The Ninth Gate Plot

The Ninth Gate is a Spanish/French English-language mystery film based on the novel The Club Dumas by Arturo Pérez-Reverte.

It was directed by Roman Polanski, and stars Johnny Depp, Lena Olin, Frank Langella and Emmanuelle Seigner. It premiered in Europe on August 25, 1999.

The movie opens with rare books-dealer Dean Corso (Johnny Depp) being offered a job by publishing tycoon Boris Balkan (Frank Langella) in New York. Balkan has recently acquired a copy of The Nine Gates of the Kingdom of Shadows by 17th century author Aristide Torchia. The book purportedly details the procedure for summoning the Devil. Balkan claims the book may be a forgery, and hires Corso to travel to Europe, assess the other two known copies, find out whether any are genuine and if so, acquire them for Balkan.

Polanski received the screenplay by Enrique Urbizu and was so taken by it that he read the book that it was based on, El Club Dumas by Arturo Perez-Reverte. The novel featured several intertwined plots and so Polanski decided to write his own draft with long-time screenwriting partner, John Brownjohn (they had collaborated previously on Tess, Pirates and Bitter Moon). Perez-Reverte’s book contains numerous literary references and a subplot concerning Corso’s investigation into the original manuscript for a chapter of The Three Musketeers. Polanski and Brownjohn jettisoned these elements and focused on one particular plot line: Corso’s pursuit of the authentic copy of The Nine Gates.

Johnny Depp became attached to the project as early as 1997 when he met Polanski at the Cannes Film Festival promoting his directorial debut The Brave (1997) that was in competition. Initially, the veteran filmmaker did not think that Depp was right for the role of Corso because the character was 40 years old. Polanski was thinking of casting an older actor but Depp was persistent and wanted to work with him. Polanski cast Frank Langella as Balkan after seeing him in Adrian Lyne’s version of Lolita (1997).

Filming took place in France, Portugal and Spain during the summer of 1998.

Most critics felt that the film fell short of Polanski's best known supernatural thriller, Rosemary's Baby. The Ninth Gate holds a 39-percent rotten rating at Rotten Tomatoes (and a 26% among the "Cream of the Crop" critics) and a 6.4-rating at IMDB with 26,280 votes.

In Roger Ebert's review he felt that the film's ending was lackluster, "while at the end I didn't yearn for spectacular special effects, I did wish for spectacular information--something awesome, not just a fade to white." He also claimed on the show Roger Ebert & the Movies that the film was "full of unanswered questions and unquestioned answers" to which Joyce Kulhawik (that week's guest critic) responded: "This is such as silly movie! It's hard to believe that Roman Polanski, who gave us Rosemary's Baby, a horrifying movie...gave us this! I was reminded of Scooby-Doo when Dean Corso put on that cloak to disguise himself." Elvis Mitchell in The New York Times criticized the film for being "about as scary as a sock-puppet re-enactment of The Blair Witch Project, and not nearly as funny." However, Philip Strick's review in Sight and Sound magazine was more sympathetic, recognizing that it was "not particularly liked at first outing - partly because Johnny Depp, in fake grey temples, personifies the odious Corso of the book a little too accurately - the film is intricately well-made, deserves a second chance despite its disintegrations, and in time will undoubtedly acquire its own coven of heretical fans."