Film

The Private Life of Henry VIII

Name: The Private Life of Henry VIII
Genre: History, Drama
Released: 1933
Cast: Charles Laughton, Robert Donat, Franklin Dyall, Miles Mander, Laurence Hanray

Charles Laughton devours the screen as history's most notorious husband in this brisk, wickedly funny Alexander Korda production—the film that essentially invented the roistering, chicken-leg-tearing Henry we still picture today. It skips his first marriage as 'not sufficiently interesting' and gallops through the rest as bawdy costume comedy rather than tragedy. Watch it for Laughton's Oscar-winning swagger, not a history lesson.

TMDb rating

3.2

Should you watch it?

Watch it if you enjoy a sly, appetite-driven costume piece where a great actor gets to be vain, greedy and oddly tender, and history is played for mischief rather than reverence.

Skip it if you want a tight, plot-driven history, as this is a loose string of vignettes with broad comic strokes that can feel stagey and more interested in appetite than politics.

What it asks of you: Ninety-seven minutes, brisk and episodic, with scenes that snap shut quickly rather than build, leaning on lavish sets and big theatrical performances rather than sustained suspense.

Not sure? Find tonight's pick in a minute.

If you liked this

Wolf Hall2015

Same court, same executions, but told from Thomas Cromwell's watchful, calculating perspective—hushed and candlelit where Korda's film is a romp. Mark Rylance's performance is extraordinary and quietly devastating.

But It's slow, deliberate television; if you wanted more of Laughton's bombast, this restrained approach may frustrate you.

Anne of the Thousand Days1969

Richard Burton plays Henry as tender and terrifying by turns opposite Genevieve Bujold's fierce Anne Boleyn, giving the marriage that ended on the scaffold its full tragic weight.

But Talky and stagebound in places; decades on, its pace can feel stately rather than urgent.

The Tudors2007

If you liked Henry's private life being scandalous, this turns the dial to eleven—gorgeous, horny, soapy and gleefully unconcerned with accuracy across four whole seasons.

But The history and the wig work are equally dubious; treat it as costume-drama fan fiction, not education.

Not sure tonight? Get a pick in a minute, starting from The Private Life of Henry VIII

The wildcard

Something you would not have found on your own.

I, Claudius1976

Korda's Henry, chatting to camera and joking about his wives, set the template for treating a monarch's marriages and murders as dark domestic comedy rather than solemn history—I, Claudius runs the exact same trick across four Roman emperors and a decade of screen time.

A legendary BBC serial about Roman emperors murdering, marrying and poisoning their way through generations—Laughton's leering, direct-to-camera monarch has a spiritual descendant in Derek Jacobi's whole unhinged imperial family.

But Video-taped 1970s studio production values look frankly cheap now, and thirteen episodes is a real commitment for a warm-up act.

The Favourite2018

Different monarch, same idea of the English court as a viper's nest of marriages, favourites and petty cruelty, played here as a vicious, very funny comedy of manners.

But Its anachronistic, foul-mouthed script and fisheye lenses are a deliberate provocation that not everyone finds charming.

A Man for All Seasons1966

Same king, same court, seen through Thomas More's conscience rather than Henry's appetites—a sober, exquisitely acted counterweight to Laughton's comic monster.

But It's a film about principle and quiet resistance; if you want spectacle or scandal, this is the wrong register entirely.

The Lion in Winter1968

Centuries earlier but the same royal blood sport—a Christmas gathering of a king, his estranged wife, and their scheming sons that's as funny as it is savage.

But It's almost entirely dialogue-driven, a chamber piece of verbal combat rather than pageantry or action.

Becket1964

A king and his closest friend curdle into mortal enemies in this earlier medieval court drama, with Peter O'Toole giving a Henry every bit as volatile as Laughton's.

But Heavier and more theological than Korda's film; its meditation on power and friendship favours weight over wit.

Elizabeth1998

Watch what happens to Henry's dynasty a generation later, as his daughter learns that surviving as monarch means becoming every bit as ruthless as her father was.

But It plays fast and loose with the historical record in service of mood and drama.

Mary Queen of Scots2018

The Tudor story's endgame, decades on, as two queens circle each other across a border—handsome, well-acted, interested in the same questions about power and womanhood.

But The two leads reportedly never share a scene in reality, and some found the parallel-lives structure diffuse.

Barry Lyndon1975

Strip the humour from Henry VIII's structure—a man's identity told through his sequence of marriages and appetites—and you get Barry Lyndon's tragic mirror image: same shape, entirely different temperature.

Kubrick's cold, glacially beautiful chronicle of a man's rise through marriage, fortune and ruin follows the same episodic structure as Henry's story—wife after wife, status won and lost—but drained of every joke.

But It's slow, formal and deliberately distancing; three hours of candlelit tableaux is the opposite of Laughton's rowdy energy.

The Great2020

Both take a real, notorious ruler and mine their marriages and court for comedy at truth's expense—Korda winked at history, The Great sets it on fire, but the impulse to laugh at power is identical.

Elle Fanning's Catherine the Great and Nicholas Hoult's man-child Peter turn Russian court intrigue into a gleefully anachronistic, foul-mouthed comedy—modern proof a monarch's private life can still be the funniest show in town.

But It throws historical accuracy out entirely for satire and slapstick; anyone wanting even Korda's loose fidelity to fact will be disappointed.