Review by Eric Hillis
Directed by: Anthony Harvey
Starring: Peter O'Toole, Katharine Hepburn, John Castle, Anthony Hopkins, Jane Merrow, Timothy Dalton, Nigel Terry
Every December, like clockwork, cinephiles engage in a tiresome annual debate over what makes a Christmas movie? Is it a film set during the holidays or one that evokes the spirit of the season? Director Anthony Harvey's 1968 adaptation of James Goldman's 1966 play The Lion in Winter is set during Christmas, but there isn't much seasonal warmth on display. It's about a family who gather for the holidays and spend their time bickering, belittling and backstabbing one another, which might make it the most Christmas movie ever made.
The family in question is that of England's King Henry II (Peter O'Toole). He gathers his family at his court with the purpose of deciding who should succeed him. Should it be his favourite, his oafish youngest son John (Nigel Terry)? Surely his more serious-minded older sons Richard (Anthony Hopkins, looking a lot like Russell Crowe in his first major screen role) and Geoffrey (John Castle) are more qualified to rule the land? In a gesture of seasonal goodwill, Henry releases his wife, Queen Eleanor (Katharine Hepburn) from a decade of imprisonment. Well okay, goodwill has nothing to do with it; Henry hopes to get his hands on her duchy of Aquitane. Thrown into the mix is France's teenage King Philip (Timothy Dalton), who is determined to see his sister Alais (Jane Merrow) married to whomever might be the heir to the English throne, unaware that she is Henry's secret lover.
Decades of soap opera squabbling has now made this sort of setup familiar to viewers, and modern audiences may be prompted to view The Lion in Winter as a Medieval Succession. But Goldman, adapting his own play here, was likely inspired by the screwball comedies of the 1930s, all whip crack dialogue delivered at a rapid pace. It soon becomes clear that Henry isn't interested in establishing an heir so much as in throwing a cat among the pigeons for the sake of some holiday entertainment at his family's expense. In this way Harvey's film is similar to another talky movie from 1968, Roy Ward Baker's The Anniversary, in which Bette Davis gathers her children and their partners for an anniversary dinner and relishes making them as uncomfortable as possible in her presence. But that movie gets everything wrapped up in 90 minutes, whereas The Lion in Winter is two hours and 15 minutes of familial bickering, and after a certain point it all becomes a little too repetitive. Viewers watching at home may wish to split their screening across two or three viewings to keep it fresh.
From its opening credits accompanied by John Barry's brooding theme (which surely inspired Jerry Goldsmith's score for The Omen) to the early location shoots of Medieval squalor and royal pomp, The Lion in Winter immediately reminds us of a pre-digital era when Hollywood knew how to make a movie seem larger than life. Douglas Slocombe's gritty photography, all muddy browns, creates the illusion that we're watching a lived-in world rather than one created on sets in Ireland's Ardmore Studios.
But this is very much an actor's movie, showcasing the scenery-chewing skills of O'Toole and Hepburn, and the subtlety of Hopkins (yes younger readers, there was a time when Hopkins was known for his subtletly). O'Toole is very British and campy while Hepburn is very American and caustic, and the clash of acting styles adds to the frisson between their characters. It's testament to the energy of Hepburn's performance that we never consider the fact that she was O'Toole's senior by a quarter of a century.
It's all very entertaining until it isn't. At a certain point we find ourselves wishing the drama had more to offer than simply forcing us to watch awful people treating each other awfully, which just isn't enough to justify the film's ultimately patience-testing running time.
The Lion in Winter is on UK bluray/DVD/VOD/UHD now.