The Private Life of Henry VIII

After reading Wolf Hall I've been immersing myself in all things Henry VIII. I'm watching the first season of The Tudors, and last night saw, for the first time, the Alexander Korda film The Private Life of Henry VIII, released in 1933 and starring Charles Laughton in his Oscar-winning role. The film is part of a three-film collection of Korda films, the other two will be discussed here shortly.

The surprise here is that the film is primarily a comedy. Laughton, who presents a Henry that most of us our familiar with, a corpulent, gluttonous fellow who tends to stand with hands akimbo, wearing an ermine-trimmed robe and devouring fowl as if his life depended on it, displays comic timing that is delicious to watch. "The things I do for England," he says, before entering the wedding-night boudoir with Anne of Cleves, with a spin as if he were Oliver Hardy.

There is a lot of drollery throughout, even though two of his wives are executed. We start on the day Anne Boleyn (Merle Oberon) is executed, with the ladies in waiting gossiping about it. One of them in Katherine Howard (Binnie Barnes), who will one day get her turn in Henry's bed, and on the chopping block.

Starting where it does, the film avoids Katharine of Aragon (a title card tells us her story is not interesting--she was a respectable woman, so Henry divorced her). Thus we miss the intrigue involving the Catholic church. Instead we get a gallop through history, as Henry marries Jane Seymour (presented here as a ninny--Henry tells a friend that the key to happiness is to "marry a stupid woman"). She bears him his long-desired son, but dies in the process. Then he has an arranged marriage with Anne of Cleves (Elsa Lanchester, who was Mrs. Laughton), based on a portrait. She doesn't want to marry him, so exaggerates her homeliness (and brings along a retinue of horse-faced ladies in waiting). The two spend their wedding night playing cards, and mutually arrange for an annulment.

It is Howard who dominates the story, as she finally marries the King, but dallies with an aide and gets the chop. Laughton probably won the Oscar for his magnificent breakdown scene when he's told that she's unfaithful.

Finally he marries Katharine Parr, who will outlive him. "The best wife is the worst wife," he tells us, before the fade-out, his face lined, his hair gray.

Korda's direction emphasizes shadows and twisting corridors of the palace (a wrestling scene, in which a fifty-year-old Henry tries to prove his youthful vigor, is shown primarily in shadow), but I couldn't get over how comedic the film was. It was almost like an extended Saturday Night Live sketch, with John Belushi as Henry. Well, it was better than that, but not what I was expecting.