A Man for All Seasons won six Oscars, back in 1966, for Best Picture, Best Director (Zinnemann), Best Actor (Paul Scofield), Best Color Cinematography, Best Costume Design, and Best Adapted Screenplay. It was also nominated for Best Supporting Actor (Robert Shaw) and Best Supporting Actress (Wendy Hiller). The public spent over $20 million to see it in theaters. For Zinnemann, it was his third Oscar and second for a feature film.

Historical Background: Fred Zinnemann deserves more continuing attention and respect than he typically gets. He was nominated eight times for Academy Awards as Best Director of a feature film, winning the trophy twice. Born April 29th, 1907 in Vienna, Zinnemann studied the violin as a child and had aspirations of becoming a musician. Later, he began study for the law, proceeding as far as a master's degree, but inspired by his exposure to the films of Erich von Stroheim and King Vidor, he took a job as an assistant cameraman in Paris and then Berlin. Zinnemann emigrated to the United States in 1929 and settled immediately in Hollywood. He got a part as an extra in All Quiet on the Western Front (1930). By 1931, he had found work as an assistant to directors Berthold Viertel and Robert Flaherty. In 1934, he moved up to co-director for a documentary shot in Mexico. Then, in 1937, he began directing shorts for MGM. He won an Oscar, in 1938, for one of them entitled That Mothers Might Live.

Although Zinnemann was promoted to feature director in 1941, it wasn't until 1948 that his first major opportunity came along, with The Search, a drama about conditions in postwar Europe. His breakout films came in the early fifties. High Noon (1952) and From Here to Eternity (1953) were both huge box-office successes. The latter film earned Zinnemann his second Oscar and his first for a feature film. In 1955, he directed the delightful Oscar and Hammerstein musical Oklahoma!. Other successful Zinnemann films followed, including The Nun's Story (1959), The Sundowners (1960), A Man for All Seasons (1966), The Day of the Jackal (1973), and Julia (1977). The six Oscars won by A Man for All Seasons made it the film of the year in 1966. The rap on Zinnemann is that his work is sometimes plodding and uninspired, but his craftsmanship is beyond dispute and his best films are among the great ones of his era.

The Story: This film's story pertains to a famous Englishman who refused to compromise his principles to suit the whims of a King. Sir Thomas More (1478-1535) (played by Paul Scofield) was highly regarded by his countrymen for his fair and impartial judgments and refusal to take bribes. He was a staunch Catholic with unshakable faith in his duty to both God and his country. He had not anticipated the two loyalties coming into such implacable conflict.

King Henry VIII (1491-1547) (played by Robert Shaw) of the house of Tudor had once thought highly of Thomas More. He had him appointed to the high council in 1518 and knighted in 1521. More served several times on diplomatic missions to the low countries and became speaker of the House of Commons in 1523. More even succeeded Cardinal Wolsey (Orson Welles) as Lord Chancellor in 1529 and was the first lay person to hold that post. More's stature changed abruptly when he refused to support the King's determination to be divorced from his wife Catherine.

Henry had secured a Papal dispensation in 1503 in order to become betrothed to Catherine of Aragon, who was his brother's widow. When he succeeded his father to the throne in 1509, Henry married Catherine. Henry had a hearty personality and fondness for sports and military arts that endeared him to his subjects near the beginning of his reign, but a series of foreign misadventures had diminished his luster by the 1520's. In 1527, Henry made known his desire to divorce his wife Catherine. She had proved unable to produce a male heir for him. He had a lover on hand in the form of Anne Boleyn (Vanessa Redgrave). Henry based his claim of a right to divorce Catherine on the argument that the papal dispensation had been invalid. The Pope, however, was the prisoner of King Charles V of Spain, at the time, and Charles would have been most displeased with the Pope if he granted the dispensation. Henry attempted to circumvent the difficulties by appointing Wolsey to litigate the issue in the English courts, but that effort was squashed when the Pope summoned the case to Rome. For Henry, that interference was the last straw. He immediately began dissolving the ties between the English church and the papacy. With the backing of parliament and using a combination of bribes, threats, and taxes, Henry seized control of the clergy, forcing them to acknowledge him as the head of the English church. Only Sir Thomas More refused to sign the oath. Then, when Henry married Anne Boleyn the next year, More compounded the slight by refusing to attend the wedding. The Pope excommunicated King Henry in 1534, but by then it was a moot point.

Even before Wolsey's death, More was under pressure to help gain the King the annulment that he so badly wanted. Wolsey accused More of seeing things with a "horrible moral squint." Then the King paid the More estate a surprise visit, trying to coax More into supporting him with offers of career advancement and other favors. When that failed, the King put the vicious Thomas Cromwell (Leo McKern) on the task. The powerful Duke of Norfolk (Nigel Davenport), long a friend of More, tried initially to remain loyal to More, but ultimately succumbed to the mounting pressure. More, recognizing Norfolk's difficult situation, generously declared, "We'll end our friendship for friendship's sake." Before long, More was thrown into the Tower of London on suspicion of treason. His wife, Alice More (Wendy Hiller), daughter Margaret (Susannah York), and son-in-law William Roper (Corin Redgrave) were allowed to pay him a visit, but only after swearing to try to persuade him to sign the oath. More withstood all of the pressures in turn, standing firm behind his principles. Finally, he was tried for treason before a special tribunal. A young Judas named Richard Rich (John Hurt) betrayed him and helped ensure his conviction and subsequent execution by the headsman.

Themes: This is one of the thematically richest films I've encountered. There are so many levels on which it could be experienced and analyzed. One issue is the notion of principles and what it means to stand by them, in a political context.. It's often said that politics is the art of compromise and anyone with half a wit realizes that part of what is being compromised is one's principles. Politicians who don't learn to sometimes compromise their principles have no possibility of survival. Politicians often have to trade votes in order to stand by some of their key principles (or key interests of their constituency) by sacrificing some of the others.

Then there's the issue of the relative priority of the various categories of allegiances that the majority of people hold most dear: family, nation, and religion. The question is no less valid for those who are nonreligious. I, for example, have no religious affiliation but often place my humanistic ideals above patriotism in assessing international political questions. The issue of relative priorities is also applicable for those whose ties are stronger to their friends than their families. Thus, for some, the issue might be formulated as friends, nation, and philosophical beliefs, but it's still the same basic challenge. The conflict between patriotism and religion is stronger for Catholics than for some other Christian denominations because of the international structure of the Catholic Church, centered on the authority of the Vatican. When John F. Kennedy ran for president (the first Catholic to do so), there were people who voiced concern about the potential conflict of loyalties that a Catholic might have as president. Kennedy put those concerns to rest, for most voters at least, by declaring that his Catholicism would play no role in his decisions as president though it would continue to be an important part of his private life. Thomas More, being a man of profound faith, put his religious convictions above both family and nation. That decision by More then raised questions of loyalty, especially given that the papacy was under the political influence of Spain and France, which were political rivals to England. For too many people, the challenge is not which set of principles takes highest priority, but rather whether any of the person's principles can withstand the challenges of bribery, opportunities for power or wealth, or the offer of sexual favors. Thomas More was above compromising his integrity in such ways and, to that extent at least, all good people must admire his principled approach to life.

In theory, we admire people who are unwavering in their convictions, but in practice, we mostly only admire those who are steadfast if their convictions very nearly resemble our own. For example, in America, some of the most principled citizens are found on the extreme left and right sides of the political spectrum, adhering to diametrically opposed belief systems. A fundamentalist Christian, for example, might be adamantly opposed to homosexuality on Biblical grounds. He might be uncompromising in his view precisely because he is unwavering in his beliefs and principles. On the left side of the political spectrum, a person might be equally uncompromising in his adherence to principles of tolerance, diversity, and equality. For the abortion issue, both the "pro-life" and the "pro-choice" viewpoints are framed as principled positions. Politically, there is nothing more troublesome than a stubbornly principled person whose principles are opposed to your own.

Then, another set of issues raised by this film is that of human rights, including several of the ones we hold most dear in America (and, for the most part, in other Western nations). Inherent in this film's story is the issue of freedom of speech and its corollary, freedom to be silent. Despite what a lot of Americans imagine, freedom of speech has never been an absolute right. Common sense demands that there be some limitations on the right to freedom of speech, such as inciting to violence or panic or indulging in inflammatory hate-speech. The right to silence ought to be closer to an absolute, but even there people can be compelled to testify or be imprisoned for withholding evidence or information vital to public safety. We even have instances, in America, when people are required to sign oaths of one kind or another. For that matter, the Pledge of Allegiance is little more than an oath to nationalism. The right to silence intertwines with the right to privacy, since silence is how one keeps one's thoughts private. We've all heard about the severe challenges that are currently being directed at the right to privacy, in America.

For me, one of the reminders I most treasured in watching A Man for All Seasons is the issue of protecting the free-speech and silence rights of all citizens, including those whose views I find abhorrent. As More put it, "I give the devil benefit of the law for my own safety's sake." For the most part, I share very little of Thomas More's perspective on life. I have none of his faith or allegiance to his God or his Church. Personally, I am glad that England, at that time, broke with the Catholic Church. I can also understand why Henry VIII wanted a divorce and a male heir. I think that Thomas More was pigheaded, to an extent, to put his beliefs above the welfare of his family, but I also realize the importance of supporting his right to his beliefs and his right to be silent in preference to misrepresenting his views. I would even have supported his right to dissent publicly from supporting the King's divorce. I appreciate begin reminded of the necessity of standing up for every person's free speech rights because it's a point that I sometimes lose sight of when people mouth off in ways that I find disagreeable. Still, there are limits to how far a society can go in allowing people to act in accordance with their own beliefs. If I were allowed to act in accordance with my conscience, I'd refuse to pay the fraction of my federal taxes that are helping to pay for the war in Iraq, which I believe to be patently immoral. A nation can't have each person picking and choosing which laws they will and will not obey, based on their personal beliefs.

Production Values: The script for A Man for All Seasons was written by Robert Bolt based on his own highly successful play of the same name. The play had over 300 performances in London before making its Broadway debut in 1961, where it won the New York Drama Critics Award. The screenplay is highly literate, dealing in weighty philosophical themes, but taking great care to explain the issues in a way that audiences can easily follow. The dialog is consistently credible and sometimes inspired. Bolt simplified the script for the cinematic adaptation, removing a ubiquitous character called the Common Man. The production style was also altered from the sparse, abstract theater sets that emphasized the philosophical nature of the subject matter to a lavish naturalistic costume drama approach that could make use of the capacity of cinema for beautiful images. The costumes for the film are gorgeous. The film's budget was just $2 million, which is not much for an historical epic. One month was spent shooting the beautifully rendered external shots, at such sites as the Beaulieu River, Lord Montagu's estate near Southampton, and a Tudor mansion near Oxford. The interior sets were meticulously reproduced at the Shepperton Studios near London. Zinnemann did a terrific job ensuring that the period detail informed the story rather than overwhelming it.

The performance by Paul Scofield as Thomas More is one of the greatest male lead performances in all of cinema. Scofield had played the part for years on stage and had fully absorbed More's personality and viewpoint. As you watch him in the film, you forget that you are not watching the actual Sir Thomas More. Scofield performs the part with magnificent restraint. Scofield had other film appearances in The Train (1965), Quiz Show (1994), and The Crucible (1996). Other fine performances were turned in by Wendy Hiller as the anguished Alice More, Leo McKern as the diabolical Thomas Cromwell, Robert Shaw as the tempestuous King Henry VIII, Orson Welles as the rotund Cardinal Wolsey, Susannah York as the intelligent Margaret More, Nigel Davenport as the conflicted Duke of Norfolk, John Hurt as the slimy Richard Rich, and Vanessa Redgrave as the seductive Anne Boleyn. The only grating performance for me was than of Corin Redgrave as a bellicose William Roper.

Bottom-Line: You don't need to be a person of faith to appreciate Sir Thomas More's stubborn adherence to his principles. The main issue exemplified by More's life is having the integrity to act consistently according to one's beliefs, regardless of what those beliefs might be. Politicians, even more than the general citizenry, have always been known for their easy willingness to bargain away their principles and its refreshing to observe, in More, a loftier alternative. It's very rare for a film to address such high-powered issues, but to do so in a manner that is highly entertaining and visually stunning is a tremendous accomplishment. Viewers who are not excited by discussion of the conflicts between moral and political perspectives are likely to find this film talky and plodding, but I was at no time bored by this film. For me, it was more genuinely engaging that a lot of fast-paced action films. The DVD is short on extras, including only a small pamphlet and the theatrical trailer that accompanied the film's re-release. The film's running time is 120 minutes.

Recommended:
Yes

Viewing Format: DVD
Video Occasion: Fit for Friday Evening
Suitability For Children: Suitable for Children Age 13 and Older