Becket

The moral dilemmas on display in Becket were compelling when the film was released in 1964 and remain interesting given all the wars and political scandals in the interim. The main reason to see Becket, however, is the performances of Peter O'Toole and Richard Burton. Henry II (O'Toole) and his pal in debauchery, Thomas Becket (Burton), are first seen wenching their way across twelfth-century England. They are, in modern parlance, lads, but it quickly becomes clear that Thomas has more of a conscience than Henry, feeling uncomfortable about exploiting simple peasant lasses.

When the Archbishop of Canterbury drops dead, the king gets the bright idea of replacing the old duffer with his best friend, thereby eliminating church opposition to his policies. But wouldn't you know it, once Thomas is in office, that pesky old conscience of his grows even stronger and soon he and Henry are enemies.

Director Peter Glenville strives to make Becket, adapted by Edward Anhalt from Jean Anouilh's play, cinematic, but it still consists mostly of lengthy interior scenes. Some may find the first hour or so slow-going because so much exposition has to be dealt with, but once Thomas becomes archbishop, it picks up some momentum.

Primarily a stage director, Glenville uses crane shots to create a larger scale. He and cinematographer Geoffrey Unsworth -- who later shot 2001: A Space Odyssey -- use the wide screen to emphasize the increasing philosophical distance between the protagonists. When Henry and Thomas meet on horseback on a beach, the scene recalls images from Lawrence of Arabia. In an extra, Anne V. Coates, who edited both films, wishes Anhalt and Glenville had created an action scene to make Becket more of an epic.

Becket was O'Toole's first film after Lawrence of Arabia and while he doesn't come close to matching one of the three or four greatest performances ever, he does show that he can do something different. While Lawrence is a neurotic who wants to do good but gives in to bloodlust, Henry is a spoiled brat who wants to have his way about everything with O'Toole conveying both the king's strength of authority and his weaknesses. O'Toole made the same character considerably less magisterial, more humanly mundane, four years later in The Lion in Winter.

It is easier to appreciate Burton now than in 1964 when his tabloid romance with Elizabeth Taylor Hilton Wilding Todd Fisher Burton overshadowed his work. Burton could be a tad bombastic, as with his defrocked minister this same year in The Night of the Iguana, but he is subtle here, convincing us of Thomas' piety and the pain he feels in choosing God over Henry. The film's leisurely pace allows Burton to convey Thomas's thought processes as he agonizes over his decisions. Burton received the third of his seven Oscar nominations for Becket and O'Toole the second of his eight, both losing to Henry Higgins. Of the twelve nominations for Becket, only Anhalt won.

O'Toole, unfortunately, says little of interest in his commentary, moderated by Mark Kermode, wavering about the homoerotic relationship between Henry and Thomas. He says, without vanity, "In no sense am I aware that that's me. That's a performance." There are two BBC interviews with Burton, one from 1967 emphasizing his stage work, in which he admits he is uncomfortable with actresses and a 1977 discussion mostly about his recovery from alcoholism. His unrealized plans for the future -- he would be dead in seven years -- make the latter quite sad.

The most interesting extra is Coates's as she talks about how easy the film was to cut because Glenville kept both Burton and O'Toole in the same frame almost all the time. She explains that the mismatched shots in the beach scene resulted from uncooperative horses and the stars' hangovers.

In another extra, composer Laurence Rosenthal discusses the interference of producer Hal Wallis and teaching Burton to sing a Gregorian chant. Rosenthal claims that Becket has never looked or sounded better than in this 2:35:1 anamorphic transfer. The reds of the bishops' robes are vibrant, but there is some flickering in the background of some shots. Unfortunately, nothing can be done to improve the look of several rear-projection shots, which O'Toole describes as "amazingly bad." -- Michael Adams