The Ninth Gate
About the Film
Dean Corso is a brilliant but unscrupulous New York dealer in rare books, hired by the wealthy collector Boris Balkan for a delicate job. Balkan owns one of only three surviving copies of The Nine Gates of the Kingdom of Shadows, a seventeenth-century grimoire supposedly co-written with the Devil, and he wants Corso to travel to Europe, compare it with the other two copies, and determine which — if any — is authentic.
As Corso moves between Portugal, Spain and France scrutinising the books’ cryptic engravings, everyone connected to them begins to die, and he realises the differences between the copies are the key to a genuine satanic ritual. Shadowed by a mysterious green-eyed woman who seems to protect him, the cynical Corso is drawn ever deeper into the occult, until he passes through the final gate himself.
Plot synopsis by johnny-depp.org.
Johnny Depp
Johnny Depp plays Dean Corso as a rumpled, chain-smoking, morally flexible book detective — a character consciously modelled on the hard-boiled private eyes of Raymond Chandler, complete with glasses and a permanent five-o’clock shadow. Coolly cynical and out for himself, Corso is gradually unnerved as the deaths pile up and the supernatural stakes become impossible to dismiss, and Depp charts his shift from sardonic skeptic to a man walking willingly into the dark.
Cast & Crew
Cast
Dean CorsoJohnny Depp
Boris BalkanFrank Langella
Liana TelferLena Olin
The Girl (Green Eyes)Emmanuelle Seigner
Baroness KesslerBarbara Jefford
Victor FargasJack Taylor
Crew
DirectorRoman Polanski
ScreenplayRoman Polanski, John Brownjohn & Enrique Urbizu
Based on the novel The Club Dumas byArturo Pérez-Reverte
MusicWojciech Kilar
CinematographyDarius Khondji
StudioArtisan Entertainment
Filming Locations
- Biester Palace, Sintra, Portugal
- Château de Ferrières, France
- Château de Puivert, France
- Toledo, Spain
More about this film
Trivia
- Johnny Depp met his future partner, French singer Vanessa Paradis, during the shoot in France.
- The film is adapted from Arturo Pérez-Reverte’s novel The Club Dumas — though only one strand of the novel’s plot made it to screen.
- Roman Polanski has said he does not believe in the occult, approaching the story as a stylish thriller rather than a horror film.
- Composer Wojciech Kilar’s eerie score is often singled out as one of the film’s strongest elements.
Awards
- 2000 Fotogramas de Plata — nominated
