Synopsis
The Private Life of Henry VIII (1933) is Alexander Korda's historical drama, and you can watch it online on iFILM. Charles Laughton plays the English king for whom a wedding and an execution were never far apart.
The film skips the first marriage and opens on the morning Anne Boleyn loses her head. From there the wives keep coming: quiet Jane Seymour, foreign-born Anne of Cleves whom Henry would rather divorce than bed, young Catherine Howard. Laughton's Henry isn't a fearsome icon but a huge, gluttonous, sulking man who mistakes power for a license over other people's lives. Merle Oberon, Binnie Barnes and Elsa Lanchester fill out the court.
This was the first British picture to take an Academy Award — Laughton's Best Actor prize — and the film that put Korda's studio on Hollywood's map. It rewards anyone curious about where prestige British cinema began, or who simply wants a lead performance that hasn't aged in ninety years. Stream The Private Life of Henry VIII (1933) online on iFILM.
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