The author: Umberto Eco (b1932) wrote a thesis on Thomas Aquinas before being appointed professor of semiotics at Bologna University in 1961. His study of communication methodology, A Theory of Semiotics (1976), established him as a leading academic, as did Semiotics and the Philosophy of Language (1984), The Limits of Interpretation (1991) and Kant and the Platypus (1997). Eco also maintained a parallel journalistic and literary career, and The Name of the Rose (1980) was his first novel, building on his academic interest in medieval aesthetics. Its huge success prompted a second, Foucault's Pendulum (1988), and, though a year later Eco stated "it doesn't make much sense" to write a third, he has since published two more, The Island of the Day Before (1995) and Baudolino (2002).
The story: In reconstructing the impassioned theoretical debate of a 14th-century Italian monastery and combining it with the more orthodox concerns of a conventional detective story, Eco set a much-imitated template for literary-historical thriller. His narrator is Adso of Melk, a novice monk accompanying William of Baskerville, a Franciscan emissary of the Holy Roman Emperor (referencing Conan Doyle's Sherlock Holmes tales). Baskerville's task is to debate theology with the papal inquisitor, but his visit is disrupted by a string of unexplained deaths, centred around the abbey's closely guarded library. Baskerville penetrates the library's secrets and solves the crime - the murders are committed to keep hidden the "lost" second volume of Aristotle's Poetics , by a monk convinced its subject, laughter, is heretical.
The film-makers: Jean-Jacques Annaud (b1943) emerged as part of the post-nouvelle vague generation of French film-makers that also included Jean-Jacques Beineix and Luc Besson. Annaud won the best foreign film Oscar for his debut, the Algerian war satire Black and White in Colour (1976), before establishing a reputation for rigorously anthropological film-making with Quest for Fire (1981). After persuading Eco to reassign him the rights from Italian TV combine RAI, Annaud cast Sean Connery, who was just emerging from a three-year career hiatus after the disaster of Never Say Never Again (1983).
How book and film compare: Inevitably, Annaud's film guts the story of its prolonged theological disputations, concentrating on the whodunnit aspects of the narrative and elevating the Bernardo Gui character into Baskerville's evil adversary. The major plot departure was a "happy" ending, with Adso encountering the young peasant girl he believed burned. Annaud compensated for this pruning with an obsessive attention to historical authenticity, from specially-woven monks' habits to having all fillings and crowns removed from his actors' mouths.
Inspirations and influences: The 1980s saw the development of an intellectually and aesthetic "arthouse" cinema, in direct response to perceived lowering of standards in commercial Hollywood, and The Name of the Rose was a key entry in the genre - released the same year as Betty Blue , Down by Law and The Sacrifice . Probably the presiding influence on this film, however, was Pier Paolo Pasolini, whose artfully arranged compositions Annaud clearly imitated, as well as employing Pasolini's former cameraman, Tonino Delli Colli, and art director, Dante Ferretti.
