**½/**** Image A- Sound B+ Extras B-
starring Wendy Hiller, Leo McKern, Robert Shaw, Paul Scofield
screenplay by Robert Bolt, based on his play
directed by Fred Zinnemann
by Travis Mackenzie Hoover Assessing A Man for All Seasons is no easy task. In its favour is the fact that it’s quite sensitively directed: Fred Zinnemann lays on a level of melancholy largely unheard-of in the costume-movie sweepstakes, making the film plenty more affecting than the twilight-of-Old-Hollywood clunker it could very well have become. Alas, Robert Bolt’s screenplay (and presumably his stage play) is resolutely impervious to directorial manipulation–and also completely full of crap. Bolt’s hilariously over-the-top deification of Thomas More (Paul Scofield) and More’s opposition to the divorce of Henry VIII (Robert Shaw) is so emptied of contemporary meaning that you can project anything you like onto it. Such care has been taken to shift the discussion away from political matters and towards “personal ethics” that an atheist like me can groove to More’s rigid refusal to indulge Henry’s transgression over God’s law.
That’s a pretty cagey trick for a big-budget heritage movie, but Bolt is no ordinary schoolmaster. He sets up More as a sort of perpetual aphorism machine with an elegantly tart rejoinder for whoever crosses his moral code, including though not limited to crass King Henry (bouncing around in his finery), scheming adversary Thomas Cromwell (Leo McKern), traitorous protégée Richard Rich (John Hurt), and William Roper (Corin Redgrave), the Reformation sympathizer who has the gall to seek the hand of More’s daughter, Margaret (Susannah York). You wind up in one of two camps: either rapt in awe of More’s wisdom, cunning, and unshakable belief or confounded at his unwillingness to toe the line and get with the program. Even Margaret shows outrageous deference to papa when he denies Roper permission to marry.
Zinnemann can’t be said to have actually challenged the script. Incorruptible More remains incorruptible: this world is one that requires his smug moral compass, and the film sets out to prove it. Still, the material lends itself to a brightly-lit piece of pageantry, and Zinnemann admirably resists going that route. For one thing, he’s forgone shock-name casting: Scofield works in the role precisely because he’s not familiar enough to be typed, while Leo McKern makes a good adversary precisely because his craggy presence challenges the elegance of period pictures. More importantly, Zinnemann chooses to push the corruption of the world manifest instead of the Quality angle–early shots gaze upon stone carvings that stare down on state property in sombre judgement, and a certain autumnal decay never quite eludes the proceedings. Our man gives more thought to the pain being represented than most other filmmakers his age would’ve considered.
But is that redemption for a cheesy screenplay, or is it a hesitant recapitulation of its ever-so-vague thematics? As it’s a filmed play, one is always aware of that dialogue, which is simultaneously pop-obvious and empty of pleasure, full of simpleminded evasions Bolt has sapped of much flourish. And Zinnemann commits to such evasiveness, visually passing the textual buck even as he naively believes in what he’s doing. The whole thing threatens to turn into the most pedigreed game of Three Card Monte ever played, yet somehow, one can’t simply brush it off as a crock: A Man for All Seasons is made with such skill that you might enjoy it in spite of the mounting pile of cow flop (or because of Zinnemann’s incongruous approach to the material). Decide for yourself–just don’t interrogate it too much or it may fall apart in your hands.
THE DVD
Sony’s new Special Edition reissue of A Man for All Seasons improves on the previous DVD in irrefutable ways. The 1.67:1 anamorphic widescreen transfer, pillarboxed for 16×9 displays, restores a sliver of picture info to the image as well as a remarkable amount of detail, although much of that increased sharpness comes from a contrast boost so severe as to produce haloes around dark objects juxtaposed against light backgrounds. If skin tones are perhaps a little pink, that seems to be a film stock issue, since the overall palette suggests a greater degree of fidelity now that the orange Tudor drapery familiar from the previous disc is a more veracious electric red. Not sure why they bothered remixing the sound in 5.1 Dolby Digital: the source audio doesn’t yield much to brighten up the discrete channels, though everything is clear and powerful enough to hold your attention. As for extras, “The Life of Sir Thomas More” (18 mins.) starts off on the right foot by defining the Renaissance context to More and Henry VIII’s initial connection and eventual falling-out, but the piece eventually gets bogged down in taking the position of A Man for All Seasons. That said, the early parts hint at the larger, less narrow film that might have been. Trailers for Sense and Sensibility and Little Women cue up on startup.
120 minutes; G; 1.67:1 (16×9-enhanced); English DD 5.1, English DD 2.0 (Mono), French DD 2.0 (Mono); CC; English, French, Portuguese subtitles; DVD-9; Region One; Sony
