On the 2nd of May 1536, King Henry VIII sat in his private chambers, staring at a document that would seal the fate of his second wife, Anne Boleyn. The warrant for her execution lay before him, a stark contrast to the lavish coronation she had received just three years prior. This moment of hesitation was the opening scene of a film that would take two decades to reach the screen, delayed by the strict moral codes of the American film industry which deemed themes of adultery and illegitimacy too scandalous for public consumption. The story begins not with the grandeur of the Tudor court, but with the cold, calculating silence of a man who had once been madly in love with the woman now facing the block. The film, Anne of the Thousand Days, directed by Charles Jarrott and produced by Hal B. Wallis, chose to frame the entire narrative through this lens of regret and finality, forcing the audience to witness the slow erosion of a marriage that had once been the center of the kingdom's attention.
The Broken Engagement
Nine years earlier, in 1527, the court of Henry VIII was a place of shifting alliances and hidden desires. The king, bored with his wife Catherine of Aragon and his current mistress Mary Boleyn, found himself transfixed by Mary's eighteen-year-old sister, Anne. She had just returned from her education in France, engaged to the son of the Earl of Northumberland, and seemingly destined for a quiet life. Henry, however, was not content to let her go. He ordered Cardinal Thomas Wolsey, his Lord Chancellor, to break the engagement, a move that would set off a chain reaction of political and personal destruction. Anne's reaction was immediate and furious; she blamed the cardinal and the king for ruining her happiness, refusing to be a passive object in their schemes. When Henry made a clumsy attempt to seduce her, she bluntly informed him of her feelings, rejecting his advances with a mixture of repulsion and anger. This initial resistance was the spark that would eventually ignite the fire of the English Reformation, as Anne used the king's obsession to undermine Wolsey and seize power for herself.
The Power of Love
The transformation of Anne Boleyn from a resistant courtier to the Queen of England was not immediate, but it was inevitable once she realized the power that the king's love could grant her. She began to undermine Cardinal Wolsey, who initially saw her as a passing love interest for the king, and her influence grew with every rejection she turned into a victory. When Henry pressed her to become his mistress, she drew a line in the sand, stating that she would never give birth to an illegitimate child. Her demand was clear: she would only marry him. Henry, desperate for a son, suddenly came up with the idea of marrying Anne in Catherine's place. Anne was stunned, but she agreed, and Wolsey begged the king to abandon the idea because of the political consequences of divorcing Catherine. Henry refused to listen, and when Wolsey failed to persuade the pope to give Henry his divorce, Anne pointed out this failing to an enraged Henry. Wolsey was dismissed from office, and his magnificent palace in London was given as a present to Anne, who realized she had finally fallen in love with Henry. They slept together, and after discovering that she was pregnant, they were secretly married. Anne was given a splendid coronation, but the people jeered at her in disgust, a sign of the turmoil that was to come.
Months later, Anne gave birth to a daughter, Princess Elizabeth, but Henry was displeased because he wanted a son, and their marital relationship began to cool. His attentions were soon diverted to Lady Jane Seymour, one of Anne's maids. Once she discovered this liaison, Anne banished Jane from court, but the damage was done. The king's interest had shifted, and Anne's position as queen was no longer secure. During a row over Sir Thomas More's opposition to Anne's queenship, Anne refused to sleep with her husband again unless More was put to death. More was executed, but Anne's subsequent pregnancy ended with a stillborn boy. Henry demanded that his new minister Thomas Cromwell find a way to get rid of Anne. Cromwell tortured a servant in her household into confessing to adultery with the queen, and he then arrested four other courtiers who were also accused of being Anne's lovers. Anne was taken to the Tower and placed under arrest. When she was told that she had been accused of adultery, Anne laughed until she saw her brother being brought into the Tower and learned he faced the same accusation. The laughter died, and the reality of her situation set in.
The Trial and the Tower
At Anne's trial, she managed to cross-question Mark Smeaton, the tortured servant who finally admitted that the charges against Anne were lies. Henry made an appearance, then visited Anne in her chambers that night. He offered her freedom if she would agree to annul their marriage and make their daughter illegitimate. Anne refused, saying that she would rather die than betray their daughter, whom she claims will rule after Henry. He slapped her and told her that her disobedience will mean her death. The meeting between Anne and Henry shortly before her execution is fictional, and even if such a meeting had taken place, some details of their discussion are implausible. Anne's marriage was annulled anyway, and she never was offered a deal that would have given her her freedom. Elizabeth and Mary were both declared illegitimate, but were nevertheless in the line of succession, but not until after Anne's death. Thus, at that point, the chance of Elizabeth's inheriting the crown must have seemed small. Henry did not intervene in Anne's trial; she was disallowed the right to question the witnesses against her. She and the king met last at a joust the day before her arrest. Anne of the Thousand Days depicts Anne as innocent of the charges laid against her, and this is considered historically correct in the biographies by Eric W. Ives, Retha Warnicke, Joanna Denny, and David Starkey, which all assert her innocence of adultery, incest, and witchcraft.
The Final Execution
In the present, Henry decides to execute Anne. A few days later, she is taken to the scaffold and beheaded by a French swordsman. Henry rides off to marry Jane Seymour. Meanwhile, Elizabeth toddles alone in the garden as she hears cannons firing, announcing her mother's death. The film ends with the young princess, the future Elizabeth I, hearing the sound of her mother's execution, a moment that would define her entire life. The film's depiction of Anne's death is one of the most powerful scenes in the movie, capturing the tragedy of a woman who had once been the center of the world, now reduced to a mere footnote in the history of the Tudor dynasty. The film's ending is a stark reminder of the cost of power and the fragility of life in the Tudor court, where even the most powerful individuals could be brought low by the whims of a single man.
The Making of a Legend
The film Anne of the Thousand Days took 20 years to reach the screen because its themes , adultery, illegitimacy, incest , were then unacceptable to the U.S. motion picture production code. The play Anne of the Thousand Days, the film's basis, was first enacted on Broadway in the Shubert Theatre on the 8th of December 1948; staged by H. C. Potter, with Rex Harrison and Joyce Redman as Henry VIII and Anne Boleyn respectively, running 288 performances; Harrison won a Tony Award for his performance. British actress Olivia Hussey was the first choice for the role of Anne Boleyn. When producer Hal B. Wallis first met Hussey in New York in November 1967 at a party for her then upcoming film Romeo and Juliet (1968), he offered her the title role. In addition, he also offered her to star with John Wayne in True Grit (1969). In her 2019 memoir, Hussey stated that she had mumbled something about being interested in Anne of the Thousand Days but added that she couldn't see herself with Wayne. She claims that this adolescent and opinionated remark inevitably ended her professional relationship with Wallis, and he immediately withdrew his offer from her. It had taken her less than a minute to talk her way out of it. The film was made on such locations as Penshurst Place and Hever Castle, and at Pinewood and Shepperton Studios. Hever Castle was one of the main settings for the film; it was also the childhood home of Anne Boleyn.
The Critical Reception
Despite receiving some negative reviews, Anne of the Thousand Days was nominated for 10 Academy Awards and won the award for best costumes. Geneviève Bujold's portrayal of Anne, her first role in an English language film, was very highly praised, even by Time magazine, which otherwise skewered the movie. According to the Academy Awards exposé Inside Oscar, an expensive advertising campaign was mounted by Universal Studios that included serving champagne and filet mignon to members of the academy following each screening. The film received mixed reviews from critics, as most commonly they considered the plot dull and plodding. The film has an approval rating of 43% on Rotten Tomatoes from 14 critic reviews. Beyond the story itself, the performances of Geneviève Bujold, Richard Burton, and Irene Papas were met with universal acclaim, especially that of Bujold. Bujold remains the only actress to have been nominated for an Oscar for playing Anne Boleyn. The film was one of the more popular movies of 1970 at the British box office. The film's historical accuracy has been disputed by historians like Antonia Fraser, who noted that the unrequited passion of Henry for Anne, which undergoes a complete reversal by the end of the story, is entirely unhistorical. She observed that all six of Henry's wives married him willingly, and that this depiction is very far away from history and the mentality of the sixteenth century. In short, the real Anne Boleyn was delighted to receive the king's attentions.