The Ninth Gate

The Ninth Gate
Original film poster
Directed by	Roman Polanski
Produced by	Roman Polanski
Written by	John Brownjohn Enrique Urbizu Roman Polanski (screenplay) Arturo Pérez-Reverte (novel)
Starring	Johnny Depp Lena Olin Frank Langella Emmanuelle Seigner
Music by	Wojciech Kilar
Cinematography	Darius Khondji
Editing by	Hervé de Luze
Distributed by	Artisan Entertainment
Release date(s)	August 25, 1999 (Spain, France and Belgium)
Running time	133 minutes
Country	Portugal Spain France United States
Language	English, French, Spanish, Portuguese, Latin
Budget	$38,000,000
Gross revenue	$58,401,898 (worldwide)

The Ninth Gate (1999), directed by Roman Polanski, is a neo-noir, mystery horror thriller about the rare book business, wherein rare-book dealer Dean Corso (Johnny Depp) is hired by bibliophile Boris Balkan (Frank Langella) to validate a seventeenth-century copy of The Nine Gates of the Kingdom of Shadows, by Aristide Torchia, and what he encounters en route.

The film, based upon the novel The Club Dumas (1993), by Arturo Pérez-Reverte, comprises three genres, and was co-written by director Roman Polanski. The premiere showing was at San Sebastián, Spain, on 25 August 1999 — a month before the 47th San Sebastian International Film Festival; in North America, it failed critically and commercially, because, reviewers claimed, it was a lesser effort than Rosemary's Baby (1968), his best supernatural-theme film; nonetheless, The Ninth Gate earned a world-wide gross profit of $58.4 million against a $38 million budget.

Plot

Dean Corso (Johnny Depp) is a New York City rare-book dealer motivated solely by financial gain. In the event, wealthy book collector Boris Balkan (Frank Langella) hires Corso to authenticate the seventeenth-century book The Nine Gates of the Kingdom of Shadows, by Aristide Torchia; it is one of three extant copies, and now in Balkan’s possession. The book contains nine engravings that, when correctly deciphered and the interpretations properly spoken, will raise the Devil. Balkan suggests to Corso that the book might be a forgery, understanding that two other copies exist. Balkan hires Corso to travel to Europe, assess the two other known copies, and establish whether or not any of the three copies of The Nine Gates of the Kingdom of Shadows are genuine — and, if so, acquire them for Balkan, at any cost, or by any means.

Previously, Balkan’s copy of The Nine Gates had belonged to bibliophile Andrew Telfer, who committed suicide soon after selling the book to Balkan. Moreover, Telfer’s widow, Liana (Lena Olin), wants the book back, as Telfer originally bought the book for her. In pursuit of that, Liana seduces Corso, yet fails to re-acquire her book. Meanwhile, Corso’s business partner, and rare-book shop owner, Bernie (James Russo), whom Corso had asked to hide the book, is murdered in the style of one of the engravings in The Nine Gates, and as in the image of the The Hanged Man Tarot card, Bernie is hanged upside down, from a foot.

Corso travels to Toledo, Spain, to talk with the Ceniza brothers (José López Rodero), twin-brother book restorers, who show him that some of the book’s engravings are signed “LCF”, and prompt him to guess to whom the initials refer — the Ceniza brothers concur when he replies “Lucifer”. Corso next goes by train to Sintra, Portugal, and visits Victor Fargas (Jack Taylor), in a mysterious house (the main house of Quinta da Regaleira), whose copy of The Nine Gates Corso compares with Balkan’s, noting variations in three of the engravings. The next morning, a mysterious young woman (Emmanuelle Seigner) awakens Corso; he and she have been crossing paths; she then leads Corso back to Fargas’s house, and finds him murdered, and the engravings ripped out of his copy of The Nine Gates. Later, the anonymous woman displays supernatural abilities in rescuing Corso from Telfer’s bodyguard (Tony Amoni).

In Paris, Corso tracks the third copy of The Nine Gates, owned by the Baroness Kessler (Barbara Jefford). There, he records three further differences in her copy, before she is killed and the engravings from her book also ripped out, as with Fargas. Now believing that each copy of The Nine Gates is genuine, Corso suspects that the secret to opening the nine gates is a combination of the three copies. Liana Telfer steals Balkan’s copy from Corso’s hotel room; he follows her to a mansion, and witness her using it in leading a Satanist ceremony. Suddenly, Balkan interrupts the ceremony, kills Liana, takes the engraving pages, and his own, intact, copy, and drives away — also believing that Corso’s deduction, that the three copies are genuine, is correct.

Grasping that Balkan killed Victor Fargas and the Baroness Kessler, Corso finds Balkan and witnesses him preparing to open the nine gates. Balkan performs the ritual, then douses the floor, and himself, with gasoline and sets it alight, believing himself immune to the flames — however, one of the engravings is a forgery, and Balkan’s invocation fails, and the flames consume him; mercifully, Corso shoots and kills the burning man with Liana’s pistol. Later, the anonymous girl copulates with Corso and afterwards directs him back to the book repair shop of the Ceniza brothers. On arriving, he finds it being torn for rehabilitation, yet discovers the final, authentic, engraving, which includes a likeness of the mystery girl, thereby allowing Corso to identify the place of the Ninth Gate, to then cross its threshold.

Cast and characters

Is it genuine?: Boris Balkan (Frank Langella) shows his 17th-century copy of The Nine Gates to Dean Corso (Johnny Depp).

• Johnny Depp as Dean Corso
• Frank Langella as Boris Baulkan
• Lena Olin as Liana Telfer
• Emmanuelle Seigner as The Girl
• Barbara Jefford as the Baroness Frida Kessler
• Jack Taylor as Victor Fargas
• José López Rodero as Pablo Ceniza and Pedro Ceniza, and 1st and 2nd workmen
• Tony Amoni as Liana’s bodyguard
• James Russo as Bernie

Production

Roman Polanski read the screenplay, an adaptation by Enrique Urbizu, of the Spanish novel El Club Dumas (The Dumas Club, 1993), by Arturo Pérez-Reverte, So impressed with the script, Polanski read the novel, liking it because he “saw so many elements that seemed good for a movie. It was suspenseful, funny, and there were a great number of secondary characters that are tremendously cinematic”.^[1] Pérez-Reverte’s novel, El Club Dumas features intertwined plots, so Polanski wrote his own adaptation with his usual partner, John Brownjohn (Tess, Pirates and Bitter Moon). They deleted the novel’s literary references and a sub-plot about Corso’s investigation of an original manuscript of a chapter of The Three Musketeers and concentrated upon Dean Corso’s pursuing the authentic copy of The Nine Gates.^[1]

Polanski approached the subject skeptically, saying, “I don’t believe in the occult. I don’t believe. Period”; ^[2] yet he enjoyed the genre, “There [are] a great number of clichés of this type in The Ninth Gate, which I tried to turn around a bit. You can make them appear serious on the surface, but you cannot help, but laugh at them”.^[2] The appeal of the film was that it featured “a mystery in which a book is the leading character” and its engravings “are also essential clues”.^[3] In reading El Club Dumas, Polanski pictured Johnny Depp as “Dean Corso”, who joined the production as early as 1997, when he met Polanski at the Cannes Film Festival, while promoting The Brave, his directorial début, then in festival competition.^[4] Initially, he did not think Depp right as “Corso”, because the character was forty years old. He considered an older actor, but Depp persisted, he wanted to work with Roman Polanski.^[5] The movie press reported creative friction between Depp and Polanski, reported around the time of the North American release of The Ninth Gate. Depp said, “It’s the director’s job to push, to provoke things out of an actor”.^[5] Polanski said of Depp, “He decided to play it rather flat, which wasn’t how I envisioned it; and I didn’t tell him it wasn’t how I saw it”. Visually, in the neo-noir genre style, rare-book dealer Dean Corso’s disheveled grooming derives from Philip Marlowe, Raymond Chandler’s quintessential literary private investigator.^[2]

Polanski cast Frank Langella as “Boris Balkan” based upon his performance as “Clare Quilty” in Lolita (1997), directed by Adrian Lyne. Barbara Jefford, as the “Baroness Frida Kessler” was a last-minute replacement for the cast German actress who fell sick with pneumonia, and after a second actress proved unable to learn the character’s dialogue; with only days’ notice, Barbara Jefford learned her part, spoken with a German accent.^[1] The Ninth Gate was photographed in France, Portugal, and Spain in summer of 1998. Johnny Depp met his future wife Vanessa Paradis during the shooting.

Soundtrack

The Ninth Gate (Original Motion Picture Soundtrack)
Soundtrack by Wojciech Kilar
Released	November 16, 1999
Recorded	April 1999
Genre	Soundtrack
Length	53:58
Label	Silva
Professional reviews
Allmusic link

The main theme of The Ninth Gate is based upon Havanaise, for violin and orchestra, by Camille Saint-Saëns; some of the score is a vocalise by Korean soprano Sumi Jo.^[6]

Track listing

1. Vocalise: "Theme from the Ninth Gate" – 3:56
2. "Opening Titles" – 3:31
3. "Corso" – 3:24
4. "Bernie Is Dead" – 4:31
5. "Liana" – 3:03
6. "Plane to Spain" – 4:48
7. "The Motorbike" – 1:18
8. "Missing Book/Stalking Corso" – 4:41
9. "Blood on His Face" – 1:13
10. "Chateau Saint Martin" – 4:05
11. "Liana's Death" – 2:38
12. "Boo! / The Chase" – 4:29
13. "Balkan's Death" – 3:52
14. "The Ninth Gate" – 1:13
15. "Corso and the Girl" – 3:20
16. Vocalise: "Theme from A Summer Place"

Responses

The premiere screening of The Ninth Gate was in San Sebastián, Spain, on 25 August 1999; in North America, it appeared in 1,586 cinemas during the 25 August week end, earning a gross income of $6.6 million, and $18.6 million in total. World-wide, it earned $58.4 million against a $38 million production budget.^[7]

Most movie reviewers said that the suspense in The Ninth Gate was less than that of Rosemary’s Baby (1968), director Polanski’s famous supernatural-themed film. The Ninth Gate holds a 40 per cent rating at Rotten Tomatoes (26% among “Cream of the Crop” critics) and a metascore of 44 on Metacritic. Roger Ebert said the ending was lacklustre, “while at the end, I didn’t yearn for spectacular special effects, I did wish for spectacular information — something awesome, not just a fade-to-white”.^[8] In his review for The New York Times, Elvis Mitchell said the movie was “about as scary as a sock-puppet re-enactment of The Blair Witch Project, and not nearly as funny”.^[9] Entertainment Weekly rated the film “D+”, and Lisa Schwarzbaum said it had an “aroma of middle-brow, art-house Euro-rot, a whiff of decay and hauteur in a film not even a star as foxed, and foxy, as Johnny Depp, himself, could save”.^[10] In the Los Angeles Times, Kenneth Turan said the film was “too laid-back, and unconcerned about the pacing of its story to be satisfying”, because “a thriller that’s not high-powered, is an intriguing concept, in reality it can hold our attention for only so long”.^[11] In the Village Voice, J. Hoberman said the film was “barely releasable hokum, stuffed with cheesy blah-blah”.^[12]

In Sight and Sound magazine, Phillip Strick said it was “not particularly liked at first outing — partly because Johnny Depp, in fake grey temples, personifies the odious Corso of the book a little too accurately — the film is intricately well-made, deserves a second chance, despite its disintegrations, and, in time, will undoubtedly acquire its own coven of heretical fans”.^[13] In Time magazine, Richard Corliss said that The Ninth Gate was Roman Polanski’s most accessible effort “since fleeing the U.S. soon after Chinatown”.^[14] In the San Francisco Chronicle, Bob Graham said that “Depp is the best reason to see Polanski’s satanic thriller”, because “Polanski’s sly sense of film-noir conventions pokes fun at the genre, while, at the same time, honoring it”.^[15]

After the release of The Ninth Gate, Artisan Entertainment sued Polanski for taking more than $1 million from the budget, refunds of France’s value-added tax that he did not give to the completion bond company guaranteeing Artisan Entertainment a completed film.^[16]

References

External links

• The Ninth Gate at the Internet Movie Database
• The Ninth Gate at Allmovie
• The Ninth Gate at Rotten Tomatoes
• The Ninth Gate at Metacritic
• The Ninth Gate at Box Office Mojo
• Texts, engravings and formatting of the book
• "Satanic Verses" article from American Cinematographer magazine