.\u00a0 If you dislike plays this may not be for you.\u00a0 But for me this is great storytelling.\u00a0 The humanity and the intelligence of Thomas More are on full display.\u00a0 I literally can\u2019t say enough good things about this movie.<\/p>\n
Highly recommended.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
This movie is the adaption of Robert Bolt\u2019s play of the same name.\u00a0 It is the story of Sir Thomas More.\u00a0 He was a politician<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mi_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[239,237],"tags":[2931,2588,2589,2758,2930,1338,2932,2933],"class_list":["post-13690","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-movie-reviews","category-reviews","tag-a-man-for-all-seasons","tag-john-hurt","tag-leo-mckern","tag-orson-welles","tag-robert-bolt","tag-robert-shaw","tag-sir-thomas-more","tag-susannah-york"],"yoast_head":"\n