Movies - The Draughtsman's Contract

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	Movies - The Draughtsman's Contract

The Draughtsman's Contract is a 1982 film written and directed by Peter Greenaway. The film is a period piece set in 1694. It was originally produced for Channel 4. The score was by Michael Nyman, and borrows extensively from Henry Purcell. The film features pastiche language from the period, making it difficult for some to understand and leaving it vulnerable to scrutiny from language experts. Greenaway wrote the script himself. It also uses extensive and elaborate costume designs, but has most of the action shot on location in the formal gardens and maze of Groombridge Place Garden, making effective use of a limited budget.

Plot

Mr Neville (Anthony Higgins), a young and arrogant artist, is contracted to produce a series of 12 landscape drawings of an estate by Mrs Virginia Herbert (Janet Suzman) for her absent and estranged husband. Part of the contract is that Mrs Herbert agrees "to meet Mr Neville in private and to comply with his requests concerning his pleasure with me." Several sexual encounters between them follow. Later he makes a similar contract with Mrs Herbert's married, yet childless, daughter. In the second contract, however, he agrees to comply with her pleasure. A number of curious objects appear in Neville's drawings, which point ultimately to the murder of Mr Herbert, whose body is discovered in the moat of the house. The drawings themselves appear to implicate Neville.

Trivia

The original cut of the film was about three hours, or 180 minutes, long. The opening scene was about 30 minutes long, and showed each character talking at least once with every other. In order, perhaps, to make the film more accessible, Greenaway cut it down to the present 103 minutes (1 hour and 43 minutes). The opening scene is now about 10 minutes long and no longer shows all the interactions between all the characters.

The final version provides fewer explanations to the numerous oddities and mysteries of the plot. The main murder mystery is never really solved, even though only little doubt remains as to who did it. The reasons why there is a living statue in the garden or as to why Mr Neville chooses to attach so many conditions to his contract were also more developed in the first version. It could be said that, rather to make the film more confusing, it adds to the sense of mystery and wonder it provides.

Sources

L'avant-scène cinéma, n° 333, octobre 1984, "Peter Greenaway: Meurtre dans un jardin anglais"

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