Anna Boleyn was a pleasant surprise to me. I knew Lubitsch could direct comedy, but I hadn’t expected he’d be so capable at drama. And historical drama at that. While a lot of this kind of film can drag badly, I was plugged into the characters all the way –especially King Henry, Anna and Henry Norris – and I was invested all the way through.
The most memorable performance here is Emil Jannings as Henry VIII. Jannings’ is a tour-de-force silent portrayal of a complex sociopath. His Henry is impulsive, young, and very hormone-driven. Obsessed with Anna, he divorces Catherine, but his affections then wander to Jane (and any garden nymph that happens to be around) until some court machinations stimulate his jealousy of Henry Norris. But Jannings’ Henry is not off-the-rails crazy; Jannings finds a coherence and even a likeability in Henry VIII that you’d think would come from a method actor’s approach to the character rather than from someone so well-versed in classic theater. With a cut of the eye or shift of posture, Jannings communicates even tiny variations in the King.
The other characters don’t have the complexity of Henry, but they’re still sympathetic throughout. Anna experiences many conflicts – desire/duty, King Henry/Henry Norris, sacrifice/happiness – and we watch her navigate these contradictions throughout the film with, however, a little more mope than we’d see in her portrayal today. For his part, Henry Norris goes from one bad decision to the next as he inadvertently makes Anna’s life more difficult, and he’s also tripped up by sheer, melodramatic bad luck. But Anna Boleyn is melodramatic, and we’re carried along in Anna’s tribulations and Henry’s inefficacy by the excellent story more than by the range of their respective emotions. Anna mostly suffers here; Henry gets angry and suffers. As melodrama is wont to do, the last part of the story moves to elaborate pathos with the baby Elizabeth and the treacherous Duke of Norfolk.
I was impressed by the art direction here, too. There are great sets with oversized furniture crowding rooms, and there are castle and church exteriors full of extras in period clothes. In fact, the costumes here are wonderful to look at, an interesting amalgam of 20s style and English Renaissance. I several times noticed that a woman was wearing a scarf pulled around in flapper style, for example. But whatever the style, the costumes are wonderfully complex and elegant.
This is a film that’s definitely worth the two-hour run time. What a pleasure to discover this story-telling side of the great comic director.
