Summary 
Outstanding adaptation of James Goldman's 1966 stage play is a brilliantly written and performed character study with Henry II and Queen Eleanor waging verbal battle in 1183 over which of their three sons should be named successor to the crown. Wonderful dialogue within a richly cinematic realization of 12th-century England. Seven Academy Award nominations, including Oscar wins for Katharine Hepburn as Best Actress (in a tie with Barbra Streisand as Funny Girl), the adapted screenplay, and the musical score. Of note to Shakespeare scholars with the young John and his mother Eleanor of Aquitaine two of the principals in the Bard's King John.
Production
Directed by Anthony Harvey. 1968.
Cast
Peter O'Toole (Henry II), Katharine Hepburn (Eleanor), Anthony Hopkins (Richard), John Castle (Geoffrey), Nigel Terry (John), Timothy Dalton (King Philip of France), Jane Merrow (Alais), Nigel Stock (William).
Analysis
Anthony Harvey's superb 1968 film version of James Goldman's The Lion in Winter is not only an exceptional period drama, but a fascinating insight into chess-game political machinations and delicious royal intrigue in the form of vicious family infighting. The intellectual battles are waged with clever dialogue and ample humor, contests waged with calculated cruelty and within the complexities of jealousy and aging. Goldman's story concerns the Christmas Court of Henry II in 1183, with his Queen temporarily freed from prison, the young King of France invited, and his three sons summoned to the old stone castle. The King has decided on a successor and plans to name the next in line, but he seeks the Queen's French lands as well as a prominent role for his lovely young mistress.
Goldman and Harvey provide keen insights into the character of Henry's sons as they are summoned by the King's messenger, William, to the Christmas Court. Two of the sons are roused from daydreaming: Richard imagines himself as a fully armored knight, sending an opponent sprawling from his steed with a lance thrust and about to behead him with a sword strike when William interrupts him; and Geoffrey imagines himself a concealed general, raising his arm to send waves of cavalry troops upon marching enemy foot-soldiers on a sandy beach, but he too is interrupted before he can revel in the overwhelming slaughter. The reverie - subtly indicative of Richard's cold-blooded brutality and Geoffrey's behind-the-scenes sadism - segues back to reality with a shot of Henry's sword clashing with another blade. Peter O'Toole's bearded and burly King Henry II wears layers of heavy wool, exerting himself in the schooling of his favorite son John in the tactics of single combat. Likening himself to King Lear with his three daughters, O'Toole's fifty-year-old Henry is ready to name John his successor rather than Richard - the favorite of the Queen - or Geoffrey (clearly no one's favorite). He refers to the Queen - Eleanor of Aquitaine - as "the great bitch" decaying in the tower, and he stomps off to drink wine from a metal goblet and dally with Alais, his pretty young mistress.
Harvey's vision of The Lion in Winter is decidedly cinematic, with many outdoors shots showing sweeping panoramas of a vast and barren English countryside, and a lushly choral and dramatic score. Windblown old England seems grittily authentic, with chickens and dogs running free in the castle courtyard, making a racket among milling peasants who huddle around campfires, scurry from doorway to doorway, and roll along on horse-drawn carts. The courtyard, all mud and dirt and squalor, the people wrapped in rough layers of wool, seems a refuge from the savage early-winter of the nearby countryside. Even indoors, Harvey moves the action briskly from stone-walled chamber to stone-walled chamber, the interiors cold, dark and shadowy where not lit with fires in hearths or torches secured to walls. Even the reigning royal family lacks personal hygiene - of John, Alais suggests, "he could have a bath" - as Henry crushes the layer of ice within a wooden basin so he can wash his face in the morning.
O'Toole's Henry is a dynamic tour de force, keenly intelligent with a twinkle in his eye and a rage in his heart, ready to burst into bluster or spasm into fury. Despite his tenderness toward the waif-like Alais, he keeps her in her place, usually their bedchamber - "I'll use you as I like" - and exults in his own power and prowess: "God, how I love being King." He orchestrates the other six main characters into an awkward receiving line before the Bishop, bluffing to have Alais wed to Richard if only to appease Eleanor, then calms Alais - "God, you don't think I meant it?" - before trying to get what he wants, namely Eleanor's landholdings in Aquitaine. O'Toole's Henry fills the screen with brawny humor ("should I take a thousand men in arms, or is that showy?") and consistently mesmerizes, be it with clever observation ("there's no use in asking if the air is good when there's nothing else to breathe"), self-reflective insight into his situation ("my life, when it is written, shall be better than this"), or casual wit (the imprisoned Richard "is in the cellar with his brothers...aging with the port"). O'Toole's wonderful voice ranges from conspiratorial whisper to blazing anger, and Harvey brilliantly depicts the effect on the King when he fails to achieve his goals: when Henry in a fury denies all three of his sons the kingdom, he staggers alone down a series of twisting stone staircases, lurches past the empty banquet hall, looks longingly but silently at Alais in her chamber, then ascends up and out of the castle to the windblown rampart. He slumps in a fetal ball against a stone, his sudden humility evident in being photographed from a high angle as a crane shot pulls farther and farther back and away.
Katharine Hepburn is every bit O'Toole's equal, just as is her Eleanor to his Henry. First shown painting in her dungeon prison cell, she is summoned to the Christmas Court and rides aft in a river barge, perched regally upon a throne elevated on a platform. Harvey makes subtle allusions to the aging monarchs - and an insight into the reason for their vitriol - by following a recurring upward angle shot of bells ringing in an old church tower with the image of Eleanor's barge against a setting sun, the tolling bolls and sunset subtle metaphors for the stage of their lives, as is the onset of winter. The barge approaches in a long shot, Hepburn's Eleanor in graceful silhouette as a series of oars cut through the water that shimmers with the reflection of the fading sunlight. Greeted warmly by Henry - his sheer delight in simply seeing her as obvious as is his anticipatory itch for verbal battle - she responds with characteristic irony, "how dear of you to let me out of jail" - and they link arms and head to court, genuinely pleased to be reunited. Hepburn's Eleanor is an intellectual match for her Henry ("in a world where carpenters get resurrected, anything is possible") as well as similar to him in her keen self-reflective moments ("fragile I am not") such as when she upbraids her personal favorite, Richard, for being too quick to feel sorry himself: "I've suffered more defeats than you have teeth." Hepburn's Eleanor endures a setback and faces herself, her hair down, gazing privately into a handheld mirror. Hepburn's reflection - literally - is one of faded beauty, and the ache in her voice and gesture is palpable. Rebuked by Alais - "I should like to see you suffer" - but reunited with her three horrible sons ("all my piglets!"), she has the insight to insult them all, including herself: "we're the killers...we breed war."
Separately, O'Toole and Hepburn are riveting, but together they are a dramatic powerhouse (Henry: "of all the lies, that one is the most terrible" and Eleanor: "I know, that's why I saved it for now") and share remarkable screen chemistry. Harvey's camera often explores them from high angles, looking down upon the action so the characters seem small within the elements of the remote castle, despite the magnitude of their interpersonal conflict. They walk together (she: "arm in arm" and he: "hand in hand") smiling and greeting the citizenry outside the castle, waving and smiling to the cheers and applause of the crowd, all the while sniping at each other: "did you ever love me?" she asks him, and when told, "no" seems strangely gratified, saying "good...that will make this pleasanter." They both seem to be savoring a quarrel, with Henry rather bored ("I've had no France to fight") but certainly thrilled with each other's company. Later, inside the murky torch-lit old castle, O'Toole's Henry rages "stop despising me!" and Hepburn's Eleanor knifes him with, "it's what I live for." Harvey cleverly juxtaposes their verbal fireworks with the snorting snarl of the wild dogs in the courtyard as Henry storms off in a rage. They insult each other ("your oaths are profanities") and accuse each other ("whatever I have done, you made me do"), sometimes exulting in each other's injury ("dear God the pleasure I get from goading you") or seeking deeper hurt ("I could peel you like a pear and God himself would call it justice"). But when Henry jettisons Alais from her own bedchamber, he sits at the roaring fire across from Eleanor, he sprawled on one side, she dainty on the other, the distance between them echoing the dinner-table shot from Citizen Kane. But soon the two aging old lovers are on the floor, kneeling with one another and cooing in remembrance of their first meeting. They kiss and cuddle, but in a moment old injuries creep within their dialogue, especially jealousy. When he rages, "is there a tally of the bedspreads you've spread out on?" she responds with, "I wonder if you ever wonder if I slept with your father?" then proceeds to luxuriate on his bed and simulate lovemaking with old King Louis of France. "I put more horns on you than Louis ever wore," she hollers at him, and when Henry flees the chamber, she chases after him and sprawls in the doorway. Hepburn's Eleanor then elevates an already memorable scene with a deliciously droll closing observation: "what family doesn't have its ups and downs?" Earlier, she had requested of Henry, "may I watch you kiss her?" in an odd moment of masochistic self-indulgence, as if wanting the most painful of emotions to negate a longtime absence of any emotion at all. Henry responds with a passionate embrace of Alais, murmuring to her in the chapel candle light, "forget the dragon in the doorway," while Harvey's camera moves in tight for a close-up of Eleanor's stricken expression.
Hepburn's Eleanor - "I have a confession: I don't much like our children" - puts her finger on the underlying family dilemma: none of the three sons deserve to be King. Richard is a cold-hearted soldier in a passionate homosexual affair with the King of France (although in history this was really Geoffrey); Geoffrey is a calculating intellectual sadist with few other qualities; and Nigel Terry's ghoulish little John is a peevish and moping cretin with an unruly shock of black hair and a lower lip perpetually in the pout of a spoiled brat. Terry's portrayal of John is the weakest link in the film, a one-note performance amid an array of complex and richly detailed characterizations. Terry's John bears some resemblance to the mama's boy of Shakespeare's King John, so heavily dependent emotionally and intellectually upon his mother, Eleanor. Here he is daddy's favorite, taking advantage of his family position - "I've come to gloat a little" - his father's choice because he does not display Richard's defiance or Geoffrey's cunning, but he in turn lacks Richard's valor or Geoffrey's intellect. Stooped and craven, "wee Johnny" resorts to childish name-calling, railing at both Eleanor ("you bag of bile") and Philip ("you turd"), and when he discovers Geoffrey's plot with the King of France, he cries, "you're a stinker, and you stink!" Despite some artistic prowess - he builds a graphic diorama for his father of a political beheading - he lacks the respect of his peers: Philip notes that, "if you're a prince there's hope for every ape in Africa," and Richard refers to him as a "walking pustule." Comically, when John complains that, "if I went up in flames there isn't a soul around that would pee on me to put out the fire," his elder brother Richard dryly comments, "let's strike a flint and see."
Anthony Hopkins - in his film debut - presents a ramrod straight Richard (the future Richard I, the Lion-Hearted), standing at attention like the consummate soldier, exuding dignity and pride. Summoned to his benefactor mother's side, he is courteous but ice cold ("war agrees with you," she observes), and she lends an insight into why the warlike Richard is not the heir apparent of his father: "Henry meant to hurt me; he's hacked you up instead." An outdoor camera shot is framed beautifully in metaphoric twilight, with a castle keep in the left background, Eleanor at the center, and Richard in close-up to the right. Later, at the near-nuptials of Richard with Alais, the seven main characters awkwardly stand in their absurd reception line, shouting angrily at each other. Hopkins and O'Toole share a splendid verbal screaming match, O'Toole answering Hopkins' "I'm next in line!" with "to nothing!" and his "I'll have the crown!" with "you'll have what Daddy gives you."
John Castle's scheming chameleon Geoffrey - "no one ever thinks of crowns and mentions Geoff" - is in small part self-pitying and in large part Machiavellian in his plotting. His mother mentions his "gift for hatred" and when Geoffrey mentions to his father that "you don't think much of me," the curt reply is, "I don't think of you at all." A family bit-player - "we are extra princes now," he informs John, "we're the fat that's in the fire" - Castle's smirking Geoffrey is an amoral conniver, plotting with both John and Richard one against the other and trying to use his parents in the same way to be named successor: "I'm all you've got left." Castle's funniest line follows his sneering summary of the political landscape - "I know...I know you know...I know you know I know...we know that Henry knows and Henry knows it" - to the disinterested Eleanor: "we're a knowledgeable family." When she asks him if he has devised a way of "selling everyone to everybody," Castle's Geoffrey responds, "not yet, mummy, but I'm working on it."
Timothy Dalton, a future James Bond also in his film debut as Philip, the young King of France, also impresses with his portrayal of an outsider with a vested interest. Henry attempts to intimidate him - the Vexin lands belong to England, because "it's got my troops all over it...that makes it mine" - sprawling into his throne with one leg flung over the arm of the chair. O'Toole's Henry notes, "I've been looking for your father in you," and Dalton's Philip casually replies, "he's not there." Already a seasoned political player, Dalton's black-haired and bearded young Philip can compliment Henry ("you're good at rage") as well as insult him ("piss on your peace"), and he comically hides Henry's sons within the closets of his chamber as if an adulterer in a bedroom farce, then cruelly exposes Richard - in a searing shadowy close-up of Hopkins - and his long-term homosexual love affair with him, literally and figuratively bringing the would-be King out of the closet. And Jane Merrow's lovely Alais, a singing beauty and something of a 12th-century hippie groupie, realizes her own position in the struggle - "kings, queens and knights everywhere you look...and I'm the only pawn" - but misjudges her influence in a household filled with a lion-like Henry and the lioness Eleanor: "I have nothing to lose...that makes me dangerous."
Henry's conclusion to Goldman's intense character study packs satisfying dramatic punch with a dangerous increase in the gamesmanship of the twisted family. Henry has his three sons arrested and imprisoned, but Eleanor sneaks to the dungeon with a wooden chest of long daggers, one for each of them. The boys' response is characteristic, from John's "I'll only do it wrong...you do it...I'll watch" to Richard's blunt "you want him dead, you do it." The final confrontation takes place when Henry arrives with Alais and she lights candles he has stolen from the chapel: "Jesus won't begrudge them." Henry tosses his sons Eleanor's knives and starts a perilous brawl, but they rush out, Geoffrey and John in cowardly fear and Richard with stoic defiance. Eleanor's droll remark is also comically characteristic, after her urges to kill them - "if you spare the rod, you'll spoil those boys" - as is her response to his muttering that he could not murder them: "no one thought you could." All the bluffs and lies and tests of the long night conclude with Henry helping his wife to stand - "I should have killed you years ago" - then holding her gently before leading her out into a bright new day. They laugh together with genuine affection - Eleanor always coy, dry, and sly: "you'll let me out for Easter?" - and Henry watches her embark her barge and begin sailing off into the rising sun, waving then holding his arms out for her. Harvey's film works well on a variety of levels, from historical drama to character study: an often funny, always dramatic, and brilliantly executed entertainment, performed with vigor and fury.