By JAMES MONTI
As many of our readers are already aware, relics of the English martyrs St. Thomas More and St. John Fisher are soon to begin a nine-city tour of the United States as part of the U.S. bishops’ 2016 June 21 to July 4 Fortnight for Freedom observance. (See “Fortnight for Freedom” at the website of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, www.usccb.org.)
Specifically, there will be a small silver and crystal reliquary on loan from England’s Stonyhurst College containing a bone fragment of St. Thomas More (probably from his jaw). One description of the reliquary asserts that there is also a tooth of More within it. As for St. John Fisher, it is a second-class relic of the bishop that will be presented, also on loan from Stonyhurst College, a signet ring worn by the prelate.
This amazing opportunity to “encounter personally” these two heroes of the faith comes during a year that marks the 50th anniversary of one of the greatest films of all time, movie director Fred Zinnemann’s A Man for All Seasons, the ultimate cinematic tribute to Thomas More’s courage in the face of evil, a screen adaptation of Robert Bolt’s 1960 play of the same name reworked into a screen play by Bolt himself.
A Man for All Seasons captivates the viewer literally from its opening seconds. Camera shots of Hampton Court’s stone gargoyles set against a threatening sky and the twittering of birds evoke a sense of contrast between the narrow vision of this world and the boundless perspective of eternity that will permeate the film to its conclusion.
The dispatch of a messenger from Cardinal Wolsey by boat down the Thames to Thomas More’s residence of Chelsea begins the action as Georges Delerue’s unforgettable opening neo-Renaissance music score for the film unfolds amid haunting imagery of twilight descending upon the river. From when I first saw this movie at the age of ten, this sequence has seemed to me to be a metaphor of the twilight of Catholic England — the tragic closing of a thousand years of England’s communion as a nation with the See of Peter and the universal Church.
What becomes quickly evident is the movie’s exceptional degree of fidelity to the spirit and character of the real Thomas More, an achievement principally to the credit of A Man for All Seasons’ playwright and the screenwriter of its cinematic realization, Robert Bolt. The scene of More’s conversation with Cardinal Wolsey about the “Great Matter,” King Henry VIII’s adulterous quest to divorce his queen Catherine and take Anne Boleyn for his wife, ushers us into the principled mindset of More in upholding the prerogatives of the Church and the authority of the papacy in the face of Cardinal Wolsey’s lame arguments of raw political expediency.
The success of this scene and indeed the film as a whole is also the outcome of incomparable tour-de-force acting on the part of Paul Scofield as Thomas More. And Orson Welles plays his part brilliantly as a cardinal all too ready to pander to his king.
One of the extraordinary strengths of this movie is its plethora of what I would call “the greatest lines More never spoke,” that is, lines of fictional dialogue that Bolt conceived for More which, although never actually said by the real man, are truly consonant with More’s beliefs and manner of expressing himself.
The most famous of these comes during More’s trial in Westminster Hall when he rebukes his betrayer Richard Rich for his perjury. Eyeing the chain of office for Wales that Rich is sporting as the reward for his “cooperation” in More’s downfall, the martyr quotes our Lord’s warning that it avails a man nothing to gain the whole world at the cost of his soul (Matt. 15:26), and then adds that devastating one-liner, “But for Wales?”
Yet there are other equally insightful lines that Bolt has given to More. A personal favorite of mine is More’s comment to his daughter Margaret that while God created animals for their innocence and plants for their simplicity, “Man he made to serve him wittily, in the tangle of his mind.”
There is also More’s keen remark in his heated exchange with his headstrong son-in-law William Roper, who takes offense at being called a “heretic” for his infatuation with Luther’s ideology. More replies, “It’s not a likeable word. It’s not a likeable thing!”
Significantly, Robert Bolt places William Roper’s “Lutheran phase” chronologically ahead of his marriage to Margaret More when in fact this episode unfolded sometime after their marriage. By making this change, casting More as giving Roper an ultimatum to renounce his heresy or be denied permission to marry Meg, Bolt, an avowed agnostic, seems to break with his own personal view of More as primarily a martyr for freedom of conscience.
More clearly doesn’t care here whether Roper believes in his conscience that Luther is right; as far as More is concerned, what Roper must do is conform his conscience to a truth bigger than himself and his own opinions, the Catholic faith. Thus More is depicted as actually setting the bar higher than simply following one’s own conscience.
Fred Zinnemann began work on the movie in 1965. It premiered in New York on December 12, 1966. There was also in New York a private screening of the movie by the city’s archbishop Francis Cardinal Spellman.
Years ago, a priest who was present at this screening (now deceased) told me an anecdote concerning this occasion that says a lot about Robert Bolt’s reverence for More. The priest, because of his duties, had to leave the screening early. When he emerged, he encountered Bolt outside, who was pacing about nervously. The latter anxiously asked the priest whether the cardinal and his clergy were pleased with the movie.
While naturally a favorable reception of the movie by the Catholic Church was something Bolt would have seen as good for box office revenues, I believe that his desire to win the Church’s approval ran deeper than merely monetary motives. For all his inclination to see More as a martyr for conscience rather than a martyr for his faith, Bolt nonetheless clearly wanted to depict More in a manner the Catholic Church could identify with.
A Man for All Seasons is likewise a success due to the incredible direction and cinematography of Fred Zinnemann. Among many fine examples of this is the filming of the scene depicting the English bishops’ reaction to King Henry’s menacing demand of the title, “Supreme Head of the Church in England.” A large, beautiful crucifix conspicuously looms over the assembly of prelates as they contemplate the prospect of choosing between the will of God and the will of their king.
In another scene that portrays More being led from his prison cell for interrogation, he passes a banquet hall where dancers “party on,” blindly oblivious to the gathering darkness that is descending upon their world and More’s.
Gifts From God
What took place behind the scenes in the making of this film is almost as remarkable as the film itself, and suggests that Heaven was taking an interest in its production — not too surprising, in view of the fact that the movie has become an instrument of grace in the lives of so many.
In mid-April of 1966 the production crew was ready to film the wintry scene of the Duke of Norfolk riding on horseback across a snow-covered landscape to retrieve from the dying Cardinal Wolsey the chain of office he had worn as Lord Chancellor. Everyone knows it doesn’t snow in England in mid-April, so Zinnemann had two truckloads of white Styrofoam on hand, ready to create the illusion of a snow-scape the next day.
But when on the preceding night the crew arrived at the filming location, real snow began to fall. By morning the set was mantled in white. Zinnemann wasted no time availing himself of this gift from God and began filming. No sooner had they completed their work than the snow quickly melted, disappearing entirely within half an hour.
During the filming of the highly charged exchange between Thomas More and Henry VIII (played by Robert Shaw), it was noticed that when Henry was delivering one of his most heated outbursts, a gust of wind suddenly started up and shook the trees of the garden. The rattled foliage dramatically accented Henry’s rage and looked great on camera.
But what was more amazing was that each time the crew had to do a retake of this particular line of Henry in order to capture the scene from various camera angles, the gusty wind would just as suddenly return and then die away immediately afterward.
A great work of art can sometimes wind up moving its very creators. Such was the case with A Man for All Seasons. Zinnemann tells how after beginning work on the movie with two days of routine production, the crew was transfixed on the third day by a powerful speech of More they had to film. From that day onward, an atmosphere of awe permeated the movie set. Zinnemann also relates that long after the production of the movie was completed, he still felt a certain reverence in the presence of the More actor Paul Scofield as if he were a saint — as if he were still Thomas More.
Whenever history is brought onto the “big screen,” a bit of tinkering with reality seems almost inevitable as a director tries to telescope a man’s life into a tiny timeframe. From the beginning, there have been those who have complained about certain historical inaccuracies in A Man for All Seasons.
Yet no less a More scholar than the illustrious E.E. Reynolds (+1980) and others like him have received the movie quite positively, pleased by its underlying fidelity to the essence of More. As for me, as someone who spent five years in the 1990s poring over More’s writings and the earliest accounts of his life to prepare my own biography of the saint, I remain unchanged in my admiration for this timeless cinematic depiction of one of the Church’s greatest martyrs.
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