The Private Lives of Elizabeth and Essex (1939)

I realize it hadn't been long since the last movie I saw to include heavy focus on a British royal -- indeed, Queen Elizabeth I in particular. But this one is 32 years older, so I figured it would feel rather different.

Robert Deveraux, 2nd Earl of Essex (Errol Flynn), has had a victory in the Anglo-Spanish War, but not enough to satisfy Her Majesty (Bette Davis). Insulted and sensing support only from Sir Francis Bacon (Donald Crisp), he leaves the court and doesn't return until ordered back for more military expertise in the Nine Years' War. In truth, that's largely an excuse for Elizabeth to be close to the man she craves. But Sir Robert Cecil (Henry Daniell), Sir Walter Raleigh (Vincent Price), and Lord Burghley (Henry Stephenson) see an opportunity to get him out of the way of her favor once again.

Mary, Queen of Scots (1971)

As I've said, movies about real-life British royalty have a good track record with me. This one is by the same director (Charles Jarrott) as Anne of the Thousand Days, so it was apt to feel even more like a sequel thereto than The Private Life of Henry VIII.

The tale begins in 1560, when teenage Mary (34-year-old Vanessa Redgrave) is about to lose her first husband, King Francis of France (Richard Denning). Having no claim to his throne, she decides to return to Scotland, but Queen Elizabeth (Glenda Jackson) will not grant her safe passage through England to get there. Even when Mary arrives home by ship, she finds her reception rather lacking, thanks to the rise of Protestantism and attendant hostility to Catholics such as herself. Indeed, her next 27 years will be riddled with people seeking to undermine her, whether by making her a figurehead in practice, persuading her to renounce all authority, imprisoning her, or assassinating her.

The Private Life of Henry VIII. (1933)

Evidently, I have a weakness for movies that include English royals among the characters. Becket, The King's Speech, The Lion in Winter, The Madness of King George, The Queen.... It hardly matters whether the royals appear respectable or despicable; I enjoy them either way. The one slight exception that comes to mind is Elizabeth, which I might like better if I saw it again today.

As you've probably guessed, this one focuses on the many marital/romantic connections of the king (Charles Laughton, who won an Oscar for it). Not all of them, tho: It begins on the day of the execution of second wife Anne Boleyn (Merle Oberon), almost as if Anne of the Thousand Days were a prequel, and ends somewhere in his sixth marriage, to Catherine Parr (Evelyn Gregg), covering a period of 7 to 11 years. His only explicitly depicted extramarital love interest is lady-in-waiting Catherine Howard (Binnie Barnes), who becomes his fifth wife.

The Fountain (2006)

Hoo boy, Darren Aronofsky. When he's not directing straightforward downers like Requiem for a Dream, he's spinning dark mind screws like Pi and Black Swan. My favorite work of his is The Wrestler, more for Mickey Rourke's performance than anything else. Throw in TF's box office failure and a considerable discrepancy between its ratings on IMDb and Rotten Tomatoes, and I had a real gamble on my hands. But Aronofsky didn't regret taking chances, so it didn't seem wrong for me to do the same. Besides, I tend to like love stories better with sci-fi/fantasy elements.

Netflix describes the story as taking place over a millennium, but there are only three times with which we need concern ourselves, all distinct enough not to disorient us much with the many jump cuts. Probably the most screen time is spent in the present, when surgeon Tom (Hugh Jackman) strives to find a cure for cancer before his wife Izzi (Rachel Weisz) dies of it. Izzi has been writing a story set primarily in the 16th century, in which Queen Isabella (Weisz again) assigns conquistador Tomás (Jackman again) to find the Tree of Life guarded by Mayans. The other segments show an enhanced Tom, now "Tommy," in the future, staying by the Tree of Life while flying to a nebula that Izzi had identified as Xibalba.

The Prince and the Pauper (1937)

After a few unhappy movies, I decided that my best bet was to pick a story I already knew to have a happy ending. At the same time, it had to be a story I didn't know too terribly well -- no more A Christmas Carol versions for me. Not having read the Mark Twain book, I relied on vague memories of capsulized kiddie adaptations and parodies. The gist was that the strangely identical young title characters who happened to meet were tired of their lots in life, traded places on purpose, and learned the hard way that they preferred their previous stations (a questionable lesson indeed if it equates the travails of monarchy with those of poverty), right?

Well, not exactly. In this telling, the boys don't even realize how alike they look until they've swapped outfits for fun, and they have no intention of fooling anyone; but the prince (Bobby Mauch) injudiciously exits the room alone, and you can guess what happens next. Both boys insist on their true identities, even as their insistence mostly makes matters worse for them. Sure, pauper Tom Canty (Billy Mauch) enjoys some luxuries and a lack of beatings by guards or his irredeemable father (Barton MacLane), but he can't help worrying, not least as the Earl of Hertford (Claude Rains), the prime courtier who knows Tom's not mad, plots to manipulate him -- and end the threat of the real prince returning -- when the old king (Montagu Love) dies. The moral has more to do with recognizing how little separates the highest from the lowest, with a hint that this could duly increase the elite's sympathy for common folk.

Romeo and Juliet (1968)

Consider this a last hurrah for my Shakespeare viewings in the year of his 400th deathday. It didn't seem right to go without a more straightforward screen adaptation, as opposed to a cultural translation or a story about putting on a play. I would have seen R&J much sooner, but it took a while to finish the Netflix wait, and then I forgot it until this week.

You know the plot, right? Teens from feuding families fall in puppy love, which raises tensions even further. After a couple fatalities, they make, shall we say, desperate escapes, with the bittersweet effect of ending the feud. This all takes place in the original setting, late Renaissance Italy, as opposed to the New York of West Side Story or the bizarre California of the Baz Luhrman update.

Andrei Rublev (1966)

This may be the longest movie I've seen since I started this blog. Running nearly 3.5 hours with no overture or intermission, it feels like it could easily have been edited down to less than half as much. Even for a Russian classic, that's a lot.

It had also been one of the British Film Institute's favorite films that I hadn't seen yet, at #27 on their list of 50 greatest. But that did nothing to get me psyched for it. I have to say, the BFI's taste doesn't appeal to me nearly as much as the AFI's. Perhaps I'm something of an ugly American after all.

Chimes at Midnight, a.k.a. Falstaff (1965)

You can tell it was pretty late in the directing career of Orson Welles. Not having enough friends left in Hollywood, he turned to European production companies I'd never heard of before. His use of black and white at this point probably had more to do with budget than artistry. Oh, other famous people still got involved -- Harry Saltzman, John Gielgud, and Jeanne Moreau come to mind -- but a sizable portion of the (rather few) credited names reflect Switzerland, France, or especially Spain for a reason. Thanks to contested distribution rights, you'll be lucky to find the film in the U.S. My luck took the form of a Welles festival at the AFI Silver Theater.

As you might have guessed from the second title, Welles plays Sir John Falstaff, a popular minor character from several Shakespeare plays. His moderate-length screenplay combines mostly relevant portions of the tetralogy consisting of Richard II; Henry IV, Part 1; Henry IV, Part 2; and Henry V, plus some dialog from Merry Wives of Windsor and details from a 16th-century history text. Believe it or not, Welles saw fit to lose weight for a role consistently described as obese.

The Beloved Rogue (1927)

It had been a while since my last viewing of a silent film, and I wanted something on the short side. Since John Barrymore seems best remembered for his voice (in addition to being part of an acting dynasty), the thought of his pre-vocal work intrigued me. OK, I had seen Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, but it didn't stay with me.

TBR is set in 15th-century Paris under Louis XI, with an All Fools Day parade early on. Sound familiar? There's a reason the studio reused much of the set of The Hunchback of Notre Dame. Incidentally, the cast includes three actors who would go on to feature in Freaks, but none is a hunchback.