The Name of the Rose

Jean-Jacques Annaud had the opening credits call the film “a palimpsest of Umberto Eco’s novel”, saying up front that this is not the book but a film drawn from it. Eco objected to the word: Annaud should have written that it is on a palimpsest rather than that it is one, since what survives underneath is the book’s remains. The monastery was built, not found. Dante Ferretti’s team raised it on three hectares in the Pian dell’Olmo quarry outside Rome, its octagonal library tower taken from Castel del Monte in Puglia. The interiors are German: the dormitory and star vaulted chapter hall of Eberbach Abbey, plus Maulbronn Abbey. Shooting ran from 8 November 1985 to 5 March 1986, through the winter. Casting Sean Connery appalled Eco and the American distributors alike; after seeing it Eco told Annaud that what he had feared most turned out to be the best element. Connery won the BAFTA for best actor, and Hasso von Hugo won at the same ceremony for the make up. France gave it the César for best foreign film. A good fit if you take the chain of murders opening onto heresy and forbidden books as the real subject, not a digression. Not for readers of the novel hunting Eco’s layers of narration, which Annaud’s own credit refuses in advance.