Queen Eleanor: "Of course he has a knife. He always has a knife. We all have knives. It's 1183 and we're barbarians.
Based on James Goldman's play (and, with Goldman writing the screenplay, preserving pretty much all of the dialogue), The Lion in Winter is a domestic comedy-romance transformed into grand tragedy by the fact that the family in question are the Plantagenets; Henry II (Peter O'Toole), his scorned wife Eleanor of Aquitaine (Katharine Hepburn), his rebellious children, Richard (Anthony Hopkins), Geoffrey (John Castle) and John (Nigel Terry), his mistress Alais (Jane Merrow) and her brother, King Philip of France (Timothy Dalton). The play was not successful prior to the release of the film, but unusually it did very well afterwards, due in no small part to the strength of the script.
The cast, as you can see, is spectacular, and the production design is lavish, but it is Goldman's dialogue that sparkles, in particular in the many confrontations between the two leads. O'Toole as the mercurial Henry goes from playful to curmudgeonly to snarlingly overbearing with barely a pause and never the slightest warning, while Hepburn plays Eleanor with a sharp and brittle strength. The rest of the cast are no less worthy of note, many of them in very early film roles preceding long and distinguished careers. Hopkins' Richard is a picture of chivalric nobility, and in his moments of defeat has a truly affecting look of wounded pride. Castle's Geoffrey is overtly the weakest performance, so much so that its strength only shows when one realises that Geoffrey is supposed to be the forgettable - and forgotten - one. Terry, later to play Excalibur's Arthur, is here a weasely presence, appearing very much as a lesser analogue to Dalton's beautiful, reptilian Philip. Merrow is sort of the straight man of the piece, never really knocking heads with anyone, but plays Alais and her devotion to Henry with conviction.
The action of the film is limited to one castle and a few days over Christmas in 1183, with eldest son Henry, the Young King, recently dead and the older Henry yet to name another heir. Plot and counter plot fly back and forth, secrets are revealed and past cruelties raked over as Henry pushes John, Eleanor pushes Richard and Geoffrey pushes himself.
Tightly directed and superbly played, the film is a corker, well worth viewing, if it's new to you, or re-viewing if it isn't.
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