BEFORE: I'm pretty sure that last film was a dead-end where actor linking is concerned, but that's why I started the new rule about allowing characters to carry over from one film to the next - that's useful in linking these mini-chains together to form the larger chain. So Henry VIII and Anne Boleyn carry over from "Anne of the Thousand Days". I'll have to use this technique again to get back to more modern films at the close of the Sherlock Holmes chain.
THE PLOT: King Henry VIII marries five more times after his divorce from his first wife, Catherine of Aragon.
AFTER: You're probably thinking, where are the comparisons to Donald Trump? Come on, it's too easy - tyrannical leader, multiple wives from different European countries, large man, large ego, large appetite for chicken, and a lavish lifestyle with (probably) multiple affairs. But there are key differences, OK? For starters, Henry VIII was obsessed with having a son to succeed him someday, and totally ignored his daughters - while Trump seems creepily obsessed with his daughter. Plus, as far as I know, Trump never had any of his wives or girlfriends banished or beheaded, he much preferred to pay them off, either with alimony or hush money.
This is nearly the oldest film currently on my watchlist, and it has not aged well. I mean, I realize that films of that era were operating under a production code, and as a general rule people in the 1930's didn't openly discuss such topics as adultery, incest and sex outside of marriage, but that's the whole meat of Henry's story right there. Without any of that, his biopic has no bite, no substance. You put this film up against history as we understand it, and it falls short, again and again. Nothing about the religious break-up with Rome, nothing about torturing witness to testify against the various queens, nothing about the abuses of power committed in the name of the King.
I do enjoy the fact that this film picks up almost exactly where yesterday's film left off, with the execution of Anne Boleyn. But the film never says WHY she's being executed, I don't think so, anyway, it just takes it as a given that she's got to die, and any reasoning is covered up by the executioner sharpening his sword, and a man randomly hammering to build the platform for it - it's ridiculous how little exposition this moment in history is given. Prior to this scene, the 20 year reign of Catherine of Aragon as queen is dispatched with an on-screen title that says: "She was a respectable lady, so King Henry had no interest in her..." or something like that. What this really means is "the filmmakers had no interest in telling this part of the story." Sure, just don't bother with the piece of history that you're too lazy to research, and be sure to start your story in the middle. What about her daughter, who briefly became queen, how is that not important?
Anne Boleyn's only in the first few minutes of the film, too, and even then, no mention is made of her daughter, Elizabeth, who later became queen too. What the hell is going on here? They just wanted to turn this film into speed dating for the king, it seems. And then when Henry marries his fourth wife, Anne of Cleves, they spend their first marital night playing cards, of all things, and decide to call it quits because they were both cheating in the card game. Right, I'm sure that they were incompatible in bed because they couldn't play cards together, give me a break. Wikipedia calls this scene "imaginative", which means it's a bunch of B.S. - isn't it much more likely that they had bad sex, or no sex, and then Henry was willing to pay her off just to get rid of her?
Finally, after wife #5, Katherine Howard, falls for one of Henry's courtiers, which gets them both executed, Henry settles down with wife #6, Katherine Parr, who shows some backbone in standing up to him. God knows the guy needed some structure in his life. Then Henry VIII talks to the audience (!!) and says, "Six wives, and the best of them's the worst." What the hell does that even mean, how can the best one be the worst one? That does sound like something nonsensical that Trump would say, though.
And how did Charles Laughton win a Best Actor Oscar for this? I can only assume that the standards for great acting were much, much lower back in the 1930's.
Starring Charles Laughton (last seen in "The Paradine Case"), Merle Oberon, Wendy Barrie, Elsa Lanchester (last seen in "The Inspector General"), Binnie Barnes (last seen in "Holiday"), Everley Gregg (last seen in "Stage Fright"), Robert Donat (last seen in "The 39 Steps"), Franklin Dyall (last seen in "Easy Virtue"), Miles Mander, Lawrence Hanray, William Austin (last seen in "The Gay Divorcee"), John Loder (last seen in "Now, Voyager"), Lady Tree, John Turnbull (also last seen in "The 39 Steps"), Frederick Culley, William Heughan, Judy Kelly, Hay Petrie, Wally Patch, Arthur Howard, Annie Esmond, Claud Allister, Eileen O'Mahony, Gibb McLaughlin, Sam Livesey (last seen in "Blackmail").
RATING: 3 out of 10 (empty) stained-glass windows (??)
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