MARY, QUEEN OF SCOTS (1971) *** If you were a peasant you died a rancid death at the hands of rats and feudalist lords; if you were of royal blood you were crassly manipulated until it was time to behead you. Vanessa Redgrave and Glenda Jackson as dueling monarchs twisting between the fates and their handlers, frought with the terror of their own ethical ambiguity and consoling themselves with the religion that the other despises. Jackson is probably even better at being horrified with herself and the shape that she's in, no one gets near Vanessa for outpourings of unbridled emotion or resolute back-arching when she feels the wall. Neither of the leads are flawless, but they're let down by quite a bit of over-wrought period acting around the periphery, and maybe screenwriters who didn't realize how good the story is without embellishment. They start out assuming that the audience knows a lot about the politics of this period, which left me confused for the first half an hour or so.