Henry VIII And His Six Wives Movie Review (1972)

A fictionalized retelling of a famous historical life, Henry VIII and His Six Wives does an excellent job of covering each of Henry’s relationships while giving you a little bit of insight into each wife.

Divorced, beheaded, died, divorced, beheaded, survived. If you are at all familiar with the Broadway show SIX, the television show The Tudors, or general history about Henry VIII, you’ve likely heard this rhyme before. The tale of the six wives of Henry VIII is fascinating, and being a huge Broadway fan myself, I fell down a rabbit hole of research a few years ago. So, when I happened upon this film, I had to watch it.

Henry VIII and His Six Wives tells the tale of Henry’s romantic relationships, along with his political and personal interactions, as he recalls them from his deathbed. Surrounded by people, you slowly learn who some of them are as they are introduced over the course of his life, and as he recalls his history, he exclaims various names, letting you know how he felt about them.

To provide a bit of history about the most famous people in his life, Henry VIII is the father of both Queen Mary I (aka Bloody Mary) and the infamous Queen Elizabeth. His second wife was Anne Boleyn, about whom countless media has been produced, and apparently, his 13th great-grandnephew is the actor Hugh Grant (a descendant of Henry’s sibling, Mary Tudor, Queen of France). But let’s get to the movie.

Henry VIII and His Six Wives covers a lot of ground in two hours, and works hard to give you the essence of what happened at each stage. Keith Michell is a serious and earnest Henry with all of the pressures of a king, including a fervent need for one of his wives to produce a male heir. The film spans decades, and in each, Michell leans into both Henry’s age and vulnerability, yielding a sometimes unlikeable but mostly understandable man.

All of the actresses who play the wives are in tune with their characters and memorable, but the standout for me is Lynne Frederick as Catherine Howard, Henry’s fifth wife. History remembers the least about Catherine Howard, as she was very young when she married and very young when she was beheaded, but Frederick’s performance contains an exceptional amount of nuance. She looks to be about 15 in the film and is married to an old, sick man who could be her grandfather. And while we don’t know much about the real woman, Frederick’s ability to shower her aged husband with childlike kisses while harboring conflicting feelings about their relationship is communicated well on screen.

With fantastic period costumes and sets and a cast who understands the history and the characters’ places in it, I really enjoyed this film. If you don’t know much about the wives of Henry VIII, this is a great introduction to them, and if you do, it’s just one more entertaining piece of the puzzle down the rabbit hole of history.

Runtime: 125 minutes

Motion Picture Rating: PG

Languages Spoken In The Film: English

Should You Watch It? Yes

Did I Cry? Nope

My Rating: 3.5/5 Stars

Available: Free on YouTube or may be available for free on other streaming platforms