|
"So that's the King's bed!" Alexander Korda's design is to study historical figures by peeping through their chamber keyholes, later Ken Russell happily adopts it and shoots it through the stratosphere. Tudor England is a procession of ribald scrims, the perfect stage for Charles Laughton's rip-snorting rendition of the eponymous monarch as an inflamed bear in doublet and tights. The six wives provide the circular structure. Catherine of Aragon was "respectable" and thus "of no particular interest," the story skips ahead to Anne Boleyn (Merle Oberon) in the morning of her own beheading, just the changing of the matrimonial guard. Jane Seymour (Wendy Barrie) is a scatterbrain who expires after giving Henry a male heir, Anne of Cleves (Elsa Lanchester) is a willful kook and cardsharp who bargains for a divorce, to the relief of both parties. Korda and his humorists make sure that the standard biopic solemnity is not part of this royal court: The chipper audience by the chopping block and the hatchet-man's indignation at the Frenchman stealing his job ("A crying shame, with half of the English executioners out of work as it is") set the tone, from there it's a mere step to have the King gnawing promiscuously on roasted fowl and mourning the death of manners in between belches. "The things I've done for England..." The courtship of Katherine Howard (Binnie Barnes) allows Laughton's most inspired comic moment (trying to mime suavity while sneaking into the maiden's boudoir) as well as his most moving one (sinking into his throne upon news of her unfaithfulness). The henpecked prologue with Katherine Parr (Everley Gregg) restores the droll timbre, the punchline is delivered straight into the camera, out of W.C. Fields. With Robert Donat, Franklin Dyall, John Loder, Miles Mander, Lady Tree, Laurence Hanray, and William Austin. In black and white.
--- Fernando F. Croce |