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1988 British film From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Drowning by Numbers is a crime comedy-drama 1988 British-Dutch film directed by Peter Greenaway. It won the award for Best Artistic Contribution at the Cannes Film Festival of 1988.[3]
| Drowning by Numbers | |
|---|---|
Film poster | |
| Directed by | Peter Greenaway |
| Written by | Peter Greenaway |
| Produced by | Kees Kasander Denis Wigman |
| Starring | Joan Plowright Juliet Stevenson Joely Richardson Bernard Hill Jason Edwards |
| Cinematography | Sacha Vierny |
| Edited by | John Wilson |
| Music by | Michael Nyman |
| Distributed by | Prestige |
Release date |
|
Running time | 118 minutes |
| Countries | United Kingdom Netherlands |
| Language | English |
| Budget | £1,020,000[1] |
| Box office | $424,773[2] |
The film opens with a little girl jumping rope and counting stars to "a hundred". The film's plot centres on three married women — a grandmother, her daughter, and her niece — each named Cissie Colpitts. As the story progresses, each woman successively drowns her husband. The three Cissie Colpittses are played by Joan Plowright, Juliet Stevenson and Joely Richardson, while Bernard Hill plays the coroner, Madgett, who is cajoled into covering up the three crimes.
The structure, with similar stories repeated three times, is reminiscent of a fairy tale, most specifically 'The Billy Goats Gruff', because Madgett is constantly promised greater rewards as he tries his luck with each of the Cissies in turn. The link to folklore is further established by Madgett's son Smut, who recites the rules of various unusual games played by the characters as if they were ancient traditions. Many of these games are invented for the film, including:
In Drowning by Numbers, number-counting, the rules of games and the repetitions of the plot are all devices which emphasise structure. Through the course of the film each of the numbers 1 to 100 appear, the large majority in sequence, often seen in the background, sometimes printed on cattle, sometimes spoken by the characters.[4]
The repetitive, obsessive motif of the film echoes that of the soundtrack by Michael Nyman.
The film is set and was shot in and around Southwold, Suffolk, England, with key landmarks such as the Victorian water tower, Southwold Lighthouse, and the estuary of the River Blyth clearly identifiable.
| Drowning by Numbers | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|
 | ||||
| Soundtrack album by | ||||
| Released |
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| Recorded | 1988 | |||
| Genre | contemporary classical music, Minimalist music, film score | |||
| Length | 44:48 | |||
| Label | Virgin, Caroline | |||
| Director | Michael Nyman | |||
| Producer | David Cunningham & Michael Nyman | |||
| Michael Nyman chronology | ||||
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On Greenaway's specific instructions, the film's musical score by Michael Nyman is entirely based on themes from the slow movement of Mozart's Sinfonia Concertante in E flat, bars 58 to 61 of which are heard in their original form immediately after each drowning. Greenaway alerted Nyman to the potential of this piece in the late 1970s and had previously used it as material for part of the score of his The Falls and for "The Masterwork" Award Winning Fish-Knife and Tristram Shandy.[6] "Trysting Fields" is the most complicated use of the material: every appoggiatura from the movement, and no other material from the piece, is used.[citation needed]
The album is the tenth by Nyman and the seventh to feature the Michael Nyman Band.
The back cover of the album booklet has a large number "58". Fred Ritzel has pointed out that the Skipping Girl (played by Natalie Morse) reaches number 58 in her counting game.[7] These are subtle ways of drawing attention to the key bars of the Mozart piece.
Reviews for Drowning by Numbers were mostly favourable, with the film garnering an 87% approval rating on Rotten Tomatoes from 15 critics.[8] Roger Ebert, however, gave the work two stars, praising its landscapes as beautifully photographed but also concluding, "When the movie was over, I was not sure why Greenaway made it."[9]
It made £220,000.[1]
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