Prospero's Books

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Prospero's Books
VHS cover for Prospero's Books
Directed by	Peter Greenaway
Produced by	Masato Hara Kees Kasander Katsufumi Nakamura Yoshinobu Namano Denis Wigman Roland Wigman
Written by	Peter Greenaway
Starring	John Gielgud Michael Clark Michel Blanc Erland Josephson Isabelle Pasco
Music by	Michael Nyman
Cinematography	Sacha Vierny
Editing by	Marina Rodbyl
Release date(s)	November 15, 1991
Running time	129 min.
Country	UK France
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Prospero's Books (1991) is a movie written and directed by Peter Greenaway adapting the Shakespeare play The Tempest. John Gielgud stars as the character Prospero in addition to providing the voices for all the characters as off-screen narrator. The film is known for its innovative narrative style and filmic techniques which combine mime, dance, operatic set pieces, and animation. It is also known for its abundant nudity, including a rare nude appearance by Gielgud. The musical score is by Michael Nyman and the choreography is by Karine Saporta.

1 Plot summary
2 Trivia
3 Details
4 References
5 External links

[edit] Plot summary

The daughter of an exiled magician, Prospero, and the son of his enemy fall in love, and the magician's sprite, Ariel, convinces him to abandon his thoughts of revenge against traitors from his earlier life. Prospero is portrayed in the film as a stand-in for Shakespeare himself and is seen writing and speaking the action as it unfolds. A complex tale based on William Shakespeare's The Tempest.

[edit] Trivia

Director Peter Greenaway and composer Michael Nyman ended their longstanding working relationship during the making of this film, under acrimonious circumstances. Most of the music cues featured in the film (with the exception of Ariel's songs and the Masque) was taken either from an earlier Nyman concert work, La Traversée de Paris, or from Nyman's score to A Zed and Two Noughts.
John Gielgud often said that making a film of The Tempest (which he had played on stage as Prospero in four separate productions in 1931, 1940, 1957 and 1974) was his life's amibition. He had approached Alain Resnais, Ingmar Bergman, Akira Kurosawa and Orson Welles about directing him in it, Benjamin Britten about writing the score, and Albert Finney about playing Caliban at various points before Greenaway agreed to take on the project. The closest the earlier attempts came to being made was in 1967 with Welles directing and playing Caliban to Gielgud's Prospero, but after the financial failure of Welles and Gielgud's Shakespearean film collaboration on Chimes at Midnight, the financing for the film of The Tempest fell through.^[1]