Where to watch The Name of the Rose (1986)

Trivia & production notes

• Director Jean-Jacques Annaud spent four years preparing the film, traveling throughout the United States and Europe to search for the perfect cast with distinctive faces and a multi-ethnic composition.
• Annaud initially resisted casting Sean Connery as William of Baskerville because he feared the character would become overshadowed by Connery's James Bond persona, but eventually was won over by Connery's performance at audition.
• Columbia Pictures withdrew from financing the film after Connery was cast, as his career was considered to be in a slump at that time.
• For the seduction scene between the Girl and Adso, director Annaud allowed actress Valentina Vargas to lead the scene without his direction and kept Christian Slater uninformed about what would happen to elicit more authentic reactions from both actors.
• Annaud insisted on casting a black actor as the monk Venantius the translator despite U.S. casting agencies proposing only white actors, reasoning that Moors were intellectuals in medieval times and the role required someone who fit that historical reality.
• The monastery exterior and interiors were constructed as a full-scale replica on a hilltop outside Rome, making it the largest exterior set built in Europe since the 1963 film Cleopatra.
• Most props created for the film, including period illuminated manuscripts, were produced specifically for the production rather than sourced from existing collections.
• The film performed strongly in Germany with a $25 million gross and was popular across Italy, France, and Spain, but underperformed in the United States with only a $7.2 million gross from 176 theaters.
• Umberto Eco gave a mixed assessment of the adaptation in 2011, comparing his novel to a club sandwich with multiple layers and noting that the film was forced to select only certain elements like the lettuce or cheese while eliminating the theological and political dimensions.
• Actor Ron Perlman stated that The Name of the Rose was one of only two or three projects in his entire career where he felt he would not change anything about the final product.

Adapted from the Wikipedia article The Name of the Rose (film), available under CC BY-SA 4.0. Rewritten for StreamShack; errors are ours — tell us about them.