|
HURT SO BAD In his published diaries, Richard Burton wrote of Peter O’Toole: “He looked like a beautiful, emaciated secretary bird...his voice had a crack like a whip...most important of all you couldn’t take your eyes off him...Acting is usually regarded as a craft and I claim it to be nothing more except in the hands of a few men and women who, once or twice in a lifetime, elevate it into something odd and mystical and deeply disturbing. I believe Peter to have this strange quality.” Filming Becket at the time, playing the titular role opposite O’Toole’s Henry II, Burton’s may be the most succinct assessment of the appeal of his co-star; it may also be as useful an explanation as any for the unending fascination historians, poets and dramatists have with the tormented combatants. Perhaps the reason the histories and dramas, including T.S Eliot’s Murder in the Cathedral, become fundamentally unsatisfying is why Jean Anouilh’s 1959 French play Becket isn’t: by his own admission the playwright dares to create a coup de théâtre using inaccurate history—Saxoning up Thomas when in fact Norman—as well as earmarking coarse speculation about the twosome that very eloquent actors can bluster through, audiences find salivating and settling into the growing crisis of Henry thwarting Church authority by issuing his retaliatory edicts known as the Constitutions of Clarendon. (So enamoured of Anouilh’s cunning conceit Laurence Olivier enacted both parts in separate theatre productions.) Adapting the play for the 1964 movie, Edward Anhalt heightens the curiously mystic relationship with virtually unequivocal conjecture as the basis of the “betrayal,” wherein Henry’s “love” of whoring buddy/Chancellor -now Archbishop of Canterbury must be requited. Half way in, the script begins galloping to a juncture of sectionalization: Becket, who admits loving little if anything yet discovers his ecclesiastic and honorable duty to be God’s anointed adjudicator of a priest accused of a sexual assignation with a young woman. Before the priest can return to the sanctuary of the Church, one of Henry’s lacquey-enforcers executes him. Enraged, Becket administers excommunication against the willful murderer. Threatening words and actions erupt and in order to be spared the wrath of Henry—who literally hurts from the loss of his closest mate’s affections—Becket exiles to France, which in reality lasted six years before negotiating the uneasy truce infamously violated within weeks of returning to England. (Also missing from the movie: Becket before and after his exile continued overt criticisms of Henry and would excommunicate bishops who sided with him, including Donald Wolfit’s Gilbert Folliot, Bishop of London.) The movie is made progressively more intense by a grand pairing of lushes who booze their way through “unhealthy” scenarios. According to O’Toole on The Dick Cavett Show, he and Burton were sober “choir boys” for the first weeks of filming but inevitably imbibed, with the degree and frequency left in dispute. Is there any evidence of their soused condition? Beyond the occasional bloated faces, no, yet you definitely feel something’s a little off. The suspicions aren’t necessarily derived out of the knowledge of the performers as notorious dipsos feeding each other’s habits. They largely derive out of the edginess of O’Toole’s wracked emotionalism and Burton bridled as a “spiritual gate-crasher”; they’re anxious compadres who can’t consummate. Watching O’Toole’s Henry reel from rebuffs, aching out lines to Becket like “You’re wrong not to love me,” and observing Burton’s archbishop seeking refuge in the cloistered world of the Church wherein he admits Henry’s “never forgiven me for preferring God to him,” you come to believe the actors have to be hammered in order to deliver the éclaircissements. Without O’Toole’s fancy masochism and Burton balancing with rare downplaying, the guessing game would be a stone-cold experience. Becket still requires a pullover: director Peter Glenville, who also mounted the Broadway premiere, solemnizes as conservative cover his Catholic closet by stressing the reverential spotlessness and echo chamber sounds of cathedral to allow more insinuation than the play, with strained genuflections matching the choral alleluias as downers and Laurence Rosenthal’s loftily estranging roadshow score. Glenville sticks to prejudicious formula with the supporting cast: John Gielgud’s Louis VII represents the effete French; Wolfit, Martita Hunt and Paulo Stoppa become chilled period piece caricatures; Eliot’s chorus shows up in the Vatican’s cardinals as fatisfied talebearers; the king’s henchmen keen to dispatch (substantially toned down from history’s gruesome accounts) and lurking monks eager to flog. Pamela Brown’s mousy, repugnant portrayal of Henry’s wife Eleanor of Aquataine is insulting; even during Henry’s “Becket” days, and in spite of being irrepressibly in love with him, she was actively embroidering plots against him, subordinated only slightly when under house arrest. (Though no mention of her annulment of marriage to Louis VII after birthing five daughters but no male heir, the baby dropper and Henry’s contempt for his sons as “royal vermin” will be explicated in the later companion piece The Lion in Winter.) The lasting legacy of this Becket isn’t only in the perplexing bromance and juicy dish filling in the elusive motives, it’s primarily in the counterpoints of two show horses maximizing their rearing while managing to keep their self-respect. And it’s not meaningless that sixty years later O’Toole’s exit scene would be duplicated by creator/writer Peter Morgan in the moving finale of The Crown, a tribute inexcusably missed by nearly all the media. Filmed in Panavision, with 70mm blowup. (Opening 3/19/1964 at the Cinestage, running for 16 weeks.) Oscar win for best adapted screenplay (Anhalt). Oscar nominations for best film, actor (both leads), director, supporting actor (Gielgud), color cinematography (Geoffrey Unsworth), costume (Margaret Furse), art direction-set decoration, film editing (Anne V. Coates), sound, music (substantially original). ROLL OVER IMAGE / POSTER
Text COPYRIGHT © 2000 RALPH BENNER (Revised 4/2026) All Rights Reserved.
|
