To find any fault whatsoever in a film that does as well as ''A Man for All Seasons'' in propounding the integrity and courage of an intellectual hero on the screen may seem inconsistently picky, especially for a critic who persists in protesting that most motion pictures aren't anything like as considerate of moral character as they ought to be. So, please, let me preface this comment on this uncommonly brave and literate film which Fred Zinnemann has concocted from the splendid play by Robert Bolt with assurance that I do regard it as a very fine piece of work, worthy of all the kudos and attention it is sure to receive.

In presenting the ancient story of the resistance of Sir Thomas More to the ecclesiastical and marital deviations of his monarch, Henry VIII, it develops an awesome comprehension of the disciplined persistence of one man in standing up for his moral convictions and refusing to change his mind until, by a stroke of sharp division, it is chopped off of him. In a series of verbal confrontations between More and his violent king, Cardinal Wolsey, Thomas Cromwell, an evil little sycophant named Rich, More's son-in-law, William Roper, and even his daughter and his wife, we are made to feel the fineness and honorableness of his man and led to assume, by the emphasis, that he is right and the others are wrong.

All of this is done with taste and fitness in the staging of the film and in the truly exquisite performing of a genuinely excellent cast. Paul Scofield is exceptionally appropriate in the role of More, which he played on the stage so superbly that no one else could be dreamed of in it. Robert Shaw is a ferocious eccentric as the resplendent Henry VIII, Leo McKern is poisonous as Cromwell, John Hurt is wormy as Rich, Orson Welles is morbific as Wolsey and Wendy Hiller is trenchant as More's wife. Altogether they give us quite a picture of a top-level ideological clash and its domestic reverberations in the time of Henry VII.

Too Much Detail?

But the fault with it is that the discussions of the theological issues involved, including the crucial issue, which is the legality of Henry's marriage to Anne Boleyn, are conducted in much more detail and at much greater dialectical length than is needful or likely to interest the average customer. And this is done without sufficient contemplation of what is happening in the larger frame of the nature and thought of man.

Not many people in any audience are going to be vastly concerned about whether the Pope or Henry is acknowledged as the head of the English Church - except, perhaps, the history students (and, alas, who studies history these days!). Not many are going to be able to work up much sympathy for More on the basis of the sense in his resistance to the marriage of the king and Anne.

What is fascinating in this study is the quality of a man who is ready to stand up and be counted, as we say, in a controversial case that is evidently shaking his country and placing those who differ with the king - those who are not conformists - in mortal peril. It is the evidence of moral fiber and what this presumably means in the context and mood of the society in which its possessor is.

''A Man for All Seasons'' shows us More on the level of his class, which is the level on which most motion pictures about geniuses and martyrs operate. But it doesn't give us much indication of the way the commonality feels, and thus put More in the balance of the estimations of Man. This philosophical evaluation is what the picture lacks.

Running Observer

Oddly enough, the mechanism which might put this in the film was very much in operation in Mr. Bolt's play on the stage, but it has been omitted from this more literal presentation on the screen. That was a composite character whom Mr. Bolt called the Common Man, a little fellow who opened the proceedings with a significant apology for being so conspicuously present in a play about kings and cardinals, and then went on to move in and out of the drama in several menial roles - as a steward in the home of More, a boatman, a jailer, an innkeeper, foreman of the jury at the trial of More and eventually the executioner who chopped off the hero's head.

He was a running observer and commentator of what was going on, passing his opinions to the audience and letting it know with vulgar quips the extent of his skepticism, the degree of his guarded contempt.

Ironically, this little fellow would be an apt cinematic device for providing a further dimension to this stylistically conventional film, a flexible and fascinating figure to further emphasize the loneliness of More. While there are separate characters who play his composite roles and speak some of his speeches, this is not the same as having one man symbolize the entire commonality - formulating a consensus, if you wish, and compacting the skepticism and caution that a consensus usually represents.

And certainly the film would be bettered by the terminal speech of the Common Man, after he, in the role of the headsman, has performed his grisly task (for which More, incidentally, has absolved him, thus symbolizing his acceptance of the fallibility of men). The lights have gone down, then they've come up, and the little man is standing there, exhausted and relieved that it is over.

''I'm breathing,'' he says to the audience, with an obvious implication it's all that matters, ''Are you breaking, too? It's nice, isn't it? It isn't difficult to keep alive, friends - just don't make trouble, or if you must make trouble, make the sort that's expected. Well, I don't have to tell you that.''

Surely, this cynical conclusion is not too sharp and devastating for the screen - or, to put it patly, for the common man.