What a waste of my time!!!

Great visuals, story delivers no surprises

This is a tender, generous movie that likes its characters and presents them as real people, full of flaws and strengths.

Tells a fascinating and unsettling true story, and does so well, without pretending to have all the answers.

King Henry VIII (Charles Laughton) marries five more times after his divorce from his first wife Catherine of Aragon.I have no idea why some films fall into public domain and others seem to be owned by the studios indefinitely. I am sure there is an easy answer, but it still strikes me as odd sometimes. This is one of those examples -- if this was still owned by a studio, I wouldn't be surprised, as it holds up very well.Historians could probably pick the film apart, but if you want the story of six marriages told within 90 minutes, I doubt you could do any better than this. Laughton is excellent (as always), and the rest of the cast is dynamite.

Rollicking historical bio-pic of the notorious love-life of Britain's most married monarch in this early talkie directed by the celebrated Alexander Korda and featuring a bravura performance by the young Charles Laughton.Of course, condensing six marriages into one 97 minute movie (a famous BBC series of the early 70's allocated one hour to each wife!), means that cuts are made, for instance Katherine Of Aragon (his divorce of whom saw Henry excommunicated by the Pope and effectively make England a Protestant country, in other words, no insignificant event), is sidestepped completely and we only see Anne Boleyn, possibly the most interesting and charismatic of the wives as she readies herself for her beheading. So really we only get four and a half wives for the price of six but to be fair the film is pretty much all about Henry, as the title makes clear.Laughton is terrific in the title role even if one may smile now of the casting at the time which saddled the homosexual actor with six women (not to mention the more than occasional mistress), all of whose prime purpose was to beget a male heir to Henry's throne. The movie also gets across well the excesses of Henry's court as well as the sycophancy which inevitably accompanied this despot with at different stages his songwriting and wrestling prowess lauded to the heavens.There's a relatively minor sub-plot with Robert Donat's Thomas Culpepper's relationship with the over-ambitious Kathaerine Parr which is later exposed by an army of witnesses leading to their immediate demise, but you sense the director's sympathies are with Henry in any case.There's much ribald humour, quite racy for the time, in the utterings of the hoi-polloi at the queens' executions and amongst the King's serving staff, while the encounter with the exceeding ugly Anne Of Cleves is played for laughs pretty much from the start. The direction is fast moving and while telescoping a lot of history into its short running time, does so with wit and flair - like when the second and third queens say to camera "What a lovely day", for one, her last and the other, first words as a monarch, or the elevated shot of a solitary Hanry when his beloved Kate (Parr) gets the chop for her adultery with Donat.Bowdlerised history it may well be but this is great fun and can teach all manner of succeeding stodgy and static historical recreations, both big and small-screen, a thing or six about delivering fine entertainment.

This is an actors film. Charles Laughton takes Henry through different periods in his life. We are kept at arm's length when it comes to the realities of the political climate he faced and his obsessions. We are to accept him as a fat lovable, impulsive man who is able to simply command an execution without batting an eye. The wives are each interesting. We barely see Anne Boleyn (Merle Oberon) but then are given a series of quite interesting, though somewhat underdeveloped personages. Elsa Lanchester as Anne of Cleves comes across as a vacuous Lucille Ball type who plays cards rather than consummating the marriage. The movie really has no suspense. Henry is a bully, and he gets what he wants. His heartbreak is hard to sympathize with when we consider what he has been given by his lineage. Laughton's acting excellent, but we don't really get much of the real sense of the true figure. I guess that is left to other films and other directors.

Abbreviated and adulterated biographical portrait of Henry VIII features an Oscar winning performances from Charles Laughton but isn't as effective as it probably was 75 years ago.The film concerns as the title suggests largely the private life of Henry VIII and in particular his last 5 marriages, omitting Catherine of Aragon and beginning on the day of Anne Boleyn's execution. With only a little over 90 minutes we obviously don't have much time to get more than a brief impression of each of the wives and they are labeled twice in the film with a single defining adjective. Henry is given a lot more screen time and depth but only really as it concerns his last 4 wives.The film certainly has its strengths, including another Oscar winning performer in Robert Donat as well as Merle Oberon and Elsa Lanchester. But I found the performances of both Laughton and Lanchester to be bit to farcical although I almost always enjoy both their work and that was obviously the intent, they are both fine and have some wonderful moments I was just expecting more. I though Donat was fine but his character wasn't give much to do really and only Oberon left any real impression in her brief scenes as Anne Boleyn leading up to her execution.Perhaps the comedic approach of 75 years ago doesn't translate for me or maybe what was considered subversive has changed so radically that this simply seems tame.The accomplished director Alexander Korda employed a largely static camera as is to be expected from this era but composed some wonderfully framed shots. The production values are quite good for the era.