Hepburn just had Old World Gravitas. She was coming from some kind of Blue Blood Aristocracy of an American breed. Hepburn seemed modern in the 30’s, and she was timeless by the 60’s.
Hepburn at the very top of her game is utterly without peer. Close does fine work undoubtedly, but this is exactly the kind of role at which Hepburn has always excelled.
Glad both actresses got acclaim for their performances! Hepburn earned her third Oscar for best actress in the 1968 movie (famously tying with Barbra Streisand in "Funny Girl"), while Close earned a Golden Globe for best actress in a miniseries or TV movie.
No one is accounting for the difference in direction of the two productions. Both of these women are amazing. In fact Glenn Close is probably my favorite actress since "Dangerous Liaisons." But to put them head-to-head like some sort of competition is unfair. They are both great in their own right. I think the role is more suited to Hepburn's strengths, but Glenn Close is compelling as well. They're just played very differently.
Kate gives a greater range in her performance and a more earthy Medieval feel to it. Glenn gives a more focused but smaller scope in her performance and comes across as slippery as an eel. Personally Kate's earthy interpretation resonates the most with me. Of the two Richards, the second one was by far the better (much more nuanced and and yet down to earth as Richard needs to be; the first one was like a brick wall and had almost as much personality as one in his interpretation of Richard)--even if they were going for "he's obviously gay!" in his wardrobe dept.
Thank you so much for your insightful comments. And I have always liked Andrew Howard's interpretation, he has some even more complex reactions coming up. Especially the tapestry scene. I could expand this to a comparison of the remaining actors Patrick Stewart versus Peter O'Toole, Timothy Dalton versus Johnathan Rhys Meyer etc.
Salamon2 I prefer the first Richard, as played by Anthony Hopkins. He was Richard Lionheart, a known warrior, ofcourse he should be played as a hard and tough man. He might have been queer but that doesn't mean he was femine. The movie with Glenn Close made him a puffy rockstar.
Anthony Hopkins' Richard is a man that other men would follow into battle. He is aggressively masculine but.. Tony acts with his eyes. You can see the sensitive little boy behind his eyes and the legacy of hurt he has grown up. He has developed into a brick wall because of it.
I dunno. The second Richard (whatever his name is) has the “3-day’s growth of beard” look that is so popular now, but unrealistic because a king’s son wouldn’t have been caught dead with a beard looking that straggly and unkempt. Call it “earthy” if you choose, to me it makes a man look homeless.
This queen loses NOT just in the wardrobe department, although his drag IS Flawless!!! 💅🏽💅🏽 But also his look!!! Complete with the balding head and sinewy body….If he doesn’t look like some BathHouse Queen from the 70s I’ll eat your hat in Macy’s window!! 😜😜 …….Hardly Convincing as a Great Warrior!!!……..So Hopkins who appeared large and in Charge wins hands down…….But this was Hopkins first role!! No apologies, but he was a little wooden, and it kinda worked because he was portraying someone from the 1100s!!! Not that everyone was wooden back then but it was a time of Survival and Great Austerity!!! And England was most certainly a Backwater of Europe at that time!! The 1968 version of this film captures brilliantly, the austerity of the time period, and so does Hopkins’ performance!! 🎭
Im so excited get to know who this great woman was! I have been working on my family tree and just discovered Eleanor was my 28th Great grandmother! So fascinating. I love both actresses but Kate is mesmerizing.
Most definitely Kathrine Hepburn: she might have been the actual Alienor, Duchess of Aquitaine and Grandmother to all European royal houses centuries before Queen Victoria earned that title!
@@revmiguel2000 She's correct. She was French, and her name was Alienor. As Duchess of Aquitaine, she was the most powerful woman in Europe. Eleanor is the angelized version of her name.
As much as I love Glenn Close in general, for me The Lion in Winter is Katherine Hepburn's finest Hour and I couldn't imagine any one else as perfectly cast Eleanor of Aquitane.... That being said I think Rosamund Pike would be a great fit as the Character when she's the right age....
Glenn's delivery of her lines seem awkward, her pauses feel unnecessary. Katharine read those lines and you just can't help but believe that that is how the scheming queen Eleanor would have said them.
Depends on what you're after. I'm so used to seeing Glenn Close being underappreciated. Her Eleanor is moving and emotional, and I like her dramatic take on this. No wonder she "snatched" the Golden Globe from Meryl Streep in 2005 for this.
Prince Richard is dressed quite fabulously. The 12th century's Abercrombie boy toy fashion model. Not only a legendary hero, but also a confirmed bachelor, and the most posh Crusader Knight in the kingdom.
Glenn Close is brilliant. But NO ONE comes close to Kate - Eleanor of Aquitaine was and will always be her role. That's like anyone else being Dorothy in the Wizard of Oz, other than Judy Garland.
My father took me to see this when i was a boy. He must have thought it would be a "swash buckler" action movie. it bored me to death. Now in matur ity I see what a fantasic drama it is.
Glenn Close was great BUT Katharine Hepburn was born to play Eleanor of Aquitaine!. Both Katharine and Eleanor were strong-willed independent free-thinking passionate women who didn't let an man control them. And when they were in relationships they let their men be men but never loss their sense of themselves nor let their men overshadow them but became their equals
Comparisons. Kate is great. Glenn is fettered by a lesser co-star who's timing and understanding of the parts doesn't match her own. Glenn is still quite good, just different, that's acting.
I think preference must be a generation thing. When I show clips of both films to my acting classes, most students prefer Close's manipulative mother to Hepburn's straightforward aproach. I think both are wonderful. It is like coffee vs. tea. I cannot choose!
Oh, most definitely Glenn Close. I absolutely adore Katherine Hepburn, she is an icon, a legend, but in this short clip she seems a bit subdued, expressing lines in that commanding, inimitable way she has, sounding fabulous as she does it, but Glenn close gives the lines more texture and a wider range of personality. I do love both performances, they are both brilliant.
I emphatically agree. I love Katharine Hepburn, truly I do, but her performance feels relatively flat here. The writing is wonderful, and I think Glenn Close and her scene partner bring much more depth and verisimilitude to this than Hepburn and Hopkins.
@@jaybirddee3790, if you call Kate Hepburn’s acting here “flat”, then I wonder what in blazes you would think of Pia Zadora’s acting?? You would be cursing the day she was born.
Tastes have changed. I think people in general will find Close's portrayal as a better piece of acting. I haven't seen the new Lion in Winter, only the old one with Hepburn, but it was that film that acquired Hepburn legendary status in my mind. Anyway, to the clip at hand - Close is, objectively, fantastic. Compared to Hepburn, she gives more gradations of character and applies "color" to the lines (to use a musical term) more vibrantly. Close makes us aware of inflections and implications in the lines that Hepburn completely skimped. And yet, in my very subjective opinion, I feel consciously aware, as I watch, that Close is acting. Hepburn, on the other hand, displays fewer obviously inflections and details, and some of the lines even seem bland, but somehow I still like it better. It feels fresh. It doesn't feel like acting. She seems to be doing little more than declaiming the lines but it all comes together with a powerful sense of reality for me.
Wow! Kate is giving anthony hopkins a damn good, run for his money in the acting stakes here.! And was there ever a time when anthony was'ot grey or greying? His even going grey here, and this is 1968!
I recently watched an interview he gave on this role - It was his first film, and he wasn't used to working with cameras. Kate gave him a lot of advice.
Humans are humans: power plays have doubtless gone on since the stone age. And mothers have often in history manipulated their moma's boys. But there's something I'm forced to point out--because it reminds us of the dangers of projecting 21st century views on 12th century politics--and 12th century idioms: Richard wasn't gay: the text used as evidence has been misunderstood by modern people, projecting 20th century ideas on 12th century custom. When the chroniclers said he shared Philip's bed, they meant that the two became allies/good friends:. Medieval people were funny that way. That no one was actually scandalized by it back then should be a clue it wasn't meant in a sexual way. If you want to know what they would have said had he been gay, just look at what the Anglo-Saxon chronicles had to say about William II--the only one we're sure was homosexual (Edward II and James I were bisexual, from the looks of it). Even the public confessions don't necessarily imply he was gay--certainly no one at the time took it that way (though one guy did in *1999*) Additionally, Richard I had a bastard child--Philip of Cognac, and when he was young, he had a reputation as a man who ravaged his lord's daughters in Aquitaine (or really, any women pretty enough for his taste). The reason he had no legitimate heirs was simply lack of time: he married Berengeria just before he got to Holy Land (for his crusade), and since he was on campaign, then in captivity (the Austrians), and then busy fighting Philip Augustus over his territory in France, he didn't spend much time with his wife--something he himself regretted (he also regretted his treatment of his father). It shows us that the past really is another country
I have performed Eleanor on stage and she is a much more interesting character than how Kate portrayed her. I'm hoping the inconsistencies are because of the directors choices. The play is MUCH better and funny, so funny. Eleanor is a fabulously written character and has so many levels, I didn't see this in Kate's portrayal.
Both performances are excellent, but so different from each other. If it weren't for the O'Toole/Hepburn version, the Stewart/Close version would be considered one of the greats. There just wasn't quite the same chemistry between the two leads. I do think Andrew Howard beats Anthony Hopkins as Richard though. He does more than just brood. It's a much more complex performance.
The Lion In Winter is a film that should NEVER be re-made. The 1968 version is the only one that counts. No-one can compare to O'Toole and Hepburn as King Henry The Second Of England and Elinor of Aquitaine. As for this young man who plays the part of Richard The Lionheart.........no way can he compare to Anthony Hopkins.
Nah, no contest. And I love Close; she's brilliant. She's a fine Eleanor, but Eleanor is not "fine" - she is larger than life, strong, fierce. Close, trying to ward away any chance she could be accused of imitating KH, is subtle, but well, sweet. She is never over the top, and this whole family is over the top. O'Toole's Henry would have quashed her like a bug. It doesn't help that the Close/Stewart LIW production lacks energy, there's no push to it, you wonder why you care. And that's unfortunate because Close and Stewart are magnificent actors, and there's nothing wrong with their performances, they are just not there. Perhaps the director went too far in trying not to imitate the earlier production. The KH/POT film rushes at you, the energy is fierce, no prisoners. The actors play for keeps. The music pushes us. It was a brilliant production. I know it so well that I found only one line reading where Close imitated Hepburn: "He scrutinized her..." - I wonder if she did it deliberately as a tribute. It's not that the later production is poor; it's fine. It just doesn't have the spirit where things are happening so fast that the world changes in a second. Stewart's Henry is a little too intellectual; Close's Eleanor shows her convent training.
i must STRONGLY DISAGREE, glen close is ABSOLUTELY HORRENDOUS. Katherine Hepburn OWNED this role and a young Anthony Hopkins in one of his First Movie Roles. ABSOLUTELY PERFECT!
NOT QUITE! There is considerable doubt within HISTORICAL SOURCES whether King Richard was homosexual and it will continue to be debated for quite some time. He did not have any heirs that is for sure at least legitimate and his little brother john became king who was a poor king.
@@jephrokimbo9050Also, Richard’s wife, Berengaria, spent her married life without ever once setting foot in England. Then again, Richard himself didn’t spend that much time in England. He was often off fighting on foreign soil and crusading in the Holy Land. I think he preferred fighting to staying at home and ruling his kingdom.
The 2 or 3 days’ growth “beard” thing in the 2003 version is soooo not the look of late 12th century royal circles. Princes and kings didn’t run around with their beards looking unkempt like that. They had well-groomed, trimmed beards. That 2 or 3 days’ growth look is strictly late 20th century and 21st century to appeal to modern audiences, not the royal look of 1183 Europe. He was supposed to be playing Prince Richard the Lionhearted, not a cowboy in a spaghetti Western.
None of them would have had English accents as we know them today. And the real Eleanor was raised in France and likely would have spoken with a French accent. ( of some kind). I think Katharine's affected Mid Atlantic is a perfect compromise between American and English.
Kate Hands Down!!! I adore Glenn Close but Kate Had it all over her!!! And So did Anthony Hopkins over whatever Actor that was that played his role of Prince Richard. Kate & Anthony captured the Regal Detachment that The original Real Life Royals would have had at the time (1100s) while only hinting at the ethos of the modern period from which the Actor and Actress came. Glenn Close and this other Actor put far too Much 20th century emotion in a 10th Century play. Also, the costuming was more appropriate for the time!! In Kate’s version. Close looks ridiculous in the cobbled together washer woman’s Turban combined with the ratty old fur!! Looks like a Bag Lady went dumpster diving behind a Salvation Army store!! 🙄🙄 Kate nor Anthony Hopkins never let their Regal Bearing drop for a moment during their dialogue. Regal Stoicism took precedence over emotion. Which only made the performance more compelling!!!
