Sightlines · reception
How Becket was received
1964 · Peter Glenville · Becket on Sightlines
The arc
A prestige heavyweight in 1964 — 12 Oscar nominations, though only the screenplay won — it then drifted out of circulation for decades until a 2007 restoration and re-release reminded everyone it existed; today it's mostly remembered as the Burton–O'Toole title bout it always was.
What’s debated
Fans still argue over who wins the acting duel — Burton's coiled stillness or O'Toole's volcanic Henry — and historians grumble that the film's whole Saxon-vs-Norman framing is wrong, since the real Becket was a Norman (Anouilh reportedly knew and kept it anyway).
Its footprint
This is the movie behind 'Will no one rid me of this meddlesome priest?' — the Henry II line that resurfaces every time a leader hints at something without ordering it, most famously when James Comey invoked it in his 2017 Senate testimony.
Where it stands
A beloved-but-half-forgotten prestige piece, perpetually overshadowed by The Lion in Winter — the 'other' Peter O'Toole–as–Henry II film that cinephiles cite as an underseen actors' showcase.
Did you know? Peter O'Toole played Henry II again four years later in The Lion in Winter (1968) and was Oscar-nominated both times — one of the very few actors ever nominated twice for playing the same character in two different films.