The Adventures of Gerard

The Adventures of Gerard (1970)

Based on satirical short stories by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle about a vain, egotistical Etienne Gerard, a French brigadier serving during the Napoleonic Wars. He thinks he's the best soldier and lover that ever lived and intends to prove it.

Date of release
1970-07-03
TMDB
5.9 / 10 (11)
Runtime
1h 32m
Genres
Adventure, Comedy, Drama
Director
Jerzy Skolimowski

Casting

Interesting facts

The Adventures of Gerard is a 1970 British-Italian-Swiss adventure comedy film directed by Jerzy Skolimowski and starring Peter McEnery, Claudia Cardinale, Eli Wallach, and Jack Hawkins. It was based on the 1896 collection The Exploits of Brigadier Gerard by Arthur Conan Doyle. In 2011 the director called it "my worst movie".

Production

Henry Lester had formed a company, Sir Nigel Films, which had the rights to develop projects based on the stories of Arthur Conan Doyle. Doyle's son was chairman of the company. Sir Nigel had produced the Sherlock Holmes film A Study in Terror (1965). In 1966 it was announced Sir Nigel was looking at filming the Brigadier Gerard Stories. Doyle's daughter in law unsuccessfully sought to prevent this from happening.

Gene Gutowski was a film producer who had put director Jerzy Skolimowski under contract to Gutowski's company, Cadre Films, on the recommendation of Roman Polanski, who had made Knife in Water with Skolimowski. Cadre paid Skolimowski a minimum of $60,000 a year.

Gutoskwi was friends with Henry Lester, who invited Gutoswki to co produce The Adventures of Gerard with him. The movie was going to be financed and distributed by United Artists. Gutowski, wanting a project for Skolimowski, suggested him as director and United Artists agreed.

The original script was by Harry Craig, who had written A Study in Terror. Gutowski said Skolimowski felt the script was old fashioned and had it rewritten, adding elements of surrealism. "I didn't like the script that much," admitted the director. "Anyway I never use a script like that I just improvise."

Gutowski claims that before filming began he and Lester tried to get the director replaced by UA's executive on the project, Ilya Lopert, backed Skolimowski.

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

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