FeistyUpper If you don't like this, we can't be friends.

Donald Seymour This is one of the best movies I’ve seen in a very long time. You have to go and see this on the big screen.

Kaelan Mccaffrey Like the great film, it's made with a great deal of visible affection both in front of and behind the camera.

Logan By the time the dramatic fireworks start popping off, each one feels earned.

JohnHowardReid Copyright 3 November 1933 by United Artists Corp. Made by London Film Productions, England. New York opening at the Radio City Music Hall, 12 October 1933 (ran one week). London opening: 17 August 1933. U.K. release: 24 October 1933. 96 minutes.SYNOPSIS: King Henry VIII and five of his six wives.NOTES: Academy Award, Best Actor, Charles Laughton (defeating Leslie Howard in Berkeley Square and Paul Muni in I Am A Fugitive from a Chain Gang). Also nominated for Best Picture (Cavalcade). Number 3 on The Film Daily's annual poll of U.S. film critics (Cavalcade was first, 42nd Street second).Photographed at British and Dominion Studios. Shooting commenced late Spring 1933 and was completed in five weeks for a negative cost of Sixty Thousand Pounds. The film was a huge success world-wide, earning gross rentals in excess of Five Hundred Thousand Pounds on its first release. It was never withdrawn from circulation until the advent of television.COMMENT: Considering the enormous — indeed the super-star — popularity of Charles Laughton, it's peculiar that so few of his movies are aired on TV. Most viewers have seen The Sign of the Cross (1932), Jamaica Inn (1939), The Tuttles of Tahiti (1942), The Paradine Case (1948), The Big Clock (1948), Hobson's Choice (1954) and Witness for the Prosecution (1957) — seven pictures from a total of fifty-two. Many of Laughton's most famous movies have never been broadcast at all (Payment Deferred, Island of Lost Souls, White Woman, The Man on the Eiffel Tower) and even Henry VIII has not been seen for many years. This neglect by TV programmers is the more astonishing in view of a survey conducted a few years ago in which readers of a weekly magazine were asked to nominate which movie performance of the past they regarded as unforgettable. Vivien Leigh in GWTW topped the list, followed by Garbo's Camille, Donat's Mr. Chips, Laughton's Henry VIII, Laughton's Captain Bligh in Mutiny on the Bounty, Cagney in Yankee Doodle Dandy, Bogart in Casablanca, Gary Cooper in High Noon, Bergman in Casablanca, Rathbone as Sherlock Holmes. Only Laughton figured on the list twice. In fact, the judge commented that if the performances had been tabulated simply by players and not by films, Laughton was the over-all favorite by a wide margin. His other roles frequently mentioned were in If I Had a Million, The Barretts of Wimpole Street, Ruggles of Red Gap, Les Miserables, Rembrandt and The Hunchback of Notre Dame.Of all these brilliant portrayals, there is no doubt that Henry VIII was the greatest achievement of Laughton's career. He literally sweeps the rest of the characters right off the screen. Only his real-life wife, Elsa Lanchester, can hold up against him. Even Donat (who was later to make such an impression in The Citadel and Goodbye Mr Chips) and Merle Oberon seem pallid and colorless alongside him. True, he is marvelously costumed and made up and better served by the witty script. The director deliberately throws all the attention his way, virtually forcing him to carry the whole film — which he does magnificently. It's an acting tour de force — one of the most memorable impersonations in the entire history of the cinema.

MarieGabrielle The film, entitled the "Private lives of Henry the VIII" tells us that this encompasses his activities inside the royal palace, and there were many. While maybe not historical fact one hundred percent, the performance and players do well to transcend this.Laughton is at his best here, ..."ah the things I must do for England"... he sighs mischievously as he enters the master chamber to be with his fourth wife Anne of Cleves well portrayed by Elsa Lanchester. He is very amusing and while the story give us some history it also gives us an amusing peripheral view of what life may have been like for the king.The scene where he tears a capon apart, eating it and commenting on the ills of humanity, and what is wrong with people. His court is silent, as they do not want to be next on the chopping block.Merle Oberon is lovely as Anne Boleyn, dark and attractive, as she wonders if her hair will stay in place after the guillotine.The costumes and sets in the black and white are part fiction, part real. Theatrical but not over the top, as later Technicolor would be.Overall an enjoyable version which even today does not seem dated, literally one could almost imagine Laughton stepping off the screen, and coming to your living room to play King Henry today. Amazing in retrospect, how gifted actors, truly talented can transcend their time period and make an indelible impression.

MartinHafer You should probably know that I was a world history teacher, so I tend to look at historical films differently from the average person. I love a good historical film but I am also very unforgiving of a sloppy film or one that gets its facts wrong. Keep this in mind when you read this review.Compared to the average 1930s historical film, this one is pretty good and pretty accurate. Aside from a few mistakes here and there (such as showing Anne Boleyn being publicly executed), the spirit of the film is pretty accurate to Henry in his later years. However, it shows an odd view of his life--completely bypassing his marriage to Catherine of Aragon (it said she was a good woman so her life was omitted--but she also was married to Henry the longest--and this would take up at least two movies to discuss well) as well as only giving the briefest glimpse of Boleyn just as she was being executed--but nothing more. So it skips a lot--and only shows a small glimpse of Henry's life (about a six year period). BUT, and this is important, there is STILL way too much material for this film. You see, during this time, Henry had five different marriages--and each is treated almost like a Cliff Notes version of the marriage.So, despite its limitations, is it entertaining? Well, perhaps. If you like historical period pieces and don't mind the sketchy nature of the film, it's fine viewing. The acting is very good--and Charles Laughton was in fine form. And the film looks beautiful. As for the script, it's pretty good--with some nice sparkling dialog.

carvalheiro "The private life of Henry VIII" (1933) directed by Alexander Korda is of course a date in the link between a portrait of a historical character and an evanescent story in the current of events, during his reign as king who defies the Church of Rome and promoted himself as a kind of new in spirituality.The scene that it's not possible forget, it seems as evidence from the movie and this one in special, it was when the actor who incorporates the title eats chicken - without fork nor knife, barely with his fingers - and throws the bones to the back of his sit, without even looking and only with a display gesture, that took the attention of anybody whom assisting him in his solitary meals is for the others like an usually ceremony without any particular manner of a distinguished and honorable individual. As though it was nothing more than his own portrait as particular of a pioneer decision maker in an already civilized Europe, who likes women and by this builds his fame and stylish look from a hallucinated mind, who is also responsible for a so bad figure in history itself. The figure of the king is quite too much caricatured by the performance of the acting, seemingly as a mere crook above his own degree of responsibility and showing us his lack of style for the job, which means the private life for someone as him is the mediocrity of his own ability for the vital functions. But this kind of overacting is maybe much more the public portrait of a funny man with a sense of his own happiness like a Nero positive hero without burning London finally. There is a sense of decorative interiors where the king seems nasty, however as he was extremely unquiet with the function of the role, acting with some cunning before the matters of his sovereignty. Not clothed for the helm nor for the pleasure of each of the women who he took each time for an official marriage since Anne Boleyn and preparing the next revenge for the worst as it was an anticipated ritualistic anguish for the state and its death penalty in the tower of London near the Thames river.