Angels & Demons

Ron Howard reversed the order of the books: Dan Brown’s novel comes before The Da Vinci Code, but the film was built as a sequel. Howard reasoned most people had read this one after the other, and liked opening on a Langdon who has already survived a case. That deletes every introduce-the-hero scene and hands the running time to the clock. The diocese of Rome refused permission to shoot inside the churches the story uses, and the Vatican stayed shut. Howard said the official line given a production in Rome is that the Vatican has no influence over permits; unofficially he was told otherwise. So the church interiors are sets built at Culver City. The Sistine Chapel was rebuilt full size and deliberately painted in its pre-cleaning smoky tones. Even the exterior of Santa Maria del Popolo was shot from the police station opposite, since the real facade was under scaffolding, and the Vatican staircases came from Caserta’s Palazzo Reale. Two changes take the edge off the book. The novel kills all four cardinals while the film saves the fourth, and Vittoria moves from love interest to colleague, so no romance slows the chain of puzzles. A good fit if rebuilt architecture is a curiosity rather than a cheat. Not for a reader who wants the novel’s harsher arithmetic.