Salome's Last Dance

Salome's Last Dance (1988)

Notorious, scandalous, Wilde!

London, England, November 5th, 1892, Guy Fawkes Night. The famous playwright Oscar Wilde and his lover Lord Alfred Douglas discreetly go to a luxury brothel where the owner, Alfred Taylor, has prepared a surprise for the renowned author: a private and very special performance of his play Salome, banned by the authorities, in which Taylor himself and the peculiar inhabitants of the exclusive establishment will participate.

Date of release
1988-05-06
TMDB
6.3 / 10 (39)
Runtime
1h 29m
Genres
Drama
Director
Ken Russell

Casting

Interesting facts

Salome's Last Dance is a 1988 British film written and directed by Ken Russell. Although most of the action is a verbatim performance of Oscar Wilde's 1891 play Salome, which is itself based on a story from the New Testament, there is also a framing narrative that was written by Russell.

Production

Ken Russell had been signed by Vestron to a three-picture deal after the success of Gothic, of which this was the first. Imogen Millais-Scott went blind three weeks before filming after contracting glandular fever but Russell insisted on still using her.

"It's a tale that can be interpreted in many ways," said Russell. "Years ago, I wrote it into a script titled Space Gospel, which was the New Testament in science-fiction. It didn't work out. I also thought of using the opera with the dance of the seven veils for my segment in Aria... but they wanted $3,000 a minute for the music."

For dramatic effect, Russell compressed the actual arrest of Oscar Wilde in 1895 and the first performance of his play in Paris in 1896. Russell said, "Although the play was never produced in London during his lifetime - even though he had Sarah Bernhardt actually in rehearsals for it before it was banned - I just made up the conceit of showing it in the brothel to give a flavor of what his life at the time was like, and at the same time give a h…

Russell later claimed he made the film on a bet that he could not make a movie under $1 million. The film was made for $1.3 million with filming completed in three and a half weeks.

Shortly after filming Russell said "The critics haven't worn me down, so maybe I'm trying to wear them down. I'm also trying to reach a wider - and younger - audience, and make films that are more visually stimulating. It isn't easy. I've never made a film I was totally happy with. That's what keeps me going: the next one must be better."

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

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