After 60 years--and many hundreds of movies--I steadfastly maintain that "A Man for All Seasons" is hands down the best ever. What's more (no pun intended), Paul Scofield's performance is also the finest job any actor (of any gender) has ever turned in...at least in a motion picture.
I've seen this film perhaps ten times (far fewer than I have seen "Star Wars," for example...or "Casablanca," my personal choice for Second Best), and each time I see it I marvel, not just at Scofield, but at the extraordinary performances of nearly everyone else in the movie--Leo McKern, Wendy Hiller, John Hurt, Robert Shaw, Orson Welles, Susannah York, and everyone else in the cast--as well as the magnificent dialogue and the sheer beauty of the film.
It may be that someday I'll see a better movie (heaven knows I keep looking), but even though some have come close ("Lion in Winter," "Citizen Kane", e.g.), there's still a fair-sized gap between the best of them and the best of all, "A Man for All Seasons."
I've seen this film perhaps ten times (far fewer than I have seen "Star Wars," for example...or "Casablanca," my personal choice for Second Best), and each time I see it I marvel, not just at Scofield, but at the extraordinary performances of nearly everyone else in the movie--Leo McKern, Wendy Hiller, John Hurt, Robert Shaw, Orson Welles, Susannah York, and everyone else in the cast--as well as the magnificent dialogue and the sheer beauty of the film.
It may be that someday I'll see a better movie (heaven knows I keep looking), but even though some have come close ("Lion in Winter," "Citizen Kane", e.g.), there's still a fair-sized gap between the best of them and the best of all, "A Man for All Seasons."