Zinnemann was wise to have Robert Bolt, the playwright, write the screenplay.
One of my favorite scenes is when Henry tries to impress Susannah York's scholarly Margaret with his halting, schoolboy Latin, and she eagerly, if unwisely, unleashes a torrent of fluent Latin in response. The look on Henry's face was priceless. His diatribe to Will against the cutting down of the English"Trees of Law" and warning against the "winds that would blow" I found even more powerfully acted than his address to Parliament. Masterful acting.
I've since learned that More, who was such an appealing hero here, as Lord High Chancellor he was also a somewhat prolific burner-at-the stake for Protestant "heretics", and sought to suppress the first English translation of the Bible, voicing his support for the burning of one of its distributors. It tarnished his image in my mind quite a bit!
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[deleted]
2 years ago
I have heard that the author of the work describing More as a heretic was somewhat narrow in his opinion, and to be fair, this was happening all over Europe. The Inquisition being even more horrible.
As for the translation I wonder if people realize what a danger this was to the Holy Sea as their laws were all written in Latin and would now be under scrutiny. It was a legal as well as dogma matter.
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