1964: Becket

Screenplay by Edward Anhalt
Adapted from the play Becket by Jean Anouilh

King Henry II of England is tired of constant power battles with the Church. When the Archbishop of Canterbury dies, the king stumbles upon what he thinks is a perfect solution: nominate his best friend Thomas Becket as a replacement. Henry assumes Becket will remain loyal to his king first and church second, but Becket takes his new position much more seriously than his old friend anticipated.

My experience with this one is kind of the opposite of the previous year's Best Adapted Screenplay winner, Tom Jones. In that case, I had seen the movie before, but reading the book helped me appreciate the movie much more the second time. In this case, I had never seen the movie, but watching it helped me appreciate the story a lot more than I had while reading the play. I didn't really understand the play when I read it. Many significant events occurred offstage between scenes and were only vaguely referred to afterward, so I kept feeling like I had missed a scene. Most of these were added to the film, so the story made a lot more sense. I realize that the screen is more conducive to scene changes than the stage, but I still feel like the play could have shown a little more than it did. Perhaps the intended audience of the play was already familiar with its historical context, but I must confess to know relatively little about the state of England and France in the mid-12th century. The movie filled in the gaps, clarifying what the characters were referring to later, which I greatly appreciated.

Apart from these additions, the movie and the play are quite similar. Most of the lines from the play made it into the film with few alterations. A couple of the cruder lines were eliminated, but otherwise the script was fairly consistent, as far as it went. The film added so much that it's probably a good half hour longer than the play, but overall the characters and themes remain true to the original, with some added clarity. I wish I had more to say about this adaptation, but there's not much to be said. The movie was basically just a longer and more comprehensible version of the play.

One side note that I found interesting: Peter O'Toole played King Henry II in this movie, and went on to portray the same monarch a few years later in The Lion in Winter, which won the Best Adapted Screenplay Oscar of 1968. So I'll be watching O'Toole's Henry II again relatively soon. But in the immediate future my focus will be on 1965's winner, Doctor Zhivago, based on the novel by Boris Pasternak.