Timing is everything. When French army officer Pierre Choderlos de Laclos published the book Les Liaisons dangereuses in 1782, it was considered trash. Only later was it elevated into one of the great works of Western literature, one of the most famous in a new form: a novel told exclusively in letters (the so-called “epistolary novel”), with the occasional wry observation by the “editor” of the compilation. Today, though, Laclos has few readers outside the academy. One of them was future playwright and filmmaker Christopher Hampton, who fell in love with the story as a student and thought it would make a great drama.
No one in the British theater community shared Hampton’s vision, but eventually he was able to get his inventive dramatization mounted in a tiny theater in the London equivalent of off-Broadway, where it was an immediate hit. It eventually transferred to the mainstream West End, where it ran for years, both in London and on Broadway. Among other things, the play launched the career of a previously unknown actor named Alan Rickman, who put his indelible stamp on the French philanderer Valmont long before the world came to know him as Hogwarts’ Professor Snape. (Rickman didn’t get to recreate his role in the film, but that same year he was everywhere on American movie screens as Hans Gruber in Die Hard.)
Director Stephen Frears (The Queen) never saw Hampton’s stage play and has said that, if he had, he’d have been too intimidated to make the movie. Having never read Laclos’ novel either, Frears came to the project with no preconceptions, and his cinematic imagination was unencumbered. Hampton had already transformed the novel, inventing scene after scene that Laclos had never envisioned. In Laclos’ world, his two main charactersâthe duplicitous Marquise de Merteuil and the serial seducer Valmontâcorresponded but never met in person. Hampton repeatedly put them in the same room, where they schemed, traded confidences, battled and ultimately destroyed each other. Frears, who had never before done a period piece (or, as he called it, a movie “in frocks”), added the elaborate decor, costumes and environment that bred mentalities like that of Valmont and the Marquise, and he used well-chosen close-ups and suggestive blocking and framing to reveal layers and nuances of character that reward multiple viewings. The result was nominated for seven Oscars, including best picture, and won three, including for Hampton’s script.
Also, in a rare example of cross-cultural generosity, the French film industry honored Dangerous Liaisons with a CĂ©sar award for “Best Foreign Film”, even though an English writer and director and a group of mostly American actors had dared to tinker with one of the country’s national treasures.
