The Name of the Rose: 35 years
On September 24, 1986, Jean-Jacques Annaud's film "Der Name der Rose (The Name of the Rose)" was released on the screens of the USA and Canada.
The film is based on the novel of the same name by the Italian writer, philosopher, professor of semiotics and medieval aesthetics Umberto Eco. The novel, which was published in 1980, became the first in a series of his fictional literary works. Many who have read the novel or watched the film ask themselves the question "What does this have to do with the rose?" Umberto Eco explained the title of his novel by what he wanted to give it "totally neutral title. And rose is a symbolic figure so rich in meanings that by now it hardly has any meaning left»".
Jean-Jacques Annaud was inspired by the idea of filming this book immediately after its publication. He immediately turned to the writer for permission to film adaptation, arguing this request by the fact that the book was written as if especially for him, since he had been fond of medieval churches all his life.
Anno received permission to film it. But he had to spend five whole years preparing for filming. During these five years, Anno traveled across Europe and America, collecting an international ensemble of actors: Scotsman Sean Connery, Americans Christian Slater, Ron Perlman and F. Murray Abraham, Austrian Helmut Kwaltinger, Soviet Jew born in Riga, Elya Baskin, Frenchmen Michael Lonsdale and Vernon Dobcheff, the Germans Volker Prechtel and Michael Habek, the Russian Fedor Chaliapin, the son of the famous opera singer, the Swiss Urs Althaus, the Chilean Valentina Vargas, the Italian Leopoldo Trieste, the Englishman Andrew Birkin, and so on.
As for the performer of the main role - Sean Connery - everything was initially against him: Umberto Eco and Jean-Jacques Annaud were against his participation, believing that he was suitable only for the role of James Bond. And there were strong reasons for this: the previous films in which Sean Connery tried to get rid of the role of "James Bond" - "Sword of the Valiant" and "Highlander" - turned out to be, to put it mildly, a failure. At least financially. Therefore, the stars of the first magnitude of world cinema tried out for the role of William von Baskerville: Michael Caine, Albert Finney, Richard Harris, Ian McKellen, Roy Scheider, Jack Nicholson, Paul Newman, Marlon Brando, Robert De Niro, Donald Sutherland, Max von Sydow, Yves Montand, Vittorio Gassman... And no one came up. And when Jean-Jacques Annaud still chose the Scottish actor, who sought to get away from the Bond image by any means, the Columbia Pictures film studio simply refused to finance this film, fearing financial failure. And Jean-Jacques Annaud had to turn to European producers for funding.
However, to some extent, the fears of American producers came true: in the American box office, the film "The Name of the Rose" almost failed, collecting just over $ 7 million. It is possible that very scathing reviews of this film from leading American film critics representing the most influential publications, such as The Washington Post and The New York Times, played a role. A kind of generalization of these reviews with the mitigation of the most sensitive attacks against the film was the review of the guru of American film criticism, Roger Ebert, in which he gave the film 2.5 stars out of 4 possible and wrote: "What this movie needs is a clear, spare, logical screenplay. ... There are so many good things in "The Name of the Rose" - the performances, the reconstruction of the period, the over-all feeling of medieval times - that if the story had been able to really involve us, there would have been quite a movie here".
However, in other countries, the box office receipts were 10 times higher. As a result, the total box office of the picture amounted to more than $ 77 million, which is almost four times the budget of the picture of $ 20 million.
Along with the financial success, Jean-Jacques Annaud's film "The Name of the Rose" was also a success at festival venues. But only in those countries whose film companies took part in the creation of the film - Germany, France and Italy. In Germany , the country that made the main contribution to the creation of the film, the film received the Film Award in Silver of the German Film Academy as the Outstanding Feature Film. The film received 5 David di Donatello awards from the Italian Film Academy, including the René Clair Award for directing. The French Film Academy awarded the film its César Award in the Best Foreign Film category, preferring it to such films as Martin Scorsese's "After Hours" and Woody Allen's "Hannah and Her Sisters".
Despite the obvious commercial and festival success, Umberto Eco, as is often the case with the authors of literary works being filmed, was so disappointed with the film that he forbade the adaptation of his other works. Stanley Kubrick, who was going to film one of Eco's novels, was also banned. However, to the writer's credit, a quarter of a century later he "saw the light" and explained to everyone and, first of all, to himself: "A book like this is a club sandwich, with turkey, salami, tomato, cheese, lettuce. And the movie is obliged to choose only the lettuce or the cheese, eliminating everything else - the theological side, the political side. It's a nice movie". Some writers are unable to understand the difference between cinematic and literary creativity until the end of their lives.
But one thing Umberto Eco still could not understand until the end of his life. The fact is that he wrote six novels and believed that each subsequent novel was better than the previous one. And all over the world he was known only as the author of the novel "The Name of the Rose". The popularity of this book directly infuriated the writer. A few days before his death, he stated that "Il nome della rosa" is his worst novel and he hates it. But the reason is very simple: "Il nome della rosa" - the writer's first novel - became his only novel that was filmed. And he himself, by forbidding the adaptation of other novels, created this situation. And Eco is not alone in this misunderstanding of the reasons for his fame and popularity of his work. The same can be said about Ken Kesey, and about Stephen King, and about the Strugatsky brothers, and about Vladimir Bogomolov, and about many others. Would these writers have been so famous and popular if their works had not been filmed?
As for the ratings of Jean-Jacques Annaud's film "The Name of the Rose" by ordinary moviegoers, 63% of IMDB and Kinopoisk users gave this film ratings from 8 to 10. Taking into account this indicator and the above, the rating of Jean-Jacques Annaud's film "The Name of the Rose" according to FilmGourmand is 7.97, which allows it to occupy the 749th Rank in the Golden Thousand.
