Tudor Film Noir by Candlelight

In the 1970s a BBC historical mini-series such as Wolf Hall (currently screening here on the BBC Australia subscription channel UK TV) would have been shown in Australia free-to-air on the ABC. This series about Henry VIII’s chief minister Thomas Cromwell, based on two Booker Prize-winning novels by Hilary Mantel, would have been exactly the kind of program the national broadcaster was expected to show. Indeed, in the early 1970s, for many of us mini-series such as The Six Wives of Henry VIII and Elizabeth R took over our Sunday nights. It was not ideal—for one thing the BBC was “filming” in colour and Australia still had only black-and-white television. But we did get it for nothing, without advertisements, and we were watching superb writing and acting. To be sure, the style of a series such as Elizabeth R was somewhere between theatre and film. It was shot in long takes and written and played in a heightened style that evoked the rhetoric of the period while being expertly pitched to the camera.

Wolf Hall could not be more different. The visuals combine documentary realism with painterly images that evoke the style of Hans Holbein, whose contemporary portraits were a major influence on the production. Director Peter Kosminsky and cinematographer Gavin Finney are drawing on a long and honourable tradition for period television and film in recreating the style of contemporary artists—Jacques-Louis David for Marie Antoinette (1938), Van Gogh for Lust for Life (1956), while Toulouse Lautrec was almost entitled to a designer credit for the famous opening sequence of John Huston’s Moulin Rouge (1952).

But Kosminsky has gone further. Many scenes have been filmed using the light from candles and sometimes the fires supposedly warming the rooms, with the camera almost entirely hand-held. This is anything but traditional. Gavin Finney exploits the capacity of the new digital cameras to literally “see” more clearly than the human eye.

It has been attempted before but with different technology. Stanley Kubrick used very fast film stock and specially adapted Zeiss lenses, originally developed by NASA to record the moon landings, so he could shoot some interiors for Barry Lyndon (1975) by candlelight. That was very effective, but with six hours of television Kosminsky recreates almost completely the visual experience of living in the sixteenth century. In the night scenes characters are shadowy figures, occasionally illuminated by a lantern. Day sequences seem to have been filmed in natural light. Unobtrusive travelling shots give the narrative an immediacy that is often lacking in the more formal groupings of the traditional period film.

The series was shot almost entirely on location using surviving Tudor and medieval houses. Dover Castle doubled as the Tower of London for the public execution scenes in episode six. The Long Gallery, Tapestry Room and Queen Elizabeth Room in Penshurst Place doubled as specific rooms in Whitehall. The Long Gallery, which was actually used by the real Henry and Anne Boleyn, doubles as her chamber. The film-makers soon discovered that these buildings were specifically designed to be lit by candles and found the appropriate spots—while the actors complained about bumping into the furniture in the dark.

Wolf Hall’s action is seen from the perspective of Thomas Cromwell. He is of course the villain in A Man for All Seasons, Robert Bolt’s play about Sir Thomas More, most famously played by Leo McKern in the film version as a bullying thug. Historically he was more complex, a loyal servant of Cardinal Wolsey and later Henry VIII, and a major force in distributing the translated Bible. Mantel made him the fascinatingly ambiguous protagonist of the two novels on which the mini-series is based, Wolf Hall and Bring Up the Bodies.

The screenwriter, Peter Straughan, condenses Mantel’s original brilliantly. The first two episodes, “Three Card Trick” and “Entirely Beloved”, portray the fall of Wolsey, beginning when the King’s officers demand the Great Seal of England from the Cardinal. A figure emerges from the shadows and whispers in the prelate’s ear and Wolsey blandly points out that they have not brought the right papers. This is the viewer’s first introduction to Mark Rylance’s Cromwell. Jonathan Pryce is a sympathetic Wolsey, and together they make this first attachment of Cromwell’s touchingly believable. Some nicely placed flashbacks explain the King’s Great Matter—the divorce of Catherine of Aragon from King Henry that Wolsey has failed to secure.

Wolf Hall is perhaps the first of these series to show the details of a great man’s fall—the plundering of his possessions, how his retainers move him to another residence, and of course the anguish. Straughan, following Mantel, makes these sequences the motivation for Cromwell’s pursuit of the instigators of Wolsey’s fall. When another retainer of the Cardinal describes their patron’s death while being taken to the Tower charged with high treason and calls on God to take vengeance on all those responsible, Cromwell replies quietly that there is no need to trouble God: “I will take it in hand.” It is one of Wolf Hall’s most chilling moments. No one can be absolutely certain this was the reason Cromwell pursued the Boleyns and their allies, but it is quite likely, and makes for splendid drama. Throughout he is haunted by his memory of a masque staged at court to influence the King where a figure representing the Cardinal is prodded into a hell mouth by masked “devils” impersonated by some of the men seeking to encompass his disgrace. The incident is completely accurate although whether it influenced Cromwell in this way one can’t be sure—but once again, it is highly probable.

As Mark Rylance’s Cromwell moves down the corridors of the great houses occupied by King and court, or sits at his desk perusing state papers and the reports of informants, he seems to be yet another film noir protagonist, flawed, vulnerable, laconic, witty and deadly—“You made a mistake when you threatened me.” Yet the portrait is at least a valid interpretation. Neither Mandel nor Straughan makes any attempt to mitigate the enormity of his judicial murder of Anne Boleyn, which is portrayed in the novel and the series in chilling clinical detail. As with so many of the great tragedies, the revenge once achieved is horrifying; even more so here because it is all true.

Wolf Hall is one of the few fictional series to make a real contribution to our understanding of the period. Damian Lewis’s Henry captures the charm and authority described by contemporaries. When Wolsey speaks of loving the King it seems quite plausible. And as the King’s cruelty emerges it comes as a genuine shock to the viewer, much as it did for many of his subjects at the time. Claire Foy’s Anne Boleyn is both vicious and vengeful as well as being resolute and courageous at her end.

It is a pity a similar balance was not struck with the portrayal of Cromwell’s great rival Sir Thomas More. As played by Anton Lesser he is a fanatical persecutor of heretics and a torturer. More did have a darker side. Accusations of torture were made against him in his lifetime. They were denied, but he openly approved the burning of heretics. Mandel and Straughan were therefore entitled to portray these less attractive qualities. But they should not have distorted the trial. As we know from A Man for All Seasons, More was charged with high treason for refusing to take the Oath of Supremacy affirming Henry VIII as head of the Church in England and would not say why he would not take it. He was convicted when Richard Rich testified that More had denied the supremacy in a private conversation in his cell in the Tower when Rich came to remove his books and papers. Undoubtedly Rich perjured himself and the perjury was suborned by Cromwell. In episode four of Wolf Hall, Rich is telling the truth and More is worsted in the exchange with him. This contradicts the transcript which records this devastating response:

Can it seem likely to your Lordships that in so weighty an Affair as this as to trust Mr Rich, a Man I had so mean an opinion of, in reference to his Truth and Honesty … that I should only impart to Mr Rich the secrets of my Conscience in respect to the King’s Supremacy, the particular Secrets and only Point about which I have been so long pressed to explain myself?

Similarly Mantel and Straughan only give their More a few fragments of his great oration in which, after being convicted, he condemned the Act of Supremacy. He isn’t even allowed his final line before being executed: “I die the King’s good servant but God’s first.” The trial was done brilliantly by Robert Bolt, who condensed the exchanges and speeches to give the actor playing More some great moments—watch Charlton Heston and Paul Scofield in the film versions. But all Mantel in the novel and Straughan in his script had to do was to stay closer to the transcript and allow More his moral triumph and not distort the history. Certainly this is fiction, and the less attractive side of Sir Thomas was overdue for an airing, but artists of this calibre should have embraced the complexity of his trial and death, not simplified it.

Nevertheless, Wolf Hall is great film-making and this is only a minor lapse in an otherwise extraordinary achievement.