30 Door Key

30 Door Key (1991)

A young writer in 1939 Warsaw faces the conflict of acting his age or relapsing into childhood during the brink of World War II. Based on the famous novel Ferdydurke by Witold Gombrowicz.

Date of release
1991-09-02
TMDB
6.2 / 10 (11)
Runtime
1h 29m
Genres
Drama, Comedy
Director
Jerzy Skolimowski

Casting

Interesting facts

30 Door Key, also spelled as Thirty Door Key, is a 1991 English-language drama film directed and produced by Jerzy Skolimowski, and written by Skolimowski, Michał Skolimowski, and Józef Skolimowski. It starred Iain Glen, Robert Stephens, and Crispin Glover. The film was based on the 1937 novel Ferdydurke by Witold Gombrowicz. The film premiered at the 48th Venice International Film Festival on 2 September 1991 and was released in Poland on 21 February 1992. It was produced in France, Poland, and the United Kingdom by Million Frames Limited and Cinea.

Production and release

The film was directed and produced by Jerzy Skolimowski, and written by Skolimowski, Michał Skolimowski (credited as Michael Lyndon), and Józef Skolimowski (credited as Joseph Kay). It starred Iain Glen, Robert Stephens, and Crispin Glover.

The film was based on the 1937 novel Ferdydurke by Witold Gombrowicz. Being produced for international audiences, many aspects relating to Polish culture were removed, and simplified. Due to difficulties in presenting the philosophical ideas of the novel, the production focused more on the film's plot, while also putting more enthesis on depicting the social and political realities of the 1930s in Poland.

The Polish-language film's title, Ferdydurke is a meaningless word coined by Gombrowicz. The English title, 30 Door Key, was coined as phonetically similar to the Polish equivalent. Skolimowski stated that, aside of phonetics, the title is also meant to symbolise the main character, a 30-years-old, looking for a key to the metaphoric doors between infantilism and maturity. It was also intentionally kept grammatically incorrect.

Read on Wikipedia · Text from Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0. Data from Wikidata.

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