Anne of the Thousand Days (1969)
(On TV, October 2019) There are Oscar-nominated movies that age so poorly that it’s a wonder why they were ever nominated, and then there are those where it’s still obvious, decades later, why they were. Anne of the Thousand Days belongs to the second category, give how lavishly it portrays one of the high points of any High School history curriculum. Here we are, once again, in King Henry VIII’s court as he throws a hissy fit about his right to divorce whoever he wants. This being said, Richard Burton ably plays him, and he gets to face off with a very young and fiery Genevieve Bujold as the titular Anne (Elizabeth I’s mom, if you’re keeping track). It’s not just a costume drama: it’s one of the ultimate examples of the form. The colours and cinematography still impress fifty years later, with more camera movements than we could expect from a film of that period. Alas, my interest for such subject matter is near an all-time low (I blame High School), and I found myself more bored than intrigued by the result even if I can recognize that it’s a superior example of such. Even I ended up appreciating some of the touches of high drama, humour or romance in the middle of a very well-known story. It liked it quite a bit better than A Man for All Seasons, for instance. But at least I can now take it out of my list of Oscar nominees I still hadn’t seen.