Christmas 1183. An elderly King Henry the Second (Peter O'Toole) is torn over naming his successor. He wants the young Prince John (Nigel Terry), one of his three sons, to take over, however, his wife Queen Eleanor of Aquitaine (Katherine Hepburn) wants another of his sons, Prince Richard the Lionheart (Anthony Hopkins), to take the throne. Perilous plotting provides ever-rising tension in this expertly crafted historical drama.
Up Next in Period & History
-
Henry VIII and His Six Wives
With his reign coming to an end, a dying Henry VIII looks back on his life and the six marriages that would go on to define him. The film looks back with the King, following his life from his marriage to a Spanish princess to the foundation of Protestantism, to the beheadings and divorces that wo...
-
Ran
Akira Kurosawa’s visually spectacular epic transplants Shakespeare’s King Lear from Celtic Britain to feudal Japan. In its epic scope and expert execution, Ran can be seen as a culmination of the great Japanese director’s filmmaking career; a late triumph which he planned and refined over several...
-
Wittgenstein
Written for Channel 4 by radical literary theorist Terry Eagleton but heavily reworked by Derek Jarman, Wittgenstein is a bold, offbeat biography, personalised in Jarman’s unique style to address the politics and sexuality of the great, troubled philosopher.
