Gothic (1987)

Curiosidades

Gothic is a 1986 British psychological horror film directed by Ken Russell, starring Gabriel Byrne as Lord Byron, Julian Sands as Percy Bysshe Shelley, Natasha Richardson as Mary Shelley, Myriam Cyr as Claire Clairmont and Timothy Spall as Dr. John William Polidori. It features a soundtrack by Thomas Dolby, and marks Richardson and Cyr's film debut.

Production

The film was based on a screenplay by Stephen Volk, who worked in advertising. He sent it to Al Clark, head of Virgin Films. Clark said "it was worlds removed from the scripts that one predominantly gets in this country, with their literary ambience and dependence on a sort of linguistic authenticity. I felt it offered a perfect springboard to a director."

After seeing Crimes of Passion, Clark offered the film to Ken Russell, who then accepted. Volk admits to having "slight misgivings" when Clark mentioned Russell's name, "But when I met Ken, I found, somehow to my surprise, that he was very easy to get on with". Russell worked on a further draft of the script with Volk which made relatively minor changes.

Russell had been interested in Byron and Shelley's meeting for a decade. He said, "About 10 years ago, Robert Powell, the actor, approached me with a script covering the same time span and events. But we couldn't raise the money. I think it was a little too poetic and not as scary as it might have been." Russell saw Gothic as "a sort of black comedy; some of the others have been slightly more serious.

"I felt pretty positive about the story when it was sent to me," said Russell. "It was extremely visual, which attracted me. And the use of laudanum gave me a springboard for my ideas."

"I made the film because I was offered a script," Russell later said. "Everything's there (in the film). They (the main characters) were responsible for publicizing the gothic experience. It's a watershed: From that meeting, everything seemed to go against them."

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