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annabolinas · 10 months

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Anne of the Thousand Days Review: Part 1

Alright, so I got around to writing this review, and boy do I have some hot takes! Fair warning, though; this is so long I'll need to post this in two parts.

“For six years, this year, and this, and this, and this, I did not love him. And then I did. Then I was his. I can count the days I was his in hundreds … In all one thousand days. Just a thousand. strange. And of those thousand, one when we were both in love, only one, when our loves met and overlapped and were both mine and his. And when I no longer hated him, he began to hate me.”

Where do I even begin with this review? I disliked this movie when I first watched it, and after a rewatch, I still dislike it. Anne of the Thousand Days is a tedious slog of a movie which somehow both has a fundamentally weird premise and forgets its own premise at times, especially in its marketing. The poster for this movie claimed that it showed “the most passionate and shocking love story in history!” As we’ll see, though, it’s hard to claim this depiction of Henry and Anne have a grand love affair when they only mutually love each other, at least in Anne’s telling, for one day.

Anne of the Thousand Days started as a Broadway play in 1948, written by American playwright Maxwell Anderson. With Rex Harrison as Henry VIII and Joyce Redman as Anne Boleyn, the play was a critical and commercial success, running for nearly 300 shows. However, as it dealt with themes of adultery, illegitimacy, and incest, Anne of the Thousand Days ran afoul of the Hays Code, so it took over two decades to be adapted into a movie. Most of the blank verse of the play was removed, many scenes were expanded into two, three, or four, and Anne was given a monologue about Elizabeth’s future greatness to shout at Henry in the Tower. Richard Burton was cast as Henry, and the virtually unknown French-Canadian actress Genevieve Bujold was cast as Anne. Burton’s wife Elizabeth Taylor feared the two were having an affair, so she managed to obtain a cameo to keep an eye on them. Taylor had actually lobbied for the role of Anne, but at 37, she was deemed too old for Anne, who (following the scholarship of the time) aged from 18 to 29 over the course of the film. One can only wonder…

The movie follows the basic outlines of history, with a heavy emphasis on “outlines”. The opening scene is of Henry agonizing whether to sign Anne’s death warrant, as we soon transition into a palace ball where Henry falls for the vivacious and charming Anne as his sober, pious wife Catherine of Aragon despairingly looks on. He orders his chief minister, Cardinal Wolsey, to break up Anne’s relationship with the “Northern clodhopper” Harry Percy, much to her fury. She vigorously resists Henry’s advances, her resolve only strengthened by her pregnant sister Mary, who gave in to Henry and now carries his child. Mary prophetically warns, “The moment you’re conquered, he’ll walk away.” Despite Anne’s utter refusal to return his feelings, Henry continues to “love” (yes, the quotes are necessary) Anne, and eventually proposes divorcing Catherine and making Anne queen. She accepts, but unfortunately, political circumstances abroad combine to make it clear that the Pope will not grant Henry a divorce. Having fired Wolsey for his failure to get the divorce, and encouraged by his new chief minister Thomas Cromwell (and to a lesser extent, Anne) to break with Rome to get his way, Henry does so. After a tense confrontation, Anne finally tells Henry that she loves him, and they sleep together; she soon becomes pregnant and they’re married in a shotgun, bigamous wedding.

Anne is reviled at the coronation, but despite Henry’s hopes and Anne’s promises, she gives birth to a daughter, Elizabeth. Henry is furious and his eye begins to wander towards Anne’s lady-in-waiting Jane Seymour. Anne is furious and demands that Henry make everyone swear an oath recognizing their daughter as his legitimate heir on pain of death, leading to the execution of Sir Thomas More. Anne promptly miscarries a boy and Henry, believing his marriage accursed, orders Cromwell to find a way out. Cromwell soon trumps up charges of adultery with five men, incest with her brother George, and treason, which lead to Anne’s arrest. At her trial, though, Henry suddenly (and ahistorically) bursts in and manages to get the only one of the five who confessed to admit he lied under torture. Henry is still unsure of whether Anne is guilty, and he confronts her in the Tower. Anne utterly refuses to agree to an annulment, even if it means her death, and lies to Henry to hurt his manhood, declaring that she cheated on him with countless men, finding them far better lovers. For good measure, she then proclaims, “Elizabeth shall be a greater queen than any king of yours. She shall rule a greater England than you could ever have built! Yes - my Elizabeth shall be queen. And my blood will have been well-spent.” Henry promptly signs her death warrant and Anne is beheaded by a French swordsman, the movie ending with a shot of the toddler Elizabeth walking towards her destiny.

Incredibly, I did like some stuff about this movie. The costumes, designed by Margaret Furse, are exquisite and mostly accurate; if nothing else, this movie deserved its Best Costume Design Oscar. Even the fact that Genevieve Bujold’s French hoods nearly always lack a proper veil doesn’t matter, in my opinion, since she manages to pull it off. The coronation procession was absolutely stunning, and the recreation of the Tower of London is incredible; they really minimized the distance between Tower Green and St Peter ad Vincula, though. Despite not using surviving Tudor pieces, the score, composed by Georges Delerue, manages to evoke the period really well.

Concerning the performances, I loved Anthony Quayle’s depiction of Cardinal Wolsey, as he goes from a self-assured, powerful man to a broken, fallen minister. His final scene is heartbreaking, and Quayle humanizes him throughout; even when he breaks up Anne and Harry Percy, he doesn’t seem thoughtlessly cruel. John Colicos’ portrayal of Cromwell as “a man without scruple” is a delightfully villainous characterization, a schemer who owns up to his villainy and revels in manipulation.

A review of Anne of the Thousand Days, of course, would be incomplete without a discussion of Genevieve Bujold’s Anne Boleyn. While not one of my top three favorite Anne Boleyn portrayals (for the record, Natalie Dormer, Dorothy Tutin, and Claire Foy), Bujold does a good job with Anne. She compellingly portrays Anne’s growth (and increasing ruthlessness) from a lovestruck teenager to a fiercely protective mother, as you can see her grow and harden over the course of the movie. She also captures Anne’s boldness and vivacity of spirit well, although sometimes to the point of straining credulity. Would the real Anne have maintained Henry’s love if she told him at the start of their relationship, “You’re spoiled and vengeful and bloody. Your poetry is sour and your music worse. You make love as you eat - with a great deal of noise and no subtlety”? It seems very unlikely. Anne’s frank declaration to Harry Percy that she’s not been a virgin for a long time additionally seems very incongruous with the historical Anne. Bujold’s acting, too, sometimes feels not just theatrical, but overly artificial and overdone, particularly when she has to express anger. Still, the fact that it is hard to imagine this Anne captivating Henry for seven years is not Bujold’s fault - she performs well the script as written - but that of the writers.

Unfortunately, this is the part of the review where I must tackle the things I disliked about this film. Equally unfortunately, there are quite a lot of them. The elephant in the room is Richard Burton’s depiction of Henry. In both history and popular depictions, Henry was and is the center of his court, someone who shifted from passionately loving Anne to furiously ordering her death on false charges; in any depiction of Anne, he is the other main character. Put bluntly, Richard Burton gives perhaps one of the creepiest portrayals of Henry VIII I’ve ever seen. While not worse than Ray Winstone’s portrayal of Henry as a marital rapist, Burton portrays Henry as a serial sexual harasser and predator. He combines the real Henry’s unshakeable belief in his own self-righteousness with a seedy lustfulness which will stop at nothing, not even claiming he’s only sexually potent with the woman in question, to get into a woman’s bed. There is little trace in this portrayal of Henry’s intellectual or cultural pursuits, and even the times when he exhibits bonhomie feel forced and fake. Furthermore, at only 5’8, Richard Burton is half a foot shorter than the real Henry, meaning he lacks the physical towering presence of the real man; he thus doesn’t physically stand out from his courtiers. In fact, Anthony Quayle as Wolsey is two inches taller than Burton; a screen Henry ought to tower above his courtiers, not vice versa!

Anne of the Thousand Days also completely misunderstands the history of the period, changing it in ways that not only make no sense plot-wise, but which indicate the writers genuinely did not understand the period. Some inaccuracies stem from changing historiography - despite being named after Anne Boleyn, the movie portrays a less politically active Anne than more recent depictions like The Tudors and Wolf Hall. However, this lack of emphasis was the result of the historiography of the time tending to minimize Anne as a political figure; only in 1986 with Eric Ives’ seminal biography of Anne would attitudes change. The inaccuracies I object to are ones which betray a lack of understanding of the basic nature of the history. I’ve already mentioned one of these inaccuracies (Anne admitting to Harry Percy that she’s not a virgin), but there’s several others. For example, Henry is seriously conflicted about breaking with Rome, stating that it would mean “everlasting damnation” and result in his soul being cast into Hell. However, this fundamentally misunderstands the real Henry’s character. When he decided on a course of action, it was not only incredibly hard to dissuade Henry from it, but he often became increasingly convinced of his own self-righteousness. As a pious early modern king, Henry would not have broken with Rome had he harbored as many doubts about its morality as he does in Anne of the Thousand Days.

Moreover, the Act of Succession in the movie is passed only after Anne agrees to bring Jane Seymour back to court from a (fictional) exile in Northumberland. Henry himself states that “One daughter is much like another. I care not who’s named bastard when I’m dead.” As this Anne points out, this version of Henry is declining to enshrine their daughter’s legitimacy in law so he can sleep with another woman. Unsurprisingly, this did not happen in real life; the real Henry, no matter how much he wanted a son, would not have shot himself in the foot by doing this! To not pass the Act of Succession wouldn’t just harm Elizabeth, but any children, including a son, he had by Anne; Elizabeth, after all, was only heir in lieu of any sons. These are serious departures which go beyond artistic license and veer into a real lack of historical comprehension.

The biggest (and most absurd) inaccuracy, though, comes in Anne’s trial and resulting confrontation with Henry in the Tower. First, Anne is allowed to cross-examine Smeaton, who is brought in, along with her brother George, during the course of the trial. But this greatly downplays just how rigged the real Anne’s trial was, as in real life, no witnesses were called. Even if they had, it is incredibly unlikely Norfolk, who hated his niece in history, would have let her cross-examine them. But then, any semblance of accuracy, realism, or even sense is sacrificed wholly on the altar of drama as Henry himself enters and gets Smeaton to confess that he’s innocent. If this had happened, there would be no reason for Henry to execute him, like Burton’s version promises he’ll do. Moreover, as Smeaton was the only person (both in history and the film) who confessed, retracting his confession would mean there were no witnesses, which would have torpedoed the government’s case against Anne and the men. But Henry does this and then proceeds to mutter, “And yet… it could be true,” which is only explicable in the film if he genuinely thinks Anne is guilty of adultery. The problem is that Anne has never flirted with any of the men on screen; she’s never talked to the ones aside from her brother at all! This means that the accusations of adultery come out of left field, a failure of writing which leaves the viewer wondering where on earth that came from.

PART 2 HERE:

#tudor era #anne boleyn #anne of the thousand days #genevieve bujold #henry viii #richard burton #catherine of aragon #katherine of aragon #jane seymour #elizabeth i #the tudors #I have so much to say about this movie #but it's just not good IMO #Genevieve Bujold Anthony Quayle and John Colicos #as Anne Wolsey and Cromwell #cannot save this movie #tudorerasource #thomas wolsey #thomas cromwell

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