I thought for sure we had covered The Lion in Winter (1968) in detail, but it turns out we’ve only included it in reference to other posts, such as our WCW homages to Katharine Hepburn, Eleanor of Aquitaine, and our favorite bad girls. Then there are our MCM posts on Peter O’Toole, Anthony Hopkins, and Timothy Dalton, and a Top Five… or two featuring our favorite Christmas frock flicks, and of course, wimples. This film has even made it onto our list of Iconic Historical Costume Movies of the 1960s, as well as our Frock Flicks Guide to Costume Designer Margaret Furse. I’m sure I’m forgetting a post or two here, but you get the idea. Clearly, The Lion in Winter occupies our brains rent free here at Frock Flicks, and yet we haven’t managed to do a full, dedicated overview of the film itself. That is … until now.
For a good introduction into the historical Eleanor, you should check out Kendra’s WCW post, which makes a pretty clear case for why this woman was so iconic — I’m not going to reinvent that wheel, but I will say that if you have no real idea who Eleanor of Aquitaine was, don’t let that stop you from watching The Lion in Winter. If anything, it may inspire you to dig deeper into her life’s story, which is long and utterly fascinating, and yes, it was as complex and complicated as the film makes it seem. All you really need to know is that the year is 1183 and it’s Christmas.
Eleanor, Queen of England, (Katharine Hepburn) has been estranged from her husband Henry II (Peter O’Toole) for quite some time, and he’s had her imprisoned in England to try to keep her from becoming the serious political threat she’s always been, but in a generous show of seasonal spirit, he releases her so that she can show up for the family get together in a drafty castle in Chinon, France, with their three adult sons (all of whom are in various stages of Hot Mess, themselves). And you thought your family holiday gatherings were fraught.
Making things extra … well … extra, is the addition of King Phillip of France (played by a very young Timothy Dalton) to the party, who just so happens to be Eleanor’s ex-husband’s son and heir, and who also is more than likely having a torrid affair with Eleanor and Henry’s eldest son, Richard (Anthony Hopkins).
Phillip’s half-sister Alais (Jane Merrow) is also in tow and is having a torrid affair with Henry.
Are you keeping track? Oh, it’s gonna get a lot messier, because Eleanor and Henry’s youngest son, John (Nigel Terry), is scheming for his father’s throne, despite Henry favoring Richard. And then there’s poor Geoffrey (John Castle), the middle kid, who no one really knows what to do with, himself included.
The reason for Henry assembling the motley crew is revealed to be a negotiation for marriage between Richard and Alais and to put pressure on Eleanor to give up her ancestral duchy of Aquitaine to John in order to get him to effectively shut up and go away and stop trying to undermine Henry’s plans for the succession. Predictably, no one is happy with these arrangements and things go further south until the boys end up imprisoned in a wine cellar, and Henry tries to knife-fight all three of them before deciding to condemn them all to death, annul his marriage to Eleanor, and marry Alais.
But since this is a Christmas movie, there’s at least a détente, if not necessarily a happy ending.
The plot itself is based on the 1966 Broadway play of the same name, and it does pull a lot of modern themes concerning divorce, blended families, complicated familial dynamics, and unchecked generational trauma, and transposes all of it on the historically messy family dynamics of Eleanor and Henry’s marriage. The delightful part is that there really isn’t that much about the underlying history that had to be tweaked for this to work.
Eleanor’s life before and after her marriage to Henry was unlike any other. As an historical figure, she comes across as alarmingly modern, and when you add Katharine Hepburn’s acerbic portrayal to the mix, you end up with an historical film that feels utterly contemporary — except, you know, with 100% more wimples.
Are you watching The Lion in Winter (1968) this holiday season? Tell us in the comments!
I’ve adored that film since it was first released: the soundtrack was the first LP I ever bought for myself (I was so small and shy I had to write down the title and proffer it wordlessly to the salesperson). Though even then I wondered why they did that weird thing with Hepburn’s hair: I knew that’s not what wimples were for.
I still love the way Henry wears the same tatty, stained old working clothes throughout, and just plonks his state robe and crown on top at the last minute for the ceremonial welcome of his feudal overlord. Granted, the robe looks more like an Arab ‘bisht’ than anything medieval European, but the character note is bang on: Henry was well known for his scruffiness.
And although Baltic squirrel skins were sewn together so as to be as smooth as a single skin, not roughty-tufty like this, props to the costume department just for knowing what miniver was and having a crack at making it for Philip’s cloak; also for knowing that medieval people used fur for linings, as here, not the outside of garments.
And, fair do’s, almost nobody realised back then that the interiors of medieval castles, even quite modest ones, were always plastered and painted – no bare rough stone walls. A decade or two ago English Heritage decorated and furnished the keep of Dover Castle (built by Henry in the 1180s as a royal palace, to impress the heck out of important people making the pilgrimage to Thomas Becket’s tomb at Canterbury) to replicate as best they could what it would have looked like when it was new. The sheer amount of bling (miniver-lined bedspreads! furniture gold-leafed and painted with malachite and lapis lazuli pigments! Limoges enamel caskets and candlesticks!) fairly knocks your eyes out.
The movie is also wickedly funny. So many quotable one liners.
“Not now, dear. Mother is fighting.”
My favorite film of all time. Historically accurate and stunning location. Katharine Hepburn alone made this film great, but then add Peter O’Toole and a caste of some of the best actors in Britain, and you have the masterpiece that it is.
It’s a fun movie, but is that a scrunchy Princess Alais is wearing? (As I recall, Jane Merrow looks alarmingly 1968 throughout.)
I think it’s a length of plaited gold cord or some such wrapped round and tied.
An all time favorite Christmas movie for sure, with wicked whit and family drama. The costumes are so authentic looking and the actors are not all shiny and clean. I do like the scene where Alais and Eleanor are wrapping gifts with good old tannenbaum in the background.
Fun Fact: The fabulous Eleanor of Aquitaine is a very distant ancestor of mine!
She’s almost certainly an ancestress of anyone who can trace a line of descent in England over the last couple of centuries. I read somewhere that more people than not in England are descended from Edward I, who was her great-grandson.
I love ‘the Kion in Winter’s but dear God, do they go through this every year?
I adore this film and have done since seeing it in the cinema in my early teens. Such stellar performances and such clever writing. “Every family has its ups and downs”!
It was filmed in Provence, in the chateaux of Beaucaire and Tarascon and the Abbey of Montmajour (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Montmajour_Abbey) – all well worth a visit.
That family took toxicity to new levels, making the modern British Royals look positively tame.
I was so impressed by this movie the first time I saw it and I still think it is so well put together.
The dialogue especially is excellent: every word shows us so much about each character while also moving the plot forward while also just being lovely to hear. I think that’s something lacking from many contemporary films – dialogue is so often reduced to quips and mumbled half-sentences. The more “stagey” dialogue of many classic films may be “less realistic” (although I think that’s debatable) but it is much more poetic and memorable.
Also, the character orchestration is so well done. Everyone clashes because they are too different or too alike. I have to admit that as a teenager I thought Geoffrey was the coolest! I always like the characters who stand back and watch and plan.
Peter O’Toole had to really coax Hepburn to take this role. She was in a deep depression, having just lost Spencer Tracy, and really didn’t want to do it. Good on him, because she won the Oscar for the performance, although she had to shared it with Barbra! I love this movie. I remember watching it on network TV as a child and when I watched it recently, it is still really enjoyed it.
Yep, this movie started me on my life-long love of Eleanor of Aquitaine. I’m told that those with certain kinds of family trauma in their past find this movie really stressful. I merely find it comfortingly familiar because this is almost exactly my family’s dysfunction (albeit for much smaller stakes).