A Man for All Seasons (Fred Zinnemann, 1966)

A Man for All Seasons was better than I remembered. The main problem is, lawd, it takes FOREVER to get going. Just over five minutes go by before Sir Thomas More finally receives the damn letter that launches the story. And it fosters a belief in The Great Man, an effect achieved in part by ignoring the fact that More burned several Protestant "heretics" at the stake. But there's lots of impressive staircase wit, especially in the climactic courtroom scene between More and Cromwell and later between More and his daughter Margaret. So a relatively painless evening of Classics Illustrated.