Murder in the Cathedral (film)
6 /10 1 Votes
Duration Language English | Director George Hoellering Country United Kingdom | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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Release date 1951 (1951) (Venice) Based on Murder in the Cathedral by T. S. Eliot | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Murder in the cathedral
Murder in the Cathedral is a 1951 British drama film directed and produced by George Hoellering and co-written by Hoellering and T. S. Eliot based on Eliot's 1935 verse drama of the same name and starring Father John Groser.
Contents
The film competed at the 12th Venice International Film Festival and received the award for Best Production Design, given to Peter Pendrey. It was released in the United Kingdom in 1952.
Plot
Archbishop Thomas Becket (Father John Groser) deals with his temptations before his murder in the Canterbury Cathedral in 1170.
Cast
Release
Murder in the Cathedral premiered at the 12th Venice International Film Festival in 1951 before being theatrically released by Film Traders Ltd. in the United Kingdom in March 1952 and in the United States by Classic Pictures on 25 March 1952.
Reception
Bosley Crowther wrote in The New York Times: "Whatever literary merits T. S. Eliot's Murder in the Cathedral may have and whatever strange dramatic virtues it may possess in performance on a stage, it is obvious that this stylized verse drama is not felicitous material for the screen. ... There are flashes of stark pictorial beauty in some of the somber scenes of prelates and noblemen and worshippers gathered in the Archbishop's Hall of Canterbury Cathedral, where the entire action of the play takes place. And some nods toward cinema dynamics are more or less effectively made in not too imaginative cutting for dramatic emphasis and flow. But, for the most part, Mr. Eliot's cold recounting of Becket's defiance of the King and his murder by helmeted assassins for insisting upon the Church's authority is conveyed in lengthy orations by individuals and choral groups, photographed in static poses and solemnly massed attitudes." Crowther continued: "Fortunately, the spoken words have richness as they flow off the cultivated tongues of handsomely costumed performers who, at least, look their medieval roles. Father John Groser, an English cleric, is grandly dignified and benign as the conscientious Archbishop who coolly calculates his martyrdom and Alexander Gauge is forceful as King Henry in a scene especially written for the film."