THE DUCHESS
"When
she appeared, every eye was turned towards her;
when absent, she was the subject
of universal conversation."
-- French Diplomat Louis Duten on the
Duchess of Devonshire
Based on the remarkable, true story of
the beautiful, powerful and notoriously scandalous Duchess of Devonshire, THE
DUCHESS unfolds the tale of a woman who became one of the world's first celebrities,
who was adored by all the people of England, save one: her husband, the Duke.
Once she marries him, she will attain the very heights of society. Whatever she
wears will become the fashion of the day. Whatever party she throws will be the
place to be at the moment. And whoever desires political office will seek out
her influential endorsement. Yet, for all her power and notoriety, for all the
affection she receives from the masses, she will have to break all of society's
rules, and sacrifice everything, to set her own passionate heart free.
If
this story sounds decidedly contemporary, that might be in part because the Duchess
of Devonshire, Georgiana Spencer, seems to have shared a twin destiny of fame
and adoration, as well as adultery and controversy, with an ancestor who lived
200 years later: Lady Diana, the Princess of Wales. The similarities between the
two are striking. For though Georgiana was born in a time of rigid social rules
and extraordinary aristocratic power, she was, like Diana, a vivacious, bright,
alluring woman who transcended the constraints of the world around her, and a
series of gossip-sparking affairs, to become a fiercely beloved icon - and a woman
who, when it was all threatened, revealed remarkable inner strength.
The
story of THE DUCHESS recently came back into public fascination with the publication
of Amanda Foreman's mesmerizing best-seller Georgiana: Duchess of Devonshire,
which won the Whitbread Award for Best Biography and caused popular historian
Simon Schama to remark: "Georgiana bursts from the pages of this dazzling
biography like the force of nature she undoubtedly was - passionate, political,
addicted to gambling and drunk on life . . . an astonishing book about an astonishing
woman."
So astonishing was the work that, even before
it spent months on the best-seller lists, it seemed destined for the screen. Despite
taking place in the volatile age just before democracy began, it was about everything
that fascinates us still: love, sex, politics, scandals, wealth, fashion, betrayal
and the audacity of an extraordinary woman to rise above it all. As Foreman herself
wrote in the introduction to her book: "[Georgiana] was distinctly of her
time. Yet her successful entry into the male-dominated world of politics, her
relationship with the press, her struggle with addiction, and her determination
to forge her own identity make her equally relevant to the lives of contemporary
women."
Producer Gaby Tana, a friend of Amanda Foreman,
snapped up the rights to the book immediately upon its publication in 1998. "As
soon as I read it, I thought the story was totally fascinating and great material
for a film," says Tana. "Georgiana was a true original, very smart and,
in a way, a precursor of the modern liberated woman. I was fascinated with how
Georgiana struggled with her contradictions and the different parts of herself,
which make her very surprising. To me, the contemporary parallels are extraordinary
and I think it's a story that resonates as much today as then."
She
continues: "I was lucky to be in a privileged position to be able to get
the rights, because Amanda was a friend, but I think she also liked the vision
that I had for the project." That vision involved honing in on the most volatile
period in the Duchess' life - which began with her mismatched yet life-changing
marriage to William Cavendish, the 5th Duke of Devonshire, in June of 1774 - when
she was just a naïve 17 year-old -- and continued through her shattering
banishment after giving birth to her lover's child.
"I
saw it as the timeless story of a marriage, the story of a woman trying to figure
out what love means in her own heart," explains Tana. "What's so appealing
about Georgiana is that you realize that people have had the same problems forever.
She was a woman looking for love, perhaps in all the wrong places, and she was
also a woman who made great sacrifices for her children. So the idea was to tell
her story in a modern way that really resonates now."
Joining
with leading producer Michael Kuhn, whose credits range from BEING JOHN MALKOVICH
to KINSEY, Tana began developing the material further. The screenplay, by Jeffrey
Hatcher, Anders Thomas Jenson and Saul Dibb, compressed the most dramatic moments
from the Duchess' life into a cinematic experience that delves into the delicate
balance of power between four people - each in love with someone forbidden to
them. Foreman was admiring of their approach. "While the book is a literary
journey, the film is about an emotional journey. What they have ended up producing
is both compelling storytelling and faithful to the book and to Georgiana's life,"
Foreman says.
Throughout the process of developing the screenplay
and later on the set, Foreman's extensive knowledge of Georgiana and the times
in which she lived continued to be invaluable. "Amanda was a great sounding
board all along the way," notes Tana, "because she knows these characters
so well. When you talk to her about them, it's as if she's channeling them right
there before your eyes."
Once on the set, Foreman found
her breath taken away by seeing the characters to whom she had grown so close
come to life. "When I saw that a whole world had been recreated out of my
book, I actually started to cry," she recalls. "I couldn't believe that
a work I had devoted my life to for seven years had been brought to life so beautifully."
At the outset, however, the producers knew that creating such
an almost surreally lavish world in an alluring and fresh way would not be simple.
They searched for a director who would relish such a task, ultimately taking a
risk on Saul Dibb, a young, up-and-coming British director who came to the fore
with the indie award-winner, BULLET BOY, and went on to direct the television
series based on Alan Hollinghurst's novel, The Line of Beauty. It wasn't so much
what Dibb had done, however, as what he envisioned, that caught the producers'
attention.
"He said all the right things," recalls
Tana. "He had the same approach to the film as we did, which was to make
a non-period kind of period film. We knew he was going to be someone who would
make the story fresh and sort of shake it all up and that's what we were looking
for."
Dibb saw the story as transcending its times -
as a scandalously contemporary love triangle unfolding in a world unlike any other,
where aristocrats live amidst unimaginable splendor and unrelenting social rules.
"I wasn't looking to make a period film, but this felt completely unlike
all those British period films that I grew up on," he notes. "It's more
of a complex and dark story about a woman trapped in an arranged marriage. It
felt much more emotionally powerful than something that was just a nostalgic view
of English life, a trap which I feel a lot of period films fall into."
To
get to the emotional heart of Georgiana's story, Dibb drew first from his early
days as a documentary filmmaker in search of raw truth - and only then delved
into the task of authentically creating Georgiana's world. "I was interested
in making this seemingly unreal world as real as possible, so I wanted to strip
away all those layers that could distance us, as viewers, from their lives, be
it the language, the settings, the costumes or the make-up -- and just try to
cut to the chase of revealing the Duke, the Duchess and their lovers as people
in these complex relationships," he says. "The most important thing
of all was to create something as emotionally true as possible - something that
was powerful but also intimate and revealing of who Georgiana became during this
remarkable marriage." Stars Keira Knightley, Ralph Fiennes, Charlotte Rampling,
Hayley Atwell, and Dominic Cooper.
Read
our review here!
