Director: Fred Zinnemann
Awards: lots and lots
Cast: Paul Scofield; Wendy Hiller; Robert Shaw; Orson Wells; Susannah York; John Hurt, Vanessa Redgrave.
STORY PLOT: Sir Thomas More is not able to approve the marriage of Henry the 8th to Anne Boylen --and his life hangs in the breech if he does not make a public statement of his support.
sez say: Thomas More was a religious fanatic--and it is hard to tell that from this movie.. He over saw burning-at-the-stake of men whom he considered heretics --ie men who criticized Rome. That seems to me to be a bad thing to do--but it was part of the same dedication that led him to be unable to approve the king's marriage.
This movie tries to make him into a principled man who can not go against his conscience and who stands his ground no matter the cost. That was no doubt a message the US was hankering for as we went deeper in the Viet Nam War and a few brave people stood against that disastrous foreign policy. But Thomas More was much more complicated than this story says--just like any person is, who is willing to risk his or her life, in order to defend an ideal. Do we approve a person's giving no thought to the impact their actions have on their family? How often is a person so purely and absolutely right that there is no possibility they could be wrong? Clearly Thomas More was a fanatic -- and how often, really, is the voice of a fanatic a voice to listen too? Sometime, yes, but not often...and if you look at the real Thomas More I don't think you'd find him nearly so heroic. So this is a fairy tale--and maybe a dangerous one.
