The King and I

Dir. Walter Lang. 1956, 133 mins. With Deborah Kerr, Yul Brynner, Rita Moreno, Martin Benson, Rex Thompson, Carlos RIvas. Walter Lang’s adaptation of the Rodgers and Hammerstein musical was a box-office hit and nominated for nine Academy Awards, winning five, including Best Actor for Brynner, who reprised his Tony Award–winning performance as the King of Siam. Deborah Kerr plays Anna, a widower sent to Bangkok to tutor the King’s children, born to various wives and concubines. Anna and the King clash over their cultural and ethical differences, much of it centering on Moreno’s Tuptim, who belongs to the King but is secretly in love with Rivas’s Lun Tha.