THE LION IN WINTER
ADAPTED BY JOHN GOLDMAN FROM HIS PLAY
SETTING
Christmas 1183, Chinon Castle, France
PLAYERS
King Henry II of England (Peter O’Toole), Eleanor of Aquitaine (Katherine Hepburn)
Richard the Lionheart (Anthony Hopkins), Prince John (Nigel Terry)
Geoffrey, Duke of Brittany (John Castle) King Philip II of France (Timothy Dalton)
Philip’s half-sister Alais (Jane Morrow)
King Henry II (Peter O’Toole) schemes to install his youngest son, John (Nigel Terry), as heir, while Eleanor of Aquitaine (Katherine Hepburn)—released from her long imprisonment for the Christmas court—champions their eldest surviving son, Richard (Anthony Hopkins) the family’s only true soldier. Geoffrey (John Castle), the overlooked middle son, maneuvers between them with cold, lawyerly precision. Into this already volatile household arrives King Philip II (Timothy Dalton) of France, demanding that Henry honor an old treaty: Philip’s half‑sister Alais (Jane Morrow) —Henry’s mistress—was promised to the future king of England, and with her comes the crucial dowry of the Norman Vexin.
Richard and Philip’s past love affair, acknowledged in the film with unusual candor for 1968, adds another layer of danger to the negotiations, turning statecraft into emotional blackmail.
Very stagy, despite the clever dialogue and the good acting, the film begins to wear out its welcome before the end.
- At the Oscars, The Lion in Winter won for Katharine Hepburn’s performance (a shared win with Barbra Streisand), James Goldman’s screenplay, and John Barry’s score.
- The Hepburn-Streisand tie is the only one in the history of the Best Actress Oscar.
- John Barry’s score was probably the least impressive of the five nominees that year, with Jerry Goldsmith’s score for Planet of the Apes and Lalo Schifrin’s score for The Fox being rated by many as two of the all-time great orchestral scores.
- Eleanor was 11 years older than Henry. Hepburn was 25 years older than O’Toole. It didn’t matter. They were an excellent pairing.
- The Lion in Winter marked the major film debut of both Anthony Hopkins (Richard the Lionheart of England) and Timothy Dalton (King Philip II of France) and their scenes together – where they acknowledge their love for one another and later betray one another – are among the film’s best.
- King of England from 1189 until his death at age 41 in 1199, after which he was succeeded by his brother John of the Magna Carta fame, Richard the Lionheart barely set foot in England during his adult life and did not speak middle English, although he may have understood it. Born in England, he lived most of his adult life, like his mother Eleanor, in the Duchy of Aquitaine in the Southwest of France, which was part of the Angevin Empire (roughly present-day England, half of France and parts of Ireland and Wales). He probably spoke French and Occitan – a relative of Catalan which is still spoken in small pockets in southern France today. Apart from defending his Angevin territories, he spent the years 1189-1192 on the Third Crusade which failed to recapture Jerusalem from the sultan Saladin. Richard viewed England mainly as a source of revenue to fund his military campaigns so the notion of Robin Hood defending England “for” Richard has a lot of irony to it.
- Peter O’Toole became the second actor in AMPAS history – following Bing Crosby’s Father O’Malley in Going My Way (1944) and The Bells of Saint Mary’s (1945) – to be nominated for playing the same character in two different movies – he had played a younger version Henry II in Becket and was Oscar nominated for Best Actor, for this performance, in 1964. Only four other actors – for a total if six – have accomplished this milestone: Al Pacino for Michael Corleone in The Godfather Parts I and II in 1972 and 1974, Paul Newman for “Fast Eddie” Felson in The Hustler (1961) and The Color of Money (1986), Cate Blanchett for Queen Elizabeth I in Elisabeth (1998) and, Elizabeth: The Golden Age (2007) and Sylvester Stallone in Rocky (1976) and Creed (2015).
- Anthony Harvey became the first director to win the Directors Guild of America Award for Outstanding Directorial Achievement in Theatrical Feature Film and NOT win Best Director at the Oscars since the DGA Award was established in 1948. He lost to Carol Reed for Oliver! This disparity has happened seven times since then – in 1972, 1985, 1995, 2000, 2002, 2012 and 2019.
- John Terry, who played Prince John was gay and he made five films with gay director Derek Jarman (see below) including the title role in Caravaggio in 1986. He is probably best known for playing King Arthur in John Boorman’s Excalibur in 1980.
- Cinematographer Douglas Slocombe received the 4th of his eleven BAFTA nominations for Best Cinematography (he won three times) for The Lion in Winter and the 2nd of his six BSC (British Society of Cinematographers) nominations (he won four times). In the 1970s and 1980s he would be nominated for three Oscars and win the LAFCA (LA Film Critics Association) Best Cinematography Award for Julia in 1977.
- James Goldman and William Goldman remain the only brothers to each independently win an Oscar for screenwriting – James for adapting his play The Lion in Winter in 1968 and William, twice – for his Original Screenplay for Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid in 1969 and for Adapting Bernstein and Woodward’s All the President’s Men in 1976. The Epstein twins (Julius J. and Philip G.) shared their Oscar, with Howard W. Koch, in 1943 for Casablanca, as did the Coen brothers (Joel and Ethan) sharing the Oscar for Best Original Screenplay for Fargo in 1996 and their Adapted Screenplay from Cormac McCarthy’s No Country for Old Men in 2007.
