Hi, WH, good to see you here!
And thank you for your reply, Katherine. I have read the play,
though not recently, and I don't recall if that line was included
or not; I can get it again on Interlibrary Loan and check.
You occasionally hear about lines being excised and then restored.
For instance, in Spartacus there was a scene with Tony Curtis
bathing Laurence Olivier, and some homo-erotic banter; it was
cut back in 1960, but restored ten years ago. Trouble is, the
audio portion of the scene was missing. Curtis was still alive
to dub in his original lines, but Olivier had died in 1991.
What to do? Well, someone remembered that Anthony Hopkins can do
a perfect imitation of Olivier, so he filled in. And it's so
seamlessly done that you cannot tell the difference when Hopkins
takes over. Wow! Being Welsh too Hopkins can probably do a boffo
Burton as well, but I don't think Henry said anything.
When you think about it, the omission of the porpoise line would
explain the rather choppy segue to her next line still in the film;
"You make love as you eat, with a great deal of noise and no
subtlety." Since she had not succumbed to his advances yet at this
point, how would she know, unless she had observed him? I know
the phrase 'make love' sometimes means 'woo or court', but you do
not woo noisily.
Ironically Bujold does not have a website, so I can't ask her
directly. Ah, well, it's a magnificent performance & film regardless.
Do you know that the whole 'Tower' scene was filmed on the day
Prince Charles was being invested as Prince of Wales a few
miles away? Roger Ebert told the story during a Bujold wallow.
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17 years ago
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Kathrynethegreat
17 years ago
I got out my DVD today as well. The cut is rather obvious, and I do think there is a possibility that an additional line could be in there. How interesting!
However...if the line was in there, then it hasn't been in any cut of the film for a long time. I wonder how we could find out? Perhaps writing to Turner Classic Movies? They air it sometimes. Perhaps they are more aware of any cuts that have been made...
But yeah...watching the scene again, there is the possibility that a line was in between the other two.
Gosh! Now I want to get to the bottom of it!
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wiccaone
17 years ago
The actual line is:
" It was my doubtful pleasure once to sleep in Mary's room or to lie awake when you thought me asleep and observe the royal porpoise at play".
This line is in the play and in the book so it may well have been cut during the filming as I do not remember it when the film originally was screened.
They also appeared to have the cut the line where Henry calls Cromwell a "whore-son pig" much to my eternal regret!
When the film aired on the London Weekend channel in the UK, they made quite a few cuts (much to my disgust) and in fact, cut the whole scene out when Anne taunts Henry about bastards and he slaps her. This obviously ruined the continuity.
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17 years ago
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little_miss_sunnydale
17 years ago
Is the scene cut on both the UK version of the DVD and the US version? Perhaps the cut was only made on one? I don’t have my copy (region 2 format) on me at the moment, but when I do will check.
‘Noli me tangere; for Caesar's I am’
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IsoldeJaneHolland
17 years ago
WH, the court did not stay in one place but travelled around the
country constantly, to "maintain peace in the shires" and all that.
Privacy is a recently acquired luxury, even in more affluent
families. Indeed, when Anne Boleyn's cousin Katherine Howard
(Henry's fifth wife) was tried for adultery, plenty of people
testified that in her grandmother's household they had observed
her lover Tom Culpepper joining her in her bed in the dormitory
type room she shared with four others. Remember that funny scene in
Forrest Gump when Forrest visits Jenny at college and they have
a jolly snog session with her room-mate 'sleeping' five feet away,
and Forrest accidentally hits her robe? LOL.
Hard for us to understand, since we ship honeymooners off to an
island far where they can do the McNasty far away from our delicate
sensibilities! LOL
Awful to think of that entire 'Our children will be bastards' scene
being cut, because of the wonderful contrast between when he hits
her here and she goes flying, and later in the tower scene he
hits her again and she doesn't even blink. Indeed, it's shot so
that she towers over him throughout, looking commandingly down,
while delivering that blistering manifesto summing up their history.
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wiccaone
17 years ago
Yes, because she is standing on steps, she forces him to look up to her. No wonder poor old Henry has to resort to slamming the door of her cell because he cannot think of a suitable retort!
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