The Ninth Gate is a 1999
horror filmHorror films seek to elicit a negative emotional reaction from viewers by playing on the audience's most primal fears. They often feature scenes that startle the viewer through the means of macabre and the supernatural, thus frequently overlapping with the fantasy and science fiction genres...
directed, produced, and co-written by
Roman PolanskiRoman Polanski is a French-Polish film director, producer, writer and actor. Having made films in Poland, Britain, France and the USA, he is considered one of the few "truly international filmmakers."...
. It is a
neo-noirNeo-noir is a style often seen in modern motion pictures and other forms that prominently utilize elements of film noir, but with updated themes, content, style, visual elements or media that were absent in films noir of the 1940s and 1950s.-History:The term Film Noir was coined by...
, occult
mysteryMystery film is a sub-genre of the more general category of crime film and at times the thriller genre. It focuses on the efforts of the detective, private investigator or amateur sleuth to solve the mysterious circumstances of a crime by means of clues, investigation, and clever deduction.The...
thriller involving the rare book business, wherein rare-book dealer Dean Corso (
Johnny DeppJohn Christopher "Johnny" Depp II is an American actor, producer and musician. He has won the Golden Globe Award and Screen Actors Guild award for Best Actor. Depp rose to prominence on the 1980s television series 21 Jump Street, becoming a teen idol...
) is hired by
bibliophileBook collecting is the collecting of books, including seeking, locating, acquiring, organizing, cataloging, displaying, storing, and maintaining whatever books are of interest to a given individual collector. The love of books is bibliophilia, and someone who loves to read, admire, and collect...
Boris Balkan (
Frank Langella-Early life:Langella, an Italian American, was born in Bayonne, New Jersey, the son of Angelina and Frank A. Langella Sr., a business executive who was the president of the Bayonne Barrel and Drum Company. Langella attended Washington Elementary School and Bayonne High School in Bayonne...
) to validate a seventeenth-century copy of
The Nine Gates of the Kingdom of Shadows, by
Aristide TorchiaAristide Torchia is a fictional character from The Club Dumas, a 1993 novel by Arturo Pérez-Reverte. The events of the novel take place hundreds of years after Torchia's death, and he is referenced only as a historical figure. He is also mentioned in the film The Ninth Gate, which is based on the...
, and what he encounters en route.
The Nine Gates is an imaginary book, but is heavily inspired by the
Hypnerotomachia PoliphiliHypnerotomachia Poliphili , called in English Poliphilo's Strife of Love in a Dream, is a romance said to be by Francesco Colonna and a famous example of early printing...
.
The film, based upon
Arturo Pérez-ReverteArturo Pérez-Reverte Gutiérrez is a Spanish novelist and journalist. He worked as a war correspondent for twenty-one years . His first novel, El húsar, set in the Napoleonic Wars, was released in 1986. He is well known outside Spain for his "Alatriste" series of novels...
's 1993 novel
El Club Dumas, comprises three genres, and was co-written by director Roman Polanski. The premiere showing was at
San SebastiánDonostia-San Sebastián is a city and municipality located in the north of Spain, in the coast of the Bay of Biscay and 20 km away from the French border. The city is the capital of Gipuzkoa, in the autonomous community of the Basque Country. The municipality’s population is 186,122 , and its...
,
SpainSpain , officially the Kingdom of Spain languages]] under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages. In each of these, Spain's official name is as follows:;;;;;;), is a country and member state of the European Union located in southwestern Europe on the Iberian Peninsula...
, on 25 August 1999, a month before the 47th
San Sebastian International Film FestivalThe San Sebastián International Film Festival is an annual FIAPF A category film festival held in the Spanish city of San Sebastián .-History:The festival was founded in 1953...
; in North America, it failed critically and commercially, because, reviewers claimed, it was a lesser effort than
Rosemary's BabyRosemary's Baby is a 1968 American horror film written and directed by Roman Polanski, based on the bestselling 1967 novel Rosemary's Baby by Ira Levin...
(1968), his best supernatural-theme film; nonetheless,
The Ninth Gate earned a worldwide gross of $58.4 million against a $38 million budget.
Plot
Dean Corso (
Johnny DeppJohn Christopher "Johnny" Depp II is an American actor, producer and musician. He has won the Golden Globe Award and Screen Actors Guild award for Best Actor. Depp rose to prominence on the 1980s television series 21 Jump Street, becoming a teen idol...
) is a New York City rare-book dealer motivated solely by financial gain. Wealthy book collector Boris Balkan (
Frank Langella-Early life:Langella, an Italian American, was born in Bayonne, New Jersey, the son of Angelina and Frank A. Langella Sr., a business executive who was the president of the Bayonne Barrel and Drum Company. Langella attended Washington Elementary School and Bayonne High School in Bayonne...
) hires Corso to authenticate his recently acquired copy of the seventeenth-century author
Aristide TorchiaAristide Torchia is a fictional character from The Club Dumas, a 1993 novel by Arturo Pérez-Reverte. The events of the novel take place hundreds of years after Torchia's death, and he is referenced only as a historical figure. He is also mentioned in the film The Ninth Gate, which is based on the...
's book
The Nine Gates of the Kingdom of Shadows, reputedly a version of a book whose author was the devil himself. The book contains nine
engravingEngraving is the practice of incising a design on to a hard, usually flat surface, by cutting grooves into it. The result may be a decorated object in itself, as when silver, gold, steel, or glass are engraved, or may provide an intaglio printing plate, of copper or another metal, for printing...
s that, when correctly interpreted and the legends properly spoken, will summon the
DevilThe Devil is believed in many religions and cultures to be a powerful, supernatural entity that is the personification of evil and the enemy of God and humankind. The nature of the role varies greatly...
. Since two other copies exist, Balkan suspects that the book might be a
forgeryForgery is the process of making, adapting, or imitating objects, statistics, or documents with the intent to deceive. Copies, studio replicas, and reproductions are not considered forgeries, though they may later become forgeries through knowing and willful misrepresentations. Forging money or...
, and he asks Corso to travel to
EuropeEurope is, by convention, one of the world's seven continents. Comprising the westernmost peninsula of Eurasia, Europe is generally 'divided' from Asia to its east by the watershed divides of the Ural and Caucasus Mountains, the Ural River, the Caspian and Black Seas, and the waterways connecting...
to determine whether his or any of the other two are genuine and, if so, to acquire them for Balkan, at any cost or by any means.
Balkan's copy of
The Nine Gates had previously belonged to bibliophile Andrew Telfer, who committed
suicideSuicide is the act of intentionally causing one's own death. Suicide is often committed out of despair or attributed to some underlying mental disorder, such as depression, bipolar disorder, schizophrenia, alcoholism, or drug abuse...
soon after selling the book to Balkan. Moreover, Telfer's widow, Liana (
Lena OlinLena Maria Jonna Olin is a Swedish actress.-Early life:Olin was born the youngest of three children, in Stockholm, Sweden. She is the daughter of actress Britta Holmberg and the director Stig Olin...
), wants the book back, as Telfer originally bought the book for her. Liana seduces Corso, but she fails to re-acquire her book. Meanwhile, Corso's business partner and rare-book shop owner, Bernie (
James RussoJames Vincent Russo is an American film and television actor. He has starred in over 90 films in three decades.-Early life:...
), whom Corso had asked to hide the book, is murdered, and his corpse disposed to reflect one of the engravings in
The Nine Gates, which, as in the image of The Hanged Man
TarotThe tarot |trionfi]] and later as tarocchi, tarock, and others) is a pack of cards , used from the mid-15th century in various parts of Europe to play a group of card games such as Italian tarocchini and French tarot...
card, shows a man hanged by one foot upside down.
Corso travels to
ToledoToledo's Alcázar became renowned in the 19th and 20th centuries as a military academy. At the outbreak of the Spanish Civil War in 1936 its garrison was famously besieged by Republican forces.-Economy:...
,
SpainSpain , officially the Kingdom of Spain languages]] under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages. In each of these, Spain's official name is as follows:;;;;;;), is a country and member state of the European Union located in southwestern Europe on the Iberian Peninsula...
, to talk with the Ceniza brothers (José López Rodero), twin-brother book restorers, who point out to him three of the book's engravings signed "LCF", which, with their prompting, Corso understands means that
LuciferTraditionally, Lucifer is a name that in English generally refers to the devil or Satan before being cast from Heaven, although this is not the original meaning of the term. In Latin, from which the English word is derived, Lucifer means "light-bearer"...
himself designed and cut them. Corso next goes by train to
SintraSintra is a town within the municipality of Sintra in the Grande Lisboa subregion of Portugal. Owing to its 19th century Romantic architecture and landscapes, becoming a major tourist centre, visited by many day-trippers who travel from the urbanized suburbs and capital of Lisbon.In addition to...
,
PortugalPortugal , officially the Portuguese Republic is a country situated in southwestern Europe on the Iberian Peninsula. Portugal is the westernmost country of Europe, and is bordered by the Atlantic Ocean to the West and South and by Spain to the North and East. The Atlantic archipelagos of the...
, and visits Victor Fargas (
Jack TaylorJack Taylor is an American actor. He first relocated to Mexico in the late 1950s/early 1960s, and later to Spain, where he has appeared in many films, mostly horror and cheesy exploitation pictures...
), whose copy of
The Nine Gates Corso compares with Balkan's. To his surprise, Corso discovers that the signature "LCF" is, in the Fargas copy, found in three
different engravings, which vary in detail from their counterparts in the Balkan copy. The next morning, a mysterious young woman (
Emmanuelle SeignerEmmanuelle Seigner is a French actress, former fashion model, and singer, best known as the wife of Academy Award winning director Roman Polanski, and for her roles in The Diving Bell and the Butterfly , and Frantic...
), who has crossed paths with Corso since Balkan summoned him for this assignment, awakens Corso and leads him back to Fargas's house to find the old man murdered and the engravings ripped out of his copy of
The Nine Gates. Later, The Girl displays supernatural abilities in rescuing Corso from Liana's bodyguard (Tony Amoni).
In Paris, Corso visits the Baroness Kessler (
Barbara JeffordBarbara Jefford, OBE is a British Shakespearean actress best known for her theatrical performances with the Royal Shakespeare Company, the Old Vic and the National Theatre, and her role as Molly Bloom in the 1967 film of James Joyce's Ulysses.-Early life:Jefford was born Mary Barbara Jefford in...
), owner of the third copy of
The Nine Gates. The Baroness initially refuses any contact with Corso once she realizes who his employer is, but Corso returns and intrigues Kessler—a lifelong devotee of the study of the book—with evidence that the engravings differ across the three copies. Having gained access to Kessler's copy, he records three further differences. Later, Kessler is killed, and the engravings from her book also ripped out. 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 "LCF" versions of each of the nine engravings, distributed across all three copies of the book. Liana steals Balkan's copy from Corso's hotel room; he follows her to a mansion and witnesses her using it in leading a Satanist ceremony. Suddenly, Balkan interrupts the ceremony, kills Liana, takes the engraving pages, and his own, intact copy, then flees.
Corso pursues Balkan to a remote keep, which was depicted in one of the engavings and in a postcard that Corso found in Kessler's copy, and finds Balkan preparing to open the nine gates. After a struggle, Balkan manages to trap Corso in a hole in the floor, thus immobilizing him and allowing Balkan to perform his summoning ritual unmolested—but with Corso as a 'witness'. Balkan recites a series of phrases related to each of the nine engravings, then douses the floor and himself with
gasolineGasoline , or petrol , is a toxic, translucent, petroleum-derived liquid that is primarily used as a fuel in internal combustion engines. It consists mostly of organic compounds obtained by the fractional distillation of petroleum, enhanced with a variety of additives. Some gasolines also contain...
and sets it alight, believing himself immune to the flames. Balkan's invocation, however, appears to fail, and Balkan begins screaming in agony as his body starts to burn. Corso frees himself and, with Balkan engulfed in flames, puts Balkan out of his agony with a shot and escapes the fire.
Outside the building, The Girl appears to Corso and seduces him by the light of the flames. She tells him that Balkan failed because the ninth engraving Balkan had used was a forgery. Corso, following her directions, returns to the Ceniza brothers' shop. Upon arriving, he finds the store gone and the last piece of furniture being removed, from the top of which falls the authentic ninth engraving, which includes a likeness of the mystery girl. With the last engraving in hand, Corso returns to the castle it depicts, and crosses the threshold of the Ninth Gate.
Cast
- Johnny Depp
John Christopher "Johnny" Depp II is an American actor, producer and musician. He has won the Golden Globe Award and Screen Actors Guild award for Best Actor. Depp rose to prominence on the 1980s television series 21 Jump Street, becoming a teen idol...
as Dean Corso
- Lena Olin
Lena Maria Jonna Olin is a Swedish actress.-Early life:Olin was born the youngest of three children, in Stockholm, Sweden. She is the daughter of actress Britta Holmberg and the director Stig Olin...
as Liana Telfer
- Frank Langella
-Early life:Langella, an Italian American, was born in Bayonne, New Jersey, the son of Angelina and Frank A. Langella Sr., a business executive who was the president of the Bayonne Barrel and Drum Company. Langella attended Washington Elementary School and Bayonne High School in Bayonne...
as Boris Balkan
- Emmanuelle Seigner
Emmanuelle Seigner is a French actress, former fashion model, and singer, best known as the wife of Academy Award winning director Roman Polanski, and for her roles in The Diving Bell and the Butterfly , and Frantic...
as The Girl
- Barbara Jefford
Barbara Jefford, OBE is a British Shakespearean actress best known for her theatrical performances with the Royal Shakespeare Company, the Old Vic and the National Theatre, and her role as Molly Bloom in the 1967 film of James Joyce's Ulysses.-Early life:Jefford was born Mary Barbara Jefford in...
as the Baroness Frida Kessler
- Jack Taylor
Jack Taylor is an American actor. He first relocated to Mexico in the late 1950s/early 1960s, and later to Spain, where he has appeared in many films, mostly horror and cheesy exploitation pictures...
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
James Vincent Russo is an American film and television actor. He has starred in over 90 films in three decades.-Early life:...
as Bernie
Production
Roman PolanskiRoman Polanski is a French-Polish film director, producer, writer and actor. Having made films in Poland, Britain, France and the USA, he is considered one of the few "truly international filmmakers."...
read the screenplay, an adaptation by
Enrique UrbizuEnrique Urbizu is a Spanish film director and screenwriter. He is a native of Bilbao.-Filmography:* Tu novia está loca * Todo por la pasta * Como ser infeliz y disfrutarlo * Cachito...
, of the Spanish novel
El Club Dumas (
The Club Dumas, 1993), by
Arturo Pérez-ReverteArturo Pérez-Reverte Gutiérrez is a Spanish novelist and journalist. He worked as a war correspondent for twenty-one years . His first novel, El húsar, set in the Napoleonic Wars, was released in 1986. He is well known outside Spain for his "Alatriste" series of novels...
, 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". Pérez-Reverte's novel,
El Club Dumas features intertwined plots, so Polanski wrote his own adaptation with his usual partner, John Brownjohn (
TessTess is a 1980 romance film directed by Roman Polanski, an adaptation of Thomas Hardy's 1891 novel Tess of the d'Urbervilles. It tells the story of a strong-willed, young peasant girl who finds out she has title connections by way of her old aristocratic surname and who is raped by her wealthy...
,
Pirates and
Bitter MoonBitter Moon is a 1992 film starring Hugh Grant, Kristin Scott Thomas, Emmanuelle Seigner and Peter Coyote and directed by Roman Polanski. The film is known as in France. The script is inspired by a book with the same name, written by the French author Pascal Bruckner. The score was composed by...
). 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.
Polanski approached the subject skeptically, saying, "I don't believe in the occult. I don't believe. Period"; 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". 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". In reading
El Club Dumas, Polanski pictured
Johnny DeppJohn Christopher "Johnny" Depp II is an American actor, producer and musician. He has won the Golden Globe Award and Screen Actors Guild award for Best Actor. Depp rose to prominence on the 1980s television series 21 Jump Street, becoming a teen idol...
as "Dean Corso", who joined the production as early as 1997, when he met Polanski at the
Cannes Film FestivalThe Cannes International Film Festival , is an annual film festival held in Cannes, France, which previews new films of all genres including documentaries from around the world. Founded in 1946, it is among the world's most prestigious and publicized film festivals...
, while promoting
The BraveThe Brave is a film adapted from the Gregory McDonald novel of the same title directed by and starring Johnny Depp.This film was Depp's directorial debut. He co-wrote the screenplay with his brother, directed and acted in it. The film was first shown at the 1997 Cannes Film Festival where it...
, his directorial début, then in festival competition.
Initially, he did not think Depp right as "Corso", because the character was forty years old (Depp at the time was only 34). He considered an older actor, but Depp persisted; he wanted to work with Roman Polanski.
The film 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". 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-noirNeo-noir is a style often seen in modern motion pictures and other forms that prominently utilize elements of film noir, but with updated themes, content, style, visual elements or media that were absent in films noir of the 1940s and 1950s.-History:The term Film Noir was coined by...
genre style, rare-book dealer Dean Corso's disheveled grooming derives from
Philip MarlowePhilip Marlowe is a fictional character created by Raymond Chandler in a series of novels including The Big Sleep and The Long Goodbye. Marlowe first appeared under that name in The Big Sleep published in 1939...
,
Raymond ChandlerRaymond Thornton Chandler was an American novelist and screenwriter.In 1932, at age forty-five, Raymond Chandler decided to become a detective fiction writer after losing his job as an oil company executive during the Depression. His first short story, "Blackmailers Don't Shoot", was published in...
's quintessential literary private investigator.
Polanski cast
Frank Langella-Early life:Langella, an Italian American, was born in Bayonne, New Jersey, the son of Angelina and Frank A. Langella Sr., a business executive who was the president of the Bayonne Barrel and Drum Company. Langella attended Washington Elementary School and Bayonne High School in Bayonne...
as Boris Balkan based upon his performance as Clare Quilty in
LolitaLolita is a 1997 French-American drama film directed by Adrian Lyne. It is the second screen adaptation of Vladimir Nabokov's novel of the same name and stars Jeremy Irons as Humbert Humbert and Dominique Swain as Dolores "Lolita" Haze, with supporting roles by Melanie Griffith as Charlotte Haze,...
(1997), directed by
Adrian LyneAdrian Lyne is an English filmmaker and producer. He is best known for directing films that focus on sexually charged characters and often uses natural light, a fog machine and other effects to create eroticized atmospheres...
.
Barbara JeffordBarbara Jefford, OBE is a British Shakespearean actress best known for her theatrical performances with the Royal Shakespeare Company, the Old Vic and the National Theatre, and her role as Molly Bloom in the 1967 film of James Joyce's Ulysses.-Early life:Jefford was born Mary Barbara Jefford in...
, as the Baroness Frida Kessler was a last-minute replacement for the cast German actress who fell sick with
pneumoniaPneumonia is an inflammatory condition of the lung—especially affecting the microscopic air sacs —associated with fever, chest symptoms, and a lack of air space on a chest X-ray. Pneumonia is typically caused by an infection but there are a number of other causes...
, 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.
The Ninth Gate was photographed in
FranceThe French Republic , The French Republic , The French Republic , (commonly known as France , is a unitary semi-presidential republic in Western Europe with several overseas territories and islands located on other continents and in the Indian, Pacific, and Atlantic oceans. Metropolitan France...
,
PortugalPortugal , officially the Portuguese Republic is a country situated in southwestern Europe on the Iberian Peninsula. Portugal is the westernmost country of Europe, and is bordered by the Atlantic Ocean to the West and South and by Spain to the North and East. The Atlantic archipelagos of the...
, and
SpainSpain , officially the Kingdom of Spain languages]] under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages. In each of these, Spain's official name is as follows:;;;;;;), is a country and member state of the European Union located in southwestern Europe on the Iberian Peninsula...
in summer of 1998. Johnny Depp met his long-time partner
Vanessa ParadisVanessa Chantal Paradis is a French singer, model and actress. She became a child star at 14 with the worldwide success of her single "Joe le taxi"...
during the shooting.
Soundtrack
The main theme of
The Ninth Gate is based upon
HavanaiseThe Havanaise in E major , Op. 83, is a composition for violin and orchestra based on the habanera rhythm, written in 1887 by Camille Saint-Saëns. It is one of the standards of the classical concertante repertoire....
, for violin and orchestra, by
Camille Saint-SaënsCharles-Camille Saint-Saëns was a French Late-Romantic composer, organist, conductor, and pianist. He is known especially for The Carnival of the Animals, Danse macabre, Samson and Delilah, Piano Concerto No. 2, Cello Concerto No. 1, Havanaise, Introduction and Rondo Capriccioso, and his Symphony...
; some of the score is a
vocaliseA vocalise is a vocal exercise without words, which is sung on one or more vowel sounds.-In classical music:Vocalise dates back to the mid-18th century...
by Korean soprano Sumi Jo.
- Vocalise: "Theme from the Ninth Gate" – 3:56
- "Opening Titles" – 3:31
- "Corso" – 3:24
- "Bernie is Dead" – 4:31
- "Liana" – 3:03
- "Plane to Spain" – 4:48
- "The Motorbike" – 1:18
- "Missing Books
- "Blood on His Face" – 1:13
- "Chateau Saint Martin" – 4:05
- "Liana's Death" – 2:38
- "Boo! / The Chase" – 4:29
- "Balkan's Death" – 3:52
- "The Ninth Gate" – 1:13
- "Corso and the Girl" – 3:20
- Vocalise: Theme from the Ninth Gate (Reprise)
Reception
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 March 10th, 2000 weekend, earning a gross income of $6.6 million, and $18.6 million in total. Worldwide, it earned $58.4 million against a $38 million production budget.
The majority of reviews for the film were mixed to negative, with objections to the film citing a slow pace, trivial subject matter, and an uneven tone. Most movie reviewers said that the suspense in
The Ninth Gate was less than that of
Rosemary's BabyRosemary's Baby is a 1968 American horror film written and directed by Roman Polanski, based on the bestselling 1967 novel Rosemary's Baby by Ira Levin...
(1968), director Polanski's famous supernatural-themed film.
The Ninth Gate holds a 40% rating at
Rotten TomatoesRotten Tomatoes is a website devoted to reviews, information, and news of films—widely known as a film review aggregator. Its name derives from the cliché of audiences throwing tomatoes and other vegetables at a poor stage performance...
(26% among "Cream of the Crop" critics) and a metascore of 44 on
MetacriticMetacritic.com is a website that collates reviews of music albums, games, movies, TV shows and DVDs. For each product, a numerical score from each review is obtained and the total is averaged. An excerpt of each review is provided along with a hyperlink to the source. Three colour codes of Green,...
.
Roger EbertRoger Joseph Ebert is an American film critic and screenwriter. He is the first film critic to win a Pulitzer Prize for Criticism.Ebert is known for his film review column and for the television programs Sneak Previews, At the Movies with Gene Siskel and Roger Ebert, and Siskel and Ebert and The...
said the ending was lackluster, "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". 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 ProjectThe Blair Witch Project is a 1999 American horror film pieced together from amateur footage. The film was produced by the Haxan Films production company. The film relates the story of three student filmmakers The Blair Witch Project is a 1999 American horror film pieced together from amateur...
, and not nearly as funny".
Entertainment WeeklyEntertainment Weekly is an American magazine, published by the Time division of Time Warner, that covers film, television, music, broadway theatre, books and popular culture...
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". 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". In the
Village Voice,
J. HobermanJames Lewis Hoberman , also known as J. Hoberman, is an American film critic. He is currently the senior film critic for The Village Voice, a post he has held since 1988.-Education:...
said the film was "barely releasable hokum, stuffed with cheesy blah-blah".
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".
In
Time magazine, Richard Corliss said that
The Ninth Gate was Polanski's most accessible effort "since fleeing the U.S. soon after
Chinatown".
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".
On his website Groucho Reviews, web critic Peter Canavese called the film "an insinuating trip into devilish darkness" and a "sorely underrated occult mystery".
After the release of
The Ninth Gate, Artisan sued Polanski for taking more than $1 million from the budget, refunds of France's
value-added taxVat or VAT may refer to:* A type of container such as a barrel, storage tank, or tub, often constructed of welded sheet stainless steel, and used for holding, storing, and processing liquids such as milk, wine, and beer...
that he did not give to the completion bond company guaranteeing Artisan Entertainment a completed film.
External links