The Draughtsman's Contract

The Draughtsman's Contract (1982)

A landscape of lust and cunning.

R. Neville, a brash young draftsman, is hired to make a dozen landscape illustrations at the estate of Mr Herbert and his wife Virginia. Aside from monetary compensation, the arrangement includes a sexual liaison offered to Neville by Virginia while her estranged husband is away. But when the murdered body of Mr Herbert is discovered at the estate, mysterious clues found in Neville's drawings point to the identity of the killer.

Date of release
1982-11-12
TMDB
7.1 / 10 (276)
Runtime
1h 48m
Genres
History, Mystery, Comedy
Director
Peter Greenaway

Casting

Interesting facts

The Draughtsman's Contract is a 1982 British period drama film written and directed by Peter Greenaway – his first conventional feature film. Originally produced for Channel 4, the film is a form of murder mystery, set in rural Wiltshire, England in 1694. The period setting is reflected in Michael Nyman's score, which borrows widely from Henry Purcell, and in the extensive and elaborate costume designs. The action was shot on location in the house and formal gardens of Groombridge Place. The film received the Grand Prix of the Belgian Film Critics Association.

Background

The film was inspired when Greenaway, who trained as an artist before becoming a filmmaker, spent three weeks drawing a house near Hay-on-Wye while holidaying with his family. Much like Mr Neville in the final film, every day he would work on a particular view at a set time, to preserve the lighting effects while sketching from day to day. The hands shown drawing in the film are Greenaway's own, as are the completed drawings.

Having received funding from the British Film Institute's Production Board for his films The Falls and A Walk Through H: The Reincarnation of an Ornithologist, Greenaway originally requested a modest £60,000 to make the film, and planned to shoot on black-and-white 35mm film and print on to colour stock to “find a visual equivalent for the black and white world the film’s main character draws in black on white paper”.

The original cut of the film was about three hours long. The opening scene was about 30 minutes long and showed each character talking, at least once, with every other character. Possibly to make the film easier to watch, Greenaway edited it to 103 minutes. The opening scene is now about 10 minutes long and no longer shows all the interactions among all of the characters.

The released final version provides fewer explanations to the plot's numerous oddities and mysteries. The main murder mystery is never solved, though little doubt remains as to who did it. The reasons for the 'living statue' in the garden and why Mr Neville attached so many conditions to his contract were also more developed in the first version.

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

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