The English Patient (1996)

At the close of WWII, a young nurse tends to a badly-burned plane crash victim. His past is shown in flashbacks, revealing an involvement in a fateful love affair.

Director:

Anthony Minghella

Writers:

Michael Ondaatje (novel), Anthony Minghella (screenplay)

Stars:

Ralph Fiennes, Juliette Binoche, Willem Dafoe

Won 9 Oscars. Another 49 wins & 66 nominations.

Cast

Cast overview, first billed only:
Ralph Fiennes	...	Count Laszlo de Almásy
Juliette Binoche	...	Hana
Willem Dafoe	...	David Caravaggio
Kristin Scott Thomas	...	Katharine Clifton
Naveen Andrews	...	Kip
Colin Firth	...	Geoffrey Clifton
Julian Wadham	...	Madox
Jürgen Prochnow	...	Major Muller
Kevin Whately	...	Sgt. Hardy
Clive Merrison	...	Fenelon-Barnes
Nino Castelnuovo	...	D'Agostino
Hichem Rostom	...	Fouad
Peter Rühring	...	Bermann
Geordie Johnson	...	Oliver
Torri Higginson	...	Mary

Storyline

October 1944 in war torn Italy. Hana, a French-Canadian nurse working in a mobile army medical unit, feels like everything she loves in life dies on her. Because of the difficulty traveling and the dangers, especially as the landscape is still heavily booby-trapped with mines, Hana volunteers to stay behind at a church to care solely for a dying semi-amnesiac patient, who is badly burned and disfigured. She agrees to catch up to the rest of the unit after he dies. All the patient remembers is that he is English and that he is married. Their solitude is disrupted with the arrival at the church of fellow Canadian David Caravaggio, part of the Intelligence Service, who is certain that he knows the patient as a man who cooperated with the Germans. Caravaggio believes that the patient's memory is largely in tact and that he is running away from his past, in part or in its entirety. The patient does open up about his past, all surrounding his work as a cartographer in North Africa, which ...

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Plot Keywords:

patient | nurse | flashback | english | church | 

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Taglines:

In memory, love lives forever.

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Genres:

Drama | Romance | War

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Motion Picture Rating (MPAA)

Rated R for sexuality, some violence and language

Details

Official Sites:

Juliette Binoche: The Art of Being - Official Fansite Official Facebook

Country:

USA UK

Language:

English German Italian Arabic

Release Date:

6 December 1996 (USA)

Also Known As:

Le patient anglais

Filming Locations:

Cinecittà Studios, Cinecittà, Rome, Lazio, Italy

Box Office

Budget:

$27,000,000 (estimated)

Opening Weekend:

$278,439 (USA) (15 November 1996)

Gross:

$78,651,430 (USA) (5 September 1997)

Company Credits

Production Co:

Miramax, Tiger Moth Productions

Technical Specs

Runtime:

162 min

Sound Mix:

Dolby Digital

Color:

Color

Aspect Ratio:

1.85 : 1

Did You Know?

Trivia

While there is the suggestion that the mysterious English patient has been shot down and fallen from the sky at the start of the film, there is a more explicit scene at the end of the film that was cut, depicting Almasy slowly falling to earth, dangling from a pure white parachute shown against a clear blue sky, the upper part of his body engulfed in flames ("The heart is an organ of fire" is a quote from the film). The scene is mentioned on the Saul Zaentz Co. website: "Blue screen work that involved the opening and the closing scenes of the film, in which the unnamed pilot and a lifeless woman are shot out of the sky and fall to earth, were completed on the main sound stage at Cinecitta, and production wrapped on January 31, 1996." The scene was shown on a CBC broadcast of an interview with Anthony Minghella but never appeared in the final cut of the ending of the film.

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Goofs

The helmets worn by the American GIs on VE day at the bridge are actually Russian military helmets.

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Quotes

Hana: The war's over - you told me yourself. How can it be desertion?
Oliver: It's not over everywhere. I didn't mean literally.
Hana: [looking at Almasy] When he dies I'll catch up.
Oliver: [looking over the small cache of provisions] It's not safe here. The whole country's crawling with Bandits and Germans and God knows what. It's madness. I can't allow it. You're not alright, this is natural. It's shock. For all of us. Hana?
Hana: [bent] I need morphine. A lot. And a pistol.
Oliver: [clutching at straws, about Almasy] And what if he ...
[...]

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Crazy Credits

Disclaimer in end credits: "While a number of the characters who appear in this film are based on historical figures, and while many of the areas described - such as the Cave of Swimmers and its surrounding desert - exist and were explored in the 1930s, it is important to stress that this story is a fiction and that the portraits of the characters who appear in it are fictional, as are some of the events and journeys."

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Connections

Referenced in Clara Sheller: État secret (2005)

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Soundtracks

Flat Foot Floogie
(1938)
Music and Lyrics by Slim Gaillard, Slam Stewart, and Bud Green
Published by Jewel Music Publishing Co., ASCAP, and Holliday Publications, ASCAP

User Reviews

The greatest romance movie of all time? Probably...

I've seen a few movies in my time, but this one is exceptional. You'll have to watch it more than once to truly appreciate it, it is emotionally very complex, it explores love and passion at it's most extreme and it's cinematography is just breathtaking. The character of the Count is intensely passionate and tragic without him having to raise his voice or indeed leave his bed, the film is perfectly cast and perfectly acted. The film has a sort of mathematical precision and perfection to it which is rare these days. It combines action, love, tragedy, drama and politics all in one. This movie is unmissable, all the hype surrounding it and all the awards cannot begin to do it any justice. Hats off to Michael Ondaatje for writing the incredible book on which it is based.