Orlando (film)

Orlando
Promotional poster
Directed by	Sally Potter
Produced by	Christopher Sheppard
Written by	Sally Potter Virginia Woolf (novel Orlando: A Biography)
Starring	Tilda Swinton Billy Zane Lothaire Bluteau John Wood Charlotte Valandrey
Music by	David Motion Sally Potter
Cinematography	Aleksei Rodionov
Editing by	Hervé Schneid
Distributed by	Sony Pictures Classics
Release date(s)	1992 (1992)
Running time	93 minutes
Country	United Kingdom
Language	English
Budget	$4 million or $5 million

Orlando is a 1992 film based on Virginia Woolf's novel Orlando: A Biography, starring Tilda Swinton as Orlando, Billy Zane as Marmaduke Bonthrop Shelmerdine, and Quentin Crisp as Queen Elizabeth. It was directed by Sally Potter.

It was particularly acclaimed for its visual treatment of the settings of Woolf's 1928 novel. Potter chose to film much of the Constantinople portion of the book in the isolated city of Khiva in Uzbekistan, and made use of the forest of carved columns in the city's 18th century Djuma Mosque.

Orlando was nominated for Academy Awards for art direction (Ben Van Os, Jan Roelfs) and costume design. The film was also nominated for the 1994 Independent Spirit Awards' Best Foreign Film award.

Orlando was rereleased by Sony Pictures Classics in select theaters starting August 6, 2010.

Plot summary

The film begins in the Elizabethan Age shortly before the death of Queen Elizabeth I. On her deathbed, Elizabeth promises an androgynous young nobleman named Orlando a large tract of land and a castle built on it along with a generous monetary gift which she will only bequeath to him if he consents to her command, "Do not fade. Do not wither. Do not grow old." Both he and his heirs will keep the land and inheritance forever. Orlando acquiesces and resides in splendid isolation in the castle for a couple of centuries or so during which time he dabbles in poetry and art. His attempts to befriend a celebrated poet, however, backfire when the poet writes a devastating takedown of his poetry. Orlando then travels to Constantinople as British ambassador to the Turks, but he is almost killed in a diplomatic fracas there. Waking up the next morning, however, he learns something even more startling: he has physically transformed into a woman overnight.

The now 'Lady' Orlando comes home to her estate in Middle Eastern garb, only to learn that she faces several impending lawsuits arguing that Orlando was a woman to begin with and therefore has no right to the land or any of her/his royal inheritance.

The succeeding two centuries tire her out; the court case, bad luck in love and the wars of British history eventually bring her up to the 1990s with a young daughter in tow and a book in search of a publisher. The editor who judges the work as "quite good" is, ironically, portrayed by Heathcoate Williams - the same actor who denigrated her poetry as a different character 200 years earlier. Having lived a most bizarre existence, Orlando finally finds a tranquil niche within it.

Differences from novel

“	My task with the adaptation of Virginia Woolf's book for the screen was to find a way of remaining true to the spirit of the book and to Virginia Woolf's intentions, whilst being ruthless with changing the book in any way necessary to make it work cinematically. [...] The most immediate changes were structural. The storyline was simplified - any events which did not significantly further Orlando's story were dropped.	”
—director Sally Potter about the changes from the book, press kit

Potter argued that the more pragmatic medium of cinema called for reasons - however flimsy - to drive the narrative, over the novel's abstraction and arbitrariness, especially as the story itself is based on a kind of suspension of disbelief. Thus it is Queen Elizabeth who bestows the long life upon Orlando. The change of sex is a result of Orlando reaching a crisis of masculine identity when he is unwilling to conform to what is expected of him as a man. Nor as a woman can Orlando conform. Unlike the novel, it leaves her without marriage or property, and with a daughter, not a son.

“	Orlando's words and looks to the camera [were] intended as an equivalent both of Virginia Woolf’s direct addresses to her readers and to try to convert Virginia Woolf's literary wit into cinematic humor	”
—director Sally Potter about Orlando's breaking the fourth wall, press kit

Also the film ends in its "present day" in order to remain true to Virginia Woolf's use of real-time at the end of the novel.

Selected cast

• Tilda Swinton as Orlando
• Quentin Crisp as Elizabeth I
• Jimmy Somerville as Falsetto/Angel
• John Wood as Archduke Harry
• John Bott as Orlando's father
• Elaine Banham as Orlando's mother
• Anna Farnworth as Clorinda
• Sara Mair-Thomas as Favilla
• Anna Healy as Euphrosyne
• Dudley Sutton as James I
• Simon Russell Beale as Earl of Moray
• Matthew Sim as Lord Francis Vere
• Charlotte Valandrey as Princess Sasha
• Toby Stephens as Othello
• Oleg Pogodin as Desdemona
• Heathcote Williams as Nick Greene
• Thom Hoffman as William III
• Sarah Crowden as Mary II
• Billy Zane as Shelmerdine
• Lol Coxhill as the butler

Soundtrack

• Jimmy Somerville - "Eliza Is the Fairest Queen" (Composed by Edward Johnson)
• Andrew Watts with Peter Hayward on harpsichord - "Where'er You Walk" (from Semele) (Composed by George Frideric Handel)
• Jimmy Somerville - "Coming" (Composed by Sally Potter, Jimmy Somerville, David Motion)

Poetry

Portions of poetry occur in the film:

• The Faerie Queene by Edmund Spenser
• Othello by William Shakespeare
• "Sonnet 29" by William Shakespeare
• "Women" ("Surat al-Nisa") from the Quran
• "The Indian Serenade" by Percy Bysshe Shelley

Production

When first pitching her treatment in 1984, Potter was told the film was "unmakable, impossible, far too expensive and anyway not interesting", but in 1988 began writing the script and raise money.

Casting

Potter saw Tilda Swinton in the Manfred Karge play Man to Man and said that there was a "profound subtlety about the way she took on male body language and handled maleness and femaleness". Quentin Crisp, in Potter's words, was the "Queen of Queens" and thus a logical choice to play the role of the old and frail Queen Elizabeth. "Particularly in the context of Virginia Woolf’s 'gender-bending' politics."

Reception

Prior to Orlando's release in the US in June 1993, Vincent Canby wrote an effusively positive review, promising in the first paragraphs "This ravishing and witty spectacle invades the mind through eyes that are dazzled without ever being anesthetized. Throughout Ms. Potter's "Orlando," as in Woolf's, there are a piercing kind of common sense and a joy that, because they are so rare these days in any medium, create their own kind of cinematic suspense and delightedly surprised laughter. "Orlando" could well become a classic of a very special kind, not mainstream perhaps, but a model for independent film makers who follow their own irrational muses, sometimes to unmourned obscurity, occasionally to glory."

He does caution that whilst the Virginia Wolf book stands on it's own, he is not yet sure if the film does. But he goes on to comment that "Potter's achievement is in translating to film something of the breadth of Woolf's remarkable range of interests, not only in language and literature, but also in history, nature, weather, animals, the relation of the sexes and the very nature of the sexes."

In contrast, Kenneth Turan of the Los Angeles Times described Orlando as “hollow…smug…and self-satisfied,” and complains: “any kind of emotional connection to match [Orlando's] carefully constructed look… is simply not to be had.”

By 2010, Orlando is seen as part of Sally Potter's successful ouvre with Matthew Connelly affirming in the very first line of his review "Rarely have source material, director, and leading actress been more in alignment than in Orlando, the 1992 adaptation of Virginia Woolf's novel, directed by Sally Potter and starring Tilda Swinton." And following with "Watching Orlando some 17 years after its U.S. theatrical run, however, proves a welcome reminder of just how skillfully they (Potter and Swinton) marshaled their respective gifts here, how openly they entered into a dialogue with Woolf's playful, slippery text."

At the beginning of 2012, IMDB listed the film's score as 7/10 from over 5500 users and Rotten Tomatoes scored the film positive at 78%

External links

• Official Website
• Orlando at the Internet Movie Database
• Orlando at AllRovi
• Orlando at Box Office Mojo
• Orlando at Rotten Tomatoes
• Orlando at the TCM Movie Database
• Yahoo! Movies
• IMP Awards