6 thoughts on “Mary, Queen of Scots (1971)

  1. This 1971 may have its issues, but it’s way better than the Ronan-Robbie “It” parody.

    1. It also gave us Dame Glenda Jackson as Elizabeth R before ELIZABETH R, so the casting department assuredly deserve our grateful thanks and heartfelt praise.

      1. Elizabeth R aired on TV in the UK in early 1971 before this film premiered anywhere (it was first shown in the US in Dec. 1971, then the UK in March 1927). Tho’ I don’t know which one was filmed first, given that movies often take longer to produce.

  2. Apropos of nothing, memories of watching this film helped sell me on THE SERPENT QUEEN – because, if nothing else, the version of Her Late Majesty Queen Mary in that latter show felt genuinely fresh and entertaining, rather than yet ANOTHER Romantically Tragic or Tragically Romantic Mary Stuart.

    Quite frankly we could do with a MARY QUEEN OF SCOTS film which applied that sort of Black Comedy to the murder of Lord Darnley (One of the few historical assassinations one can look at and, when asked “whodunnit?”, quite reasonably answer “EVERYONE”*).

    *At least everyone who was anyone in contemporary Scotland: at least one version of events – that by Ms. Alison Weir – gave me a mental image of half the Scottish establishment showing up to provide an appreciative audience to Henry Stuart’s murder.

    The other half were, of course, busy making that happen (and pretending they hadn’t been anywhere near the fatal spot).

    1. I’ve always wondered why Darnley’s killers chose that method of death. As a reader of mysteries, it seems to me that a murderer should choose an inconspicuous method…something that, ideally, would conceal the fact that this WAS even a murder. Darnley was already ailing…all they had to do was bribe or drug his guards, use a pillow over the face or a subtle poison in his medicine, and oh, alas, His Majesty took a sharp turn for the worse, may God rest his soul! But NO, they had to choose the most conspicuous method they could, literally blowing up half the house and alerting the entire countryside that this WAS a plot!

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