Mary of Scotland

A better film than its reputation would suggest, marvellously shot by Joe August, and with Ford making striking use of the imposing RKO sets even while remaining strangled by the arty ambitions of Maxwell Anderson's play (which contrives to reduce history to a novelette chronicling the jealous rivalry that drove Elizabeth Tudor to destroy Mary Stuart). One electric sequence - a hellfire sermon delivered by Moroni Olsen as John Knox - shows the extent to which Ford remained uninvolved elsewhere by the polite conventions of historical costume drama, but the performances are fascinating in their careful, slightly stilted way, and it looks terrific.