The Lion in Winter – Studiocanal

Director: Anthony Harvey
Screenplay: James Goldman
Based on a Play by: James Goldman
Starring: Peter O’Toole, Katharine Hepburn, Anthony Hopkins, John Castle, Nigel Terry, Timothy Dalton
Country: UK, USA
Running Time: 134 min
Year: 1968
BBFC Certificate: TBC

StudioCanal’s releases of UHD blu-ray editions of classic films continues with this classic from the Avco Embassy library. The Lion In Winter (1968), though something of a spiritual sequel to 1964’s Becket with Peter O’Toole as an older Henry II, is very much its own beast. At the time notorious because James Goldman’s script (and his original play) are gleefully anachronistic in a way that was less common then. Set at Christmas (with Christmas trees decorating the place),

Fifty year old Henry II, King of England (O’Toole, then thirty-five) is establishing his line of succession in his castle in Chinon, France, wanting his youngest son John (Nigel Terry) while his estranged queen, Eleanor of Aquitane (an Oscar winning Katharine Hepburn, sixty playing her actual age) favours Richard the Lionheart (Anthony Hopkins in his breakthrough role).. Meanwhile, Henry has invited the teenage Philip II of France (a twinky 22 year old Timothy Dalton with painted panto villain beard) to betroth his sister Alais (Jane Merrow), inconveniently Henry’s lover to the future King, When everyone decides to meet, things don’t quite go as planned.

The film is an opulent production with fine performances. It revels in pageantry rather than historical accuracy (do we really think Eleanor talked like a mid-century New England socialite?) and ripe dialogue (Henry musing on his age, ‘I’m fifty now, good god, boy I’m the oldest man I know, I’ve got a decade on the Pope’. It is not so much a historical story, but a family satire, a story of generational turmoil. It is camp, perhaps even to some extent failed camp. It never quite gets as ludicrous as it wants to be. Hepburn, who unlike her contemporaries, never lowered herself to Grande Dame Guignol (barring the prototypical Suddenly Last Summer) channels all that ham into this prestige project.

Things do confuse. Hopkins (30 playing 26) looks the same age as O’Toole, and considering they have similar beards, it’s hard to tell who’s who at times. They come across as contemporaries, while it is odd that you put John Castle and Timothy Dalton and they’re not playing brothers.But it all adds to the richness.

John Barry’s brilliant score (which possibly influenced Jerry Goldsmith’s work on the Omen) helps (especially in the foreboding title sequences, a montage of medieval grotesques). And the sets are impressive. Despite all this, it feels a small, personal film at heart.

Now, for the personal stuff. This writer has a connection to this film. It was shot in Ireland, and yours truly’s own grandfather worked as an animal wrangler and extra. He had very fond memories of Peter O’Toole and Hepburn. O’Toole aside (who though of Irish ancestry and always considered himself Irish and lied about his birthplace, I always consider him more of the Huston/Ustinov school of glorified Hibernophile than an actual son of Eireann), the nearest to an Irish actor is former Hollywood character actor OZ Whitehead, weirdly cast as the Bishop of Durham as he was resident here. The castle set at Ardmore is impressive, but the film doesn’t feel like an Irish-made film. Where’s Niall McGinnis or Noel Purcell? As someone whose father as a boy remembers seeing the castle set, and how much of a spectacle it was, I feel a personal connection to this film, and almost feel giving a star review is biased.

The Lion in Winter is out now on UHD, DVD & Blu-ray, courtesy of Studiocanal Vintage Classics.

Unfortunately, I haven’t had the time to check out the extras yet.

Where to watch The Lion in Winter