The Ninth Gate

The Ninth Gate is a 1999 film based on the novel The Club Dumas by Arturo Pérez-Reverte. Spanning several genres, The Ninth Gate is a mix of mystery, horror thriller, and neo-noir, and additionally portrays facets of the rare book business. The film was co-written and directed by Roman Polanski, and stars Johnny Depp as Dean Corso, a rare-book dealer hired by a book collector (Frank Langella) to validate a copy of The Nine Gates of the Kingdom of Shadows, a book by 17th century author Aristide Torchia.

The film premiered in San Sebastián, Spain on August 25, 1999, a month before the 47th San Sebastian International Film Festival and was a critical and commercial failure in North America as most critics felt that it fell short of Polanski's best known supernatural thriller, Rosemary's Baby. The Ninth Gate managed to turn a profit with a worldwide box office gross of $58,401,898, well above its $38 million budget. It has since enjoyed a small cult following.

Production

Roman Polanski received the screenplay by Enrique Urbizu that adapted the book, El Club Dumas by Arturo Pérez-Reverte. The filmmaker was so taken by Urbizu's script that he read the novel. He liked the novel because, "I 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." Pérez-Reverte's book featured several intertwined plots and so Polanski decided to write his own draft with long-time screenwriting partner, John Brownjohn (they had collaborated previously on Tess, Pirates and Bitter Moon). The source novel contains numerous literary references and a subplot concerning Corso’s investigation into the original manuscript for a chapter of The Three Musketeers. Polanski and Brownjohn jettisoned these elements and focused on one particular plot line: Corso’s pursuit of the authentic copy of The Nine Gates.

Polanski approached the subject matter with a certain amount of skepticism as he said in an interview, "I don't believe in the occult. I don't believe. Period." He wanted to have fun with the genre. "There is a great number of cliches 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." For Polanski, the appeal of the film was that it featured "a mystery in which a book is the leading character" and its illustrations "are also essential clues."

While reading the book, Polanski thought of Johnny Depp as Corso. The actor became attached to the project as early as 1997 when he met Polanski at the Cannes Film Festival promoting his directorial debut The Brave that was in competition. Initially, the veteran filmmaker did not think that Depp was right for the role of Corso because the character was 40-years-old. Polanski was thinking of casting an older actor but Depp was persistent and wanted to work with him. Hints of friction between Depp and Polanski while working on the film surfaced in the press around the time of its North American release. The actor said, "It's the director's job to push, to provoke things out of an actor". Polanski told one interviewer, "He [Depp] 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." Corso's dishevelled look was modelled after Raymond Chandler's famous sleuth, Philip Marlowe according to the director.

Polanski cast Frank Langella as Balkan after seeing him in Adrian Lyne’s version of Lolita. Barbara Jefford was a last minute casting decision because the German actress originally cast was struck with pneumonia and another actress couldn't learn the lines. Jefford came in with only a few days notice, learned her lines, and affected a German accent.

Filming took place in France, Portugal and Spain during the summer of 1998.