Oscar Tie, Part 1

At the 1969 Oscar ceremony, there was a tie for the Best Actress category, the only true tie in Oscar history. (At the 1933 awards, the Best Actor category was credited as a tie, but only because of a technicality. Frederick March actually won the award by 1 vote over Wallace Beery, but the rules at the time stated that a win by less than 3 votes would be considered a tie. The rules have since been changed so that only an exact tie will result in awards going to multiple winners.) One of those winners, Katharine Hepburn, also made a record that year for most lead performer Oscar wins, taking home her third Oscar for her performance in The Lion in Winter. (She still holds the record today, having increased her count to 4 Best Actress Oscars when she took home the statue for On Golden Pond.) The Lion in Winter also won the Oscar for Best Adapted Screenplay (James Goldman), and was nominated for Best Picture, Best Director (Anthony Harvey), and Best Actor (Peter O'Toole, in his second time being nominated for playing the same character, King Henry II, the first being for Becket, which I reviewed a couple of weeks ago).

The Lion in Winter tells the story of King Henry II's attempt to choose a successor to his throne from among his three sons. The power struggle amongst this most dysfunctional of families makes this film like a strange combination of King Lear and Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?. Reunited for Christmas of 1183, England's royal family engage in lies, manipulations, and wars of words as each attempts to grab all of the power that they can get. Hepburn plays Eleanor of Aquitaine, Henry's Queen, and his prisoner for 10 years, trying to pull the strings in order to arrange her own freedom, and needling her husband in every way possible. She is trying to get Henry to name her favored son, Richard (Anthony Hopkins, in his debut performance) as heir to the throne. Richard is a war-mongering general, a conquering hero with the strength to hold the kingdom together. Henry favors his youngest son, John (Nigel Terry), a weak, foolish puppet, not really fit for the throne, but favored by the King as the only son he has had a hand in raising. Middle son Geoffrey (John Castle) favors himself for the throne, manipulating his brothers in an attempt to get them to disqualify themselves from the throne or destroy each other, leaving himself to pick up the pieces. Adding fuel to the family's fire is the visiting King Philip of France (future James Bond Timothy Dalton, in his debut performance), trying to shatter the British Empire so he can sweep in to conquer it for France.

The performances are absolutely peerless. Hepburn astounds with her ability to earn sympathy despite her evil manipulations and her cutting sarcasm. ("Every family has it's ups and downs," she says to herself following an argument with her husband in which she suggests that she had a sexual relationship with his father.) O'Toole delivers a much richer performance this time around as King Henry II, capturing the same character as in his previous portrayal, but revealing many more layers of the character's personality than in the previous film. Hopkins, in his first major role, left no doubt that he had an amazing career ahead of him.

Goldman's award-winning screenplay is brilliant, managing to carefully balance the complex schemes and manipulations of six different characters while maximizing each character's potential for both pathos and dark humor. Once again, I find myself surprised at just how absorbed I am by a period piece about a historical era in which I don't have any particular interest or knowledge. Some might complain that there is not much action in this film, but drama doesn't get much better than this.

Movie trivia question: Part 2 of this review's question. With whom did Kate Hepburn tie for the 1969 Best Actress Oscar, and for what film?