Download Free A Man For All Seasons

Fred Zinnemann never impressed me until I watched this movie. I had
watched Julia before, but I didn't see anything special about that
movie. In fact, I only watched A Man For All Seasons because Robert
Bolt wrote the screenplay. Bolt was the screenwriter of Lawrence of
Arabia and Doctor Zhivago, two cinematic masterpieces, plus Ryan's
Daughter and The Mission, which deserve a modicum of respect too. With
such a pedigree, I expected the best from Bolt's screenplay, since I'm
a firm believer that any good movie begins at the writing.

Well, A Man For All Seasons surpassed all my expectations. This is a
fascinating movie in all its aspects: an entertaining story, a
beautiful historical recreation, and an intelligent exploration of
duty, honor, truth, responsibility and moral convictions.

The movie uses the life of Thomas More as a starting point to show the
conflict he had with King Henry VIII over the Anne Boyleen affair.
Henry VIII was currently married with Queen Catherine, his brother's
wife. He had wedded her thanks to a Papal decree. But when the Queen is
unable to give him an heir he decides to divorce her and marry another
woman, Anne. This means he needs a new Papal decree overturning the
previous one. He asks Thomas More's support, but More refuses on the
grounds that he doesn't deserve permission to divorce and remarry.

Nowadays Thomas More's adamant faith in the authority of the church may
seem absurd, even ignorant, and his decision to die for his beliefs
ridiculous. It's difficult to imagine a time when the Holy Church had
so much power over people and a man could worship religion so much to
give his life for it. But independently of what More believes in, the
core of the matter is that he's a man standing up for his beliefs in
name of a free consciousness.

Paul Scolfield plays Thomas More with grace and a startling
peacefulness. His words are always wisely chosen, pondered and calmly
expressed in a gentle tone. He's the ultimate personification of
reason, logic and nobility.

Around his towering performance an amazing cast was gathered, starting
with the always amazing Robert Shaw playing King Henry VIII. He shows
up in only three scenes, two very small ones, and one that was the
reason he got an Oscar nomination - in a scene when he meets More at
his house to convince him to change his mind, Shaw plays the King as a
maniac who unpredictably changes his personality from sweetness and
pleasantries to violence and bullying. I've always loved Shaw because
he never had any problems playing villains or unpleasant heroes, and
here it shows how much fan he had playing bad guys.

Wendy Hiller, Leo McKern, Nigel Davenport, Susanah York, a very young
but amazing John Hurt, and an aging, fat Orson Welles complete the
cast. A few words must go to Welles' performance - short as it was,
playing Cardinal Wosley, it was amazing and also showed his ability to
play villains.

I can't find anything to say against A Man For All Seasons. From the
moment we hear Georges Delerue's opening theme until the end, the movie
does a good job of bringing the past alive, especially thanks to the
Oscar-winning costume design and Ted Moore's cinematography. Watching
this movie I in fact think cinema has regressed. Nowadays many movies
have a teal and orange tone, so it was a delight to watch the vivid
colors here. It's like one big rainbow, like watching The Wizard of Oz
- and much like real life, since our eyes are closer to Technicolor
than the washed-out, filtered colors we see nowadays in so-called
realistic movies. The color red was especially omnipresent, and this
type of symbolism just doesn't exist anymore in movies, which is a
shame.

Bolt, Zinnemann, Scolfield, Shaw, Welles, Ted Moore and many others are
to praise for a man, that as the tagline says, truly is for all times!.

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1: High Treason 2: Refusal by the chancellor to consent the king to marry his brother's wife.

Certainly "A Man for All Seasons" is a very distinguished film (unlike
"The Big Lebowski") but to call it "one of the greatest films of all
time" is the sort of thing that makes IMDb absurd. It has superior
acting (of course) and a very literate screenplay, but as a film --
well, it is a filmed play, and not a particularly well filmed play.
More people should learn to distinguish what makes for great cinematic
art and not what tickles their fancies or judge film by their
"subjects." Those are not the proper criteria for cinematic greatness.
Of course, that would require more commentators to IMDb to learn
something about movies, something about standards and have the ability
to think -- but we can hope, can't we?.