Sean Connery names the “toughest” movie he ever made
While Sean Connery could certainly turn on the sophistication and charm when he needed to, he could also detail a sense of toughness and grit in his performances and his personal life. Sure, Connery had portrayed James Bond on several brilliant occasions, but he had also delivered a wide range of acting roles throughout his brilliant career.
For instance, Connery had collaborated with some of the most notorious movie directors of all time. For Alfred Hitchcock, he had appeared in Marnie; for Sidney Lumet, he’d offered his service in The Hill, The Offence and Murder on the Orient Express, while John Huston had signed the Edinburgh-born actor up for The Man Who Would Be King.
Elsewhere, Connery played for the likes of Steven Spielberg, Michael Bay, Terry Gilliam and Brian De Palma. Quite simply, no actor can star for such notable movie directors without possessing an air of resilience and determination. However, Connery once pointed out a film role that he found his “toughest” of all.
Discussing his effort in The Name of the Rose with Roger Ebert, Connery once noted, “God, it was one of the toughest films I’ve ever made.” The historical mystery movie was directed by Jean-Jacques Annaud and was based on the 1980 historical novel of the same name by Italian writer and philosopher Umberto Eco.
Connery played the Franciscan friar William of Baskerville, who is called upon to solve a dangerous and deadly mystery that has been taking place in a medieval abbey in northern Italy. Christian Slater played William’s apprentice Adso of Melk, while F. Murray Abraham portrayed the Inquisitor antagonist, Bernardo Gui.
“We filmed in Germany in a monastery, and then we built sets on a hillside outside Rome, and of course, there was noise from planes and trains and buses and blimps,” Connery explained, meaning that not a single line of dialogue could be used in the final cut, leading to a further ten days of “looping every line of the movie”.
The German monastery the film was shot in was incredibly cold, so much so that “you could see your breath when you spoke”, although such an effect looked brilliantly effective and authentic on screen. Still, even though Connery had a tough time making In the Name of the Rose, he had been driven by an ardent desire to get the job done as a result of his love for Umberto Eco’s original novel.
“I wanted to make the film because I loved the book, which sold four million copies, although I imagine 2million of those copies were never finished because the first 100 pages are rather slow going – although nothing compared to the ten days we spent dubbing the dialogue,” Connery added of his efforts and the relation to the 1980 source text.
In fact, Connery noted that Italian cinema tended to avoid even recording sound during the filming process, preferring to add it later. “Sometimes when Fellini works, he doesn’t even know what the dialogue is going to be,” Connery pointed out, “And he simply has his characters count from one to ten, knowing he will loop in their dialogue later.”
In the Name of the Rose might not be as well known as Connery’s effort in the James Bond movies or The Hunt for Red October, but it serves as one of the most gruelling filming experiences he ever went through.
