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BECKET (1964)
Directed by: Peter Glenville.
Produced by: Hal Wallis.
Written by: Edward Anhalt, based on the play by Jean Anouilh.
Director of Photography: Geoffrey Unsworth.
Edited by: Ann Coates.
Music by: Laurence Rosenthal.
Released by: Slowhand Cinema.
Country of Origin: UK/USA. 148 min. Not Rated.
With: Richard Burton, Peter O'Toole, John Gielgud, Donald Wolfit, Martita Hunt, Pamela Brown & Sian Phillips.

In Richard Burton’s brooding portrayal of the contemplative Archbishop of Canterbury, Thomas Becket, one can almost imagine him launching into “O that this too sallied flesh would melt….” The same year as this film opened Burton played Hamlet to great acclaim on Broadway, where Jean Anouilh’s Becket opened four years earlier, with Laurence Olivier as the former right-hand man-turned-man of the cloth and Anthony Quinn as King Henry II.

Long out of theatrical circulation, this rerelease offers an intriguing glimpse of the art of acting mid-century. Burton’s costar, Peter O’Toole, also had quite a storied career on the British stage. With every extended gesture and fluctuation of his voice, his gleefully arrogant monarch fills any stage, sound or otherwise, a performance in keeping with the boards-bound film. By then O’Toole had already mastered one filmic technique: shifting your eyes rather than turning your head makes it difficult for the editor to cut away from you – thus, you have more screen time. (Maybe that’s why there’s very little intercutting, even in Henry’s confrontations with Becket.) O’Toole’s latest and Oscar-nominated role as a fading jobbing actor in the acerbic Venus is an excellently-written counterpart to his irascible Henry, drolly dismissive of lesser mortals with a voice as sonorous as ever.

In a rarity, this account of the bathing buddies who become political adversaries was directed by its Broadway helmer, Peter Glenville. (Although perhaps not well known today, he did receive a coveted invitation to Truman Capote’s 1966 Black and White Ball.) Instead of blocking the characters according to their actions, Glenville centers the actors’ movements around the camera, which is planted as if in the audience. In the beginning of a few scenes, you will swear there’s a pause for the curtain to go up. Most of the dialogue-driven scenes are a series of two-shots; which is great in seeing the sparks fly between two of the leading British actors of their generation, but plodding when it comes to pace (which audibly had quite a drowsy effect on one viewer at the press screening.) When the king beckons for a subject, the camera actually pans to follow a page to the doorway to make his summons, pauses, and then pans back again with the new arrival. Kent Turner
January 26, 2007