It’s a classic — Anne of the Thousand Days (1969) stands as one of our favorite portrayals of Anne Boleyn around here at Frock Flicks HQ, primarily because of Geneviève Bujold’s performance. While we’ve discussed her various times and briefly looked at Margaret Furse‘s Oscar-winning costumes for the film, we’ve yet to do a deep-dive on this movie. Time to fix that!
I shouldn’t need to recap the story because, duh, it’s history most of us know with regards to Henry VIII of England, Catherine of Aragon, and Anne Boleyn. Check Wikipedia if you’re new here ;) This movie starts with Henry about to sign Anne’s death warrant, and the story is told in flashback from there.
They meet around 1527, when Henry’s already been having an affair with Anne’s sister Mary (y’know, The Other Boleyn Girl). Since the events take place over the course of just a mere decade, there’s isn’t significant change in the costumes, except for small things to portray Anne as stereotypically “young” at first, and this may be why she has her hair down so much. Yep, The Great Hairpin Shortage didn’t just start in the 1990s!
So let’s dig into that because my main beef with this film (as much as I love it) is the hair and headgear. Anne Boleyn is THE historical person known for the style we call a French hood, but she’s just not wearing historically accurate ones in this movie. As noted in my post The Real Deal on French Hoods in Film & TV, this flick commits three of the mortal onscreen sins against French hoods: 1) using headbands as French hoods, 2) letting hair flow loose with French hoods, and 3) sticky-uppy French hoods. Some of them all at the same time!
I mean, really. It’s not cool.
Maybe it’s leading character hair / leading character syndrome, because other ladies in this movie wear headgear that’s reasonably close to period-accurate. But I don’t have to like it!
Anne also wears a head necklace at one point, which is wholly unnecessary.
Do we need a reminder? There’s the detailed French hood post I already linked to, and just look at the standard portrait of Anne, which undoubtedly Furse, et. al., had access to back in the day:
Moving on. When Henry first sees Anne in this movie, she’s wearing a nicely typical Tudor gown, in spite of the hair down and bad hood situation.
This costume survived long enough to go on display in the past 10 years. The trim is rather tarnished now and the fabric is rather dingy, but the overall lines are lovely.
In this scene, Henry is dressed in garish green and red. Richard Burton is one of the more nuanced portrayals of Henry — he’s right on the edge of still being that Renaissance golden boy, but a little disappointed and needy, about to realize how he could become a cruel despot, just not quite yet.
He’s still in his prime, not the old, fat tyrant of the Holbein portrait quite yet.
His first wife Catherine (Irene Papas) is portrayed as dour and dark, which, as we’ve noted before, is historically inaccurate.
Sure, give her lots of jewelry, she was regal AF, but she wasn’t sallow or dark haired.
But her headgear is not bad! See, this movie in inconsistent about that. Not sure why she’s wearing a French hood instead of an English gable hood, but I’ll take it.
Some of the extras have decent headgear too:
Anne’s family is also at this event, and we’ll get a suggestion that Sir Thomas Boleyn has pimped out one daughter, Mary, for favors from the king … and is open to doing the same with another daughter.
She serves as a cautionary tale in this story, but Mary Boleyn gets a GORGEOUS gown, even if it’s a bit more 1560s than 1520s.
That kind of big sleeve puff at the shoulder wasn’t as common on women’s gowns yet:
But her French hood is excellent, and that green damask is divine!
Henry chases Anne to her family home of Hever Castle, and these scenes were filmed at the real location (I so very need to visit one day!).
There’s a brief scene between Mary and Thomas Boleyn that drives home the point about why the king is visiting, and now Mary as the cast-off, knocked-up sister gets a crappy dress.
The print fabric parts of this gown bug me — the fabric would be OK as just the forepart, but it’s not right for the sleeves. If these were full hanging velvet sleeves, the floral could be the inner sleeve part on the forearm. Just not that big puff. It’s weird!
The following scenes, first with Anne and her early love Percy and then with a demanding Henry, are where the costume design makes Anne look particularly “young.” Her hair is down, she has a headband instead of a hood, and she’s wearing this pale yellow gown with black trim and a partlet filling in her neckline. It’s all very light and flowing, but also modest and restrained.
The costume was on display at Hever Castle. However it seems that a panel was added for a later production (which must be what those black strips are left from), and the gown is in somewhat sorry shape.
She’ll wear several gowns with these big puffy sleeves (sometimes with or without similar slashes). They’re not totally inaccurate but they’re not typical either. The full hanging style was more common, and those puffy sleeves remind me of a later style:
Henry continues to chase Anne, and she continues to wear youthful outfits with her hair down:
There’s also a feast at Hever Castle where Anne rewears the same white and green dress she wore when the king first noticed her. I guess it’s her one formal court gown?
Interesting to see how Henry has a mix-and-match wardrobe — same sleeves as before, different robe and hat.
Anne goes to court and becomes Henry’s mistress in all but the bedding. Now her wardrobe gets an upgrade — more long-sleeved gowns and hey, some actual hoods on her French hoods!
Pierced metal and jeweled pomanders, filled with sweet herbs, were a popular accessory for men and women from the late 15th through 17th centuries. There are lots of extant ones in museums, and they show up in period imagery. The scale of Anne’s is more like this later 16th-c. version.
Catherine watches from a room above, with her ladies, unaware of what’s coming. Still looking regal AF with the heavy bling, dark velvet (is that blue?), and a better hood than Anne.
Anne finally gives Henry an ultimatum, thus giving Henry the idea of annulling his marriage to Catherine.
So Henry confronts his wife, wearing as much flashy gold as possible, as if to drive home the point that he’s the king.
That’s a gorgeous gold and black damask! Margaret Furse had access to some killer fabrics back then.
But Catherine will have none of his nonsense.
Catherine wearing a big cross all the time is an obvious way to remind viewers that she is and always be Catholic, even when Henry breaks with Rome. But she was sometimes painted wearing a cross too.
Anne and Henry watch Cardinal Wolsey head to Rome to try and get that annulment. While I’m glad her hood has an actual hood, the quilted pattern of decoration annoys me. It looks like a modern craft project and doesn’t have a period aesthetic for headgear.
There’s a masked ball at court, and Elizabeth Taylor — masked! — interrupts Catherine at prayer.
Yeah, she’s only onscreen for a hot second and you don’t even see her face. Yet she’s a big deal because she’s Liz! She’s also wearing the La Peregrina Pearl, which dates from the early 16th century and is one of the largest perfectly symmetrical pear-shaped pearls in the world. It was sold in 2011, and her costume ended up on another Christie’s auction of Elizabeth Taylor memorabilia, so here’s the description:
“A black velvet medieval style gown with long slashed sleeves and elaborate cream chiffon trim with gilt embroidery, deep neck with faux pearls and gold piped detail, open skirt embellished with gilt beads with cream and gold embroidered voile petticoats, labeled inside Bermans and Nathans and hand written Miss Elizabeth Taylor, with corresponding black velvet diadem set with identical faux pearls, gold piped detail and cream chiffon and gold embroidered train.”
This scene is where Anne gets her head necklace on. It’s her fanciest gown so far, and while the geometric fabric isn’t quite perfect for the era, the whole effect is really lovely. The jewels scattered over the bodice and skirt are fantastic and will be seen more when she wears this in another scene.
Since Wolsey couldn’t secure an annulment, Henry tries to get one in England with a trial.
Henry’s not getting his way, so he punishes Wolsey and takes away Hampton Court Palace (also filmed on location). Anne wears this green mishmash of a gown that has a fakey sewn-in-looking partlet and not-quite-full-hanging sleeves — plus the worst halo-style French hood of them all!
But this is when Anne decides she loves Henry, and they have sex. She returns to Hever Castle and wears (ironically?) this lovely white dress with a black and white damask petticoat. Back to those puffy sleeves too. However her headgear includes a ribbonwork snood to enclose her hair, so I give this a pass.
Henry and Anne are secretly married because she’s pregnant. Her coronation follows, and it’s quite a spectacle.
Henry goes all out, looking very flashy in red and gold.
Th costume on auction is described as: a red silk jerkin and gold embroidered robe trimmed with with pearl, ruby, and sapphire effect jewels.
Elizabeth is born. Catherine dies, and Princess Mary is at her bedside (she wasn’t historically but this is the movie’s only excuse to show her). She gets a squared-off hood, not quite a gable hood. It’s OK.
There’s another masked ball, but by now Henry’s eye is wandering to little Jane Seymour, soon-to-be historical perfect compliant wife. She doesn’t say anything, she’s just there.
Comparing with her best-known portrait as queen, it’s interesting that Jane’s wearing a gable hood there but not in the movie. Was that a purposeful distinction in the portrait to make her look less like Anne? It’s not for another decade or two that the gable hood is really out of fashion in England (when it’s only worn by old women). Ladies of rank might wear either style at this point.
She’s good enough for Henry!
Even though Anne is re-wearing her best blingy white gown, now swapping the head necklace for an equally blinging (if sticky-uppy) French hood. The tit swags on this gown are more visible too.
The sheer undersleeves on this gown are reminiscent of French styles like these:
In a scene where Henry whines about Anne giving birth to a stillborn son, he’s wearing this blackwork shirt.
Kind of surprised there weren’t more glimpses of faux blackwork. It should be all over his shirts, like this:
Things are going downhill for Anne, but first she gets a quick scene with baby Elizabeth, who I guess is three-years-old but looks older to me. The kid gets a fancy dress and a biggins that is NOT unfortunate!
Anne’s back in one of those puffy-sleeved dresses as she’s taken away to the Tower. It’s a strangely youthful, hopeful look with touches of green and floral embroidery, given that she’s going to prison and death. While the French hood is sticks up too much, her hair is tidily caught up in a gold snood (caught in a gold net, like Anne?).
For her trial, Anne gets an appropriately sober brown dress though still queenly with gold undersleeves, blingy trim, a pomander, and jewelry. She’s also wearing a gable hood for the first time — perhaps to show her serious, English side?
The real Anne Boleyn probably worth both styles, since they were both common at this time.
Locked in the Tower, she counts out her thousand days. Henry visits her and offers a deal, which didn’t really happen — the movie’s trying to make him look a little more sympathetic before he runs off for Jane Seymour.
Finally, it’s her execution, where the headgear is pretty decent, for thems who have some.
The movie ends with a reminder that little Elizabeth will become the great Queen Elizabeth I, but for now she gets a sticky-uppy French hood with hair hangin’ free like her mom.
Do you love Anne of the Thousand Days as much as we do?
Find this frock flick at:
The costumes are terrible unhistoric and really, really pretty. For pretty you forgive a lot. Today’s historic costumes are not only inaccurate but seriously ugly