A Man for All Seasons
Fred Zinnemann (1966)
Watching A Man for All Seasons again, for the first time in probably half a century, was very enjoyable – not least because this can fairly be described as a Fred Zinnemann film, not just a screen replication of Robert Bolt’s famous stage play. The original is opened out judiciously. Bolt did the screenplay so may well deserve some credit for that, but it’s Zinnemann’s movie craft that ensures that the outdoor sequences strike the right balance. They give the material cinematic life. They never try to compete with the dialogue yet are never merely filler – this is especially true of Henry VIII’s visit, by royal barge, to Thomas More’s Chelsea home on the banks of the Thames. Zinnemann ably builds the central drama of More’s refusal, through his Catholic faith and moral convictions, to sign a letter to the Pope requesting the annulment of Henry’s marriage to Catherine of Aragon or take an Oath of Supremacy that declares the King to be Supreme Head of the Church of England. The three years of More’s tenure of the office of Lord Chancellor of England seem to elapse too quickly (though that’s partly because Zinnemann commendably doesn’t resort to a ‘Three years later’ signpost on the screen). The interrogations of More and his imprisonment in the Tower of London go on a bit too long. The ‘realistic’ staging of his conclusive trial is sometimes shaky. For the most part, though, Fred Zinnemann’s storytelling, as you’d expect, is bracingly fluent and clear.
Under the skilful filmic surface, though, this is still Robert Bolt’s play and that’s an irresistible difficulty. One of Thomas More’s contemporaries, the grammarian Robert Whittington, coined the description of him as ‘a man for all seasons’. This supplied Bolt with a good, striking title, but puts his admiring cards on the table virtually before the curtain rises. Paul Scofield, who played More in the original West End and Broadway productions of A Man for All Seasons (in 1960 and 1961 respectively), reprises the role in Zinnemann’s film. Scofield gives an immaculate performance; that’s not entirely a compliment, because Bolt’s Thomas More is an immaculate conception – thoroughly principled yet worldly wise, a saint in waiting, and with more than his fair share of Bolt’s best lines. When someone else is speaking, More listens, almost always patiently, before coming out with a reply that bests the other person epigrammatically as well as morally. (Times change … in A Man for All Seasons, Thomas Cromwell is a villain. In the BBC adaptation of Hilary Mantel’s Wolf Hall (2015), Thomas More is portrayed as a chilly, sneaky ideologue, Cromwell is morally nuanced and admirable, and Mark Rylance’s portrait of the latter often brings Scofield’s More to mind.) Even so, Paul Scofield’s precision and vocal musicality are very pleasurable to watch and listen to. And when More does occasionally lose his cool – either in anger or in distress and anguish, when his wife and daughter visit him in prison – it’s powerful: a fine illustration of the benefits of an actor’s keeping his emotional powder dry.
As mentioned elsewhere (see The Ghoul), I was once in a school production of A Man for All Seasons; I still have my copy of the Heinemann Educational Books edition of the text used at the time. This includes a preface by Robert Bolt, along with his notes on ‘People in the Play’, which, although succinct, are highly prescriptive. Richard Rich, for example, is,
‘Early thirties. A good body unexercised. A studious unhappy face lit by the fire of banked down appetite. He is an academic, hounded by self-doubt to enter the world of affairs, and longing to be rescued from himself.’
Bolt’s notes anticipate the qualities of his dialogue – consistently crisp, often witty, but, in effect, telling the audience the same thing repeatedly about the person delivering the lines. There’s little scope for the actors in A Man for All Seasons to explore for themselves what makes their character tick and develop that character over the course of the play. This is liable to be even more of an issue when the piece moves from the stage to the screen, where faces and gestures will naturally express thoughts and feelings more transparently. If the faces and gestures convey the same message about the character as their words, some of what an actor does is liable to be superfluous.
The risk is all the greater if the actors are as high-powered as most of Zinnemann’s cast were. I chose Bolt’s summary of Rich as the example above because John Hurt’s playing of him is a prime example of the issue in question. Rich was Hurt’s first high-profile role in cinema. A very gifted actor, understandably eager to make a strong impression, Hurt nails the anxiously driven and unscrupulous careerist Rich in his first scene: the role is so thinly written there’s nowhere else to go with it from there. Something similar happens with actors less talented than Hurt – Leo McKern as Cromwell, Susannah York as More’s daughter, Margaret. The protagonist’s dilemma and fate make for an absorbing story, but Thomas More’s satellites are too often figures in a medieval or early Tudor morality – that is, personified vices or virtues, usually with just the one vice or virtue per person.
A few of the cast achieve more agency in their roles, with mixed results. Not surprisingly, Bolt’s screenplay jettisons the stage play’s quasi-Brechtian narrator, the Common Man (the role that Leo McKern played in the original West End production). In the theatre, the Common Man, as well as commenting on the action in direct address to the audience, is a succession of pleb bit parts – publican, boatman, jailer, jury foreman, executioner, and Thomas More’s servant. A different actor plays each of these characters in the film: Colin Blakeley, as the servant Matthew, commendably does quite a lot with very little. Orson Welles’ vast, decaying Cardinal Wolsey is an extraordinary image but Welles, in the exchange between More and Wolsey, goes too far in doing his own thing: he’s intent on making an impact with his every line, but there’s next to no emotional continuity. Robert Shaw’s Henry VIII is much more successful. Although his shouting bits are hit and miss, Shaw, in his shiny gold costume, is dazzlingly volatile, and comes through as a living screen presence. She’s hardly tested in the role of More’s simple-minded, exasperated wife, Alice, but Wendy Hiller is always entertaining and, in the couple’s final meeting, surprisingly moving.
1 August 2026