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| THE LION IN WINTER (1968) |
A Martin Poll Production
An Avo Embassy Film
In Panavision and Eastman Color, 135 minutes
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CAST
Henry II: Peter O'Toole
Eleanor of Aquitaine: Katharine Hepburn
Princess Alais: Jane Merrow
Prince Geoffrey: John Castle
King Philip: Timothy Dalton
Prince Richard, the Lion-Hearted: Anthony Hopkins
William Marshall: Nigel Stock
Prince John: Nigel Terry
and Kenneth Griffith, O.Z. Whitehead
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CREDITS
Director: Anthony Harvey
Producer: Martin Poll
Executive Producer: Joseph E. Levine
Associate Producer: Jane C. Nusbaum
Scenarist: James Goldman
Based on the Play by: James Goldman
Photographer: Douglas Slocombe
Art Director: Peter Murton
Set Decorator: Peter James
Associate Set Decorator:
Editor: John Bloom
Sound Recorder: Simon Kaye
Musical Score: John Barry
Costumer: Margaret Furse
Production Supervisor: John Quested
Production Manager: Basil Appleby
Assistant Director: Kip Gowans
Makeup Artist: William Lodge
Hair Stylist: A.G. Scott
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SYNOPSIS
In 1183, the middle-aged Henry II summons his imprisoned wife, Eleanor of Aquitaine, and sons Richard, Geoffrey, and John to make his selection of his successor. They spend the Christmas holidays squabbling and plotting in an attempt to settle the thorny question of the succession to the throne on Henry's death, a succession which affects the fate of both England and France. Young Philip Capet, King of France, and his sister Alais, mistress to Henry and promised bride to Henry's successor, join the regal goings-on with the twelfth century royal family. Eleanor and Henry are torn apart by fierce political ambitions, yet are joined by deep respect and affection. This family reunion is roaring, rambunctious, and revealing.
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CRITIQUES
"Arguably, indeed, the performance of her (Hepburn's) career. Playing the relentlessly intelligent, ambitious, cunning, devious, and yet after all, when one least expects it, human and vulnerable Eleanor of Aquitaine she finds possibilities, both in herself and in the text which we would hardly have guessed at. Mr. O'Toole is here transformed: aged to 50, disguised behind a beard, and given an antagonist to his own measure he comes over remarkably well as Henry. The rest of the cast provide, what is required, excellent support. For when we come down to it this film is most importantly a great duet, superbly rendered. Above all, it is Katharine Hepburn's film, and a monument to Katharine Hepburn as a growing, developing, still surprising actress, not merely a monument to a monument."
- John Russell Taylor, The Times (London), 1968
"Miss Hepburn certainly crowns her career as Eleanor, triumphant in her creation of a complete and womanly queen, a vulture mother who sees her sons too clearly, an aging beauty who can look her image in the eye, a sophisticate whose shrewdness is matched only by her humor. A pity it is that Miss Hepburn won an Oscar for sentimental reasons for last year's
Guess Who's Coming to Dinner, when this year it would be hers by right of performance!"
- Judith Crist, New York, 1968
"Imitation wit and imitation poetry at the 12th-century court of the Plantagenets. Anthony Harvey directed James Goldman's adaptation of his own 1966 play. On the Broadway stage this play seemed to be an entertaining melodrama about the Plantagenets as a family of monsters playing Freudian games of sex and power, but it was brought to the screen as if it were poetic drama of a very high order, and the point of view is too limited and anachronistic to justify all this howling and sobbing and carrying on. Peter O'Toole is in great voice and good spirits as Henry II - he's so robust he almost carries the role off. Not a small feat when you have to deliver lines such as
'Well, what shall we hang? The holly or each other?' and 'The sky is pocked with stars.' Goldman's dialogue can't bear the weight of the film's aspirations to grandeur, and, as Eleanor of Aquitaine, Katharine Hepburn does a gallant-ravaged-great-lady number. She draws upon our feelings for her, not for the character she's playing, and the self-exploitation is hard to take."
- Pauline Kael, The New Yorker
"Domestic squabbles concerning the succession at the court of Henry II in 1183. O'Toole's Henry is a grizzled, decaying old man, a continuation of the same part in Becket. Hepburn won her third Oscar for her role as his wife, Eleanor of Aquitaine. Harvey's direction is intelligent enough, though the reduction of power struggles to fits of personal pique - where the fate of nations hangs in the balance - becomes a little irritating. Enjoyable for its two lead performances, however."
- Rod McShane, Time Out
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COMMENTARY TRACK
"Working opposite her was extraordinary. With her you have to be one hundred per cent or forget it. She's like a bloody poultice: she pulls a performance out of you."
- Peter O'Toole
"Marvellous Kate. She's perfect. Incapable of being disloyal or telling a lie. I love her. A few years ago, Spencer Tracy wouldn't have stood a chance. I would have chopped his head off. Or broken his fingers. All of them, one at a time."
- Peter O'Toole
"My first shooting in the movie was virtually my first scene, in which I'm introduced to the entire family. The camera was pointing towards them over my shoulder. I was standing off-camera playing the scene for them. That took most of the day. We never got to me; they said they would do that tomorrow morning. They dismissed Katharine and said she didn't need to come in. And she said, 'But you're turning around on Timothy. I'm coming in.' So she came in to give one line off-camera."
- Timothy Dalton
"I called Kate in New York about four in the morning, because I thought she'd be thrilled to know that she had won [the Oscar for The Lion in Winter]. 'What time is it? Oh, for God's sake, I am asleep. Just put it in a bag or something,' she said. I put it in a brown paper bag and ten years later, we were sitting around one evening, and she was looking for some chocolates, and there was this bag, with the Academy Award still there."
- Anthony Harvey
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Publicity material
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Katharine Hepburn, Peter O'Toole
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Katharine Hepburn
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Katharine Hepburn
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Katharine Hepburn
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Katharine Hepburn
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In rehearsal: Katharine Hepburn
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Watch the trailer
