Lady Jane (1986)

A dramatization of Lady Jane Grey's short life ,as the death of King Henry VIII throws his kingdom into chaos because of succession disputes . It deals with Jane Grey (a very young Helena Bonham Carter) from her forced marriage , which she resisted at the beginning , though after falling in love for Guilford Dudley (Gary Elwes, director Trevor Nunn personally chose him to star this role , Nunn later offered Elwes to join the Royal Shakespeare Company) to her brief reign as monarch of England , his early downfall and finally , to her ultimate beheading . The film portrays her as an innocent set up for the slaughter while the scheming courtiers and pretenders to the throne barely pay her mind, as they stab each other in the back in their attempts to gain power and influence . Anxious to keep England true to the Anglican Reformation, a scheming minister John Dudley , the Duke of Nothumberland (John Wood) marries off his son to Lady Jane Grey, whom he places on the throne after Edward VI dies . Thomas Wyatt was the leader of the rebellion, proclaiming her Queen of England , her father, Henry, was a part of this rebellion. But all of them cannot withstand the course of power which will lead to their definitive fall . In 1553, Lady Jane Grey ruled the throne in Britain for just nine days. Jane was imprisoned along with Guilford ; in reality, Lady Jane and Guilford Dudley barely knew each other and were not together during their imprisonment . She was aged sixteen years when she was the Queen of England . She was the Grand Niece of King Henry VIII. Jane Grey is rarely referred to as Queen Jane and is more commonly known as Lady Jane .

This is a correct portrayal about political intrigue , lovers and war during Edward VI , Henry VIII's weak son , is on his deathbed . As are splendidly recreated intrigues , treason , turmoil and power fight of its time , including the troublesome days and machinations surrounding . It deals with a wonderful love story between Lady Jane Grey and Lord Guilford ; at first hostile to each other, but later they fall in love . It's magnificently captured by marvelous sets , splendid production design and glamorous gowns . This elaborate , colorful costumer drama packs outstanding performances from an extraordinary support cast . As the film was cast with several members of the Royal Shakespeare Company . These included prestigious players as John Wood, Michael Hordern, Patrick Stewart, Sara Kestelman, writer David Edgar, and the film's director, Trevor Nunn, who was also the Director of the Royal Shakespeare Company . This was the third filmed for the cinema version of the Lady Jane story . The tale had been filmed twice before for the big screen, the most recent at the time was half a century earlier in 1936, as The Tudor Rose , and before that, the first time in 1923, about sixty-three years earlier, as Lady Jane Grey ; or, The Court of Intrigue.

Colorful as well as glowing cinematography , being final British film shot by veteran English cinematographer Douglas Slocombe , the picture was also the penultimate film overall lensed by Slocombe, whose final film was Indiana Jones and the last crusade about three years later . Evocative musical score plenty of chores , lyrics and Baroque music , being the only ever cinema film score composed by music composer Stephen Oliver whose work was mostly in television. The motion picture was well directed by Trevor Nunn . This was first theatrical film for director Trevor in eleven years , the last had been Hedda in 1975 and the third and final

Fmovies: Although it has been more than a decade since I saw Lady Jane, I remember that it moved me greatly. The ambiance and characters are fully developed. Helen Bonham Carter was quite young, perfect for the role, and turned out to be quite a revelation. I saw the film in Madrid. I'll never forget the sight of a middle aged Spaniard (male) in the audience weeping at the conclusion. (The Spanish nobility were the "bad guys" of this drama).

Lady Jane Grey, the "Nine Days' Wonder", is a controversial figure in English history, one of a small group of English "monarchs" whose right to that title is accepted by some historians and denied by others. (Others include Queen Matilda, King Louis and King Philip, the husband of Jane's nemesis Queen Mary I). To some, mostly Protestants, she is Queen Jane, the rightful Queen of England for the nine days between 10th and 19th July 1553. To others, mostly Catholics, Mary was rightfully Queen from the death of her half-brother Edward VI and Jane a mere usurper.

Legally, in fact, the position was complicated. Mary, like her sister Elizabeth, had been declared a bastard by their father Henry VIII. Towards the end of his life, however, Henry had passed the Third Succession Act, which restored his daughters to the line of succession without formally legitimising them. Edward, as he lay dying, had executed a will excluding Mary and Elizabeth from the succession and naming his cousin Jane as his successor, although, because this will had not yet been ratified by Parliament at the time of his death, Mary's supporters argued that it carried less weight than Henry's Act. Jane was proclaimed Queen by the Privy Council, who then promptly abandoned her when they realised that Mary enjoyed more popular support and that attempts to prevent her accession were doomed to failure.

"Lady Jane" was the third British film about Jane's life after a silent version from the 1920s and "Tudor Rose" from 1936, neither of which I have seen. It was made in 1986, during the "Thatcher Years", to a script by the well-known left-wing playwright David Edgar, so it is perhaps unsurprising that it is essentially Tudor history rewritten to suit the Guardian-reading classes of the 1980s. It is a curious mixture of costume drama and political tract, of fact and fiction. It follows the essential outlines of Lady Jane's story but contains two major divergences from historical fact.

The first of these concerns the relationship between Jane and her husband Lord Guilford Dudley. At first Edgar paints them as they are portrayed in most history books- Jane as intellectually precocious, scholarly and devoutly religious, Guilford as a debauched young man more interested in frequenting taverns and whorehouses than in reading Plato. Both are initially reluctant to marry and have to be coerced by their parents, who see the match as politically and financially advantageous. In the film, however, Jane and Guilford quickly fall deeply in love, although the historical evidence suggests that they disliked one another intensely throughout their marriage.

Edgar's second major divergence from history is his attempt to introduce twentieth-century politics into the period. During their brief reign Jane and Guilford are so shocked by the poverty of their subjects that they introduce a reformist political agenda- distribution of land among the peasantry, state-funded relief of poverty, universal free education based upon progressive principles and the abolition of corporal punishment. At times I thought I was watching an alternate history fantasy about how England, under the enlightened rule of Queen Jane the Good, became the world's first socialist welfare state nearly four centuries before such ideas caught on in the rest of the world. In the film it is this reformist agenda, as much as any popular support for Mary, which causes Jane's Council to abandon her cause, her Cou

Lady Jane fmovies. I had to watch this movie for a British History course, and I was fully expecting to be bored during the entire thing, but I was so pleasantly suprised! This was a great movie - great acting, directing, plot, settings, etc. And apparently it's a great movie to watch to get a feel for that period in England, 'cause my professor made us watch it. I would definitely recommend this movie to anybody who has ever watched and enjoyed any period drama before!

It's difficult to know how to take a film that begins with a history lesson (to the self-important sound of a beating drum, no less) and ends with a quote from Plato. Between the two is a narrative that wants to be both a conventional love story and an unconventional period film. It doesn't quite succeed at either, but for viewers of LADY JANE, the pleasure is in the details, and there are plenty of those.

To first dispense with the glaring historical inaccuracy that lies at the film's center, Lady Jane Grey, the Nine-Day Queen of England in 1553, did not in truth have a passionate love match in her husband, Guilford Dudley. Theirs was an arranged marriage, highly political in nature and masterminded by Dudley's ambitious father, the Duke of Northumberland. In reality, Jane resented and distrusted her husband, who was a spoiled and rather empty-headed young man with none of the high intellectual achievement so prominent in Jane.

For the second dispensation, Helena Bonham Carter, who plays Jane, is still unskilled at acting in this, her first role. She can furrow her brow with admirable dexterity to denote every emotion from confusion to embarrassment to sexual fulfillment, but there's little evidence of much going on behind, in the furrows of an actor's brain. However, since those afore-mentioned details surround her, it becomes fairly easy for a more demanding audience to overlook her callowness.

Now for the details, beginning with everyone else in the cast. Has John Wood ever utilised his supercilious half-smile to better advantage? As Northumberland, he's perfect - driven by the need to consolidate his power when Jane's cousin Edward VI falls into a fatal illness, he conceives a scheme that will require relentless control over nearly everyone at court. While his fellow ministers, all burly toughs, inevitably knuckle under to his combination of silken flattery and outright threats, he's thwarted by two seemingly weak women - Jane and Mary Tudor (played with real grit and bitterness by Jane Lapotaire). It's a tossup whether Wood is better at the threats or at two points of emotional breakdown - one, when he must cast the die and order the agonising prolongation of Edward's death to complete his plans, or when, mud-pelted and dishevelled following his defeat by Mary's army, he ends up in the Tower, where all he can offer to his sons and followers is a weary, `I'm sorry.' It's the rare film where Wood's comic instincts don't get the better of his serious performance - this is one of them.

As Jane's equally controlling parents, Patrick Stewart and Sara Kestelman are almost as good. Stewart's character, the Duke of Suffolk, isn't a bright man, but his pursuit of his ambitions never quite overrides his notion of family honor, and this keeps him sympathetic, as all the supposed villains of the film remain. That's another of the details that deserves cherishing - the refusal to go for simplistic characters. Stewart is especially good when he throws all caution to the wind and raises an army to rescue his daughter, overriding even the objections of his formidable wife.

Other details are in the costuming, the suitably squalid tavern and brothel scenes, the bit where the aristocratic Kestelman chows down on her dinner, gnawing on a greasy chop and wiping her mouth with her sleeve, and the achingly beautiful winter deer hunt that runs under the opening credits. All this and more make up for a downbeat ending and a cen

"The next time I see your face, I want it for eternity." If you know much at all about Lady Jane Grey and her unfortunate marriage to Guildford Dudley, you must know this cannot at all be what she said to him as they were parted for the last time. Yet the story branches away from the historical aspects of Jane's life and builds up a romance completely created in the minds of the writers, who have done an excellent job. In the beginning, the scene at Bradgate in Leicester, with the dance for the King, is extremely well shot. The plot thickens between the cunning Earl of Northumberland and the cold, greedy Duchess of Suffolk, while Jane argues theology with the Catholic doctor. Comparing this with history, I believe this was also very well written; from what I've read on Jane Grey (I have done extensive Tudor period research) I know she was very Protestant and, unlike the later Queen Elizabeth, very willing to argue on the topic of religion. Perhaps my favorite scene in the entire movie is the one where Jane goes to visit the Princess Mary. In this scene the Renaissance class system is extremely well depicted. The outwardly friendly but rather sneaky nature the Princess' maid (I believe that is Lady Anne Wharton) conducts herself shows the "subservience of the lesser nobility"; the proud way Jane speaks to the maid shows what the upper nobility could do; and then the regal, majestic, icy cold way the Princess Mary enters the room and "embraces" her second-cousin is the perfect example of a Princess of two royal bloodlines. Later, the love that blooms between Guildford and Jane will, without a doubt, sweep you off your feet. If you've ever been in love, I guarantee you'll relive some fond memories there. Overall, an excellent movie and highly recommended.