Dangerous Liaisons (1988)
Trivia
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Spoilers (2)
Michelle Pfeiffer was offered the role of the Marquise de Merteuil in Valmont (1989), but she chose to play Mme. de Tourvel in this film instead.
Alan Rickman made the role of Valmont famous in London and on Broadway. However, filmmakers wanted to cast an established actor in the role, so Rickman wasn't even considered. Rickman ended up making his Hollywood debut as Hans Gruber in Die Hard (1988) instead.
When the novel "Les Liaisons Dangereuses" by Choderlos de Laclos was first published in 1782, it was considered so scandalous that when Queen Marie Antoinette commissioned a copy for her personal library, she had to have it bound in a blank cover so that no one would recognize the author's name or title.
Director Stephen Frears and screenwriter Christopher Hampton were so taken upon meeting Mildred Natwick, they hadn't realized that they'd forgotten to offer her the part of Valmont's aunt until after they'd parted company.
Glenn Close was unavailable until midway through filming due to having just given birth to her daughter.
This film opened in theaters in 1988, one year before its competing film, Valmont (1989). According to screenwriter Christopher Hampton, the director of "Valmont," Milos Forman, attended several performances of the play, "Les Liaisons Dangereuses" in London, then decided to film his own version of the Choderlos de Laclos novel. Hampton offered to have dinner with Forman to discuss the project, but on the appointed evening, the director never showed up. However, the competing film convinced the studio, Lorimar, to rush "Dangerous Liaisons" into production in order to beat "Valmont" into theaters. This film won three Oscars and was a critical and a moderate box office success. Upon its release, "Valmont" received mixed reviews and was a box office failure.
Annette Bening was considered for the role of the Marquise de Merteuil and ended up playing that role in the film Valmont (1989).
Madonna wore one of Glenn Close's costumes from the film at the 1990 MTV Video Music Awards (1990) during her eighteenth-century themed performance of "Vogue".
Swoosie Kurtz also appears in the updated version of Choderlos de Laclos' novel, Cruel Intentions (1999).
Drew Barrymore was screen-tested and came close to getting the role of Cécile.
The red-heeled shoes seen at the beginning of the film are accurate to the fashion of this period of French history. Supposedly, King Louis XIV's brother accidentally stained his heels with blood one night attending a ball at a slaughterhouse. King Louis, taken with the aesthetic, ordered the royal shoemaker to imitate the look and paint all his heels and soles red, and it quickly became a popular fashion statement.
Due to budget constraints, some of the costumes were made using sari fabric and (technically anachronistic) prints by Scalamandre. Lace trims dating from the Victorian and Edwardian eras were also used.
The original Broadway production of "Les Liaisons Dangereuses" by Christopher Hampton opened at the Music Box Theater in New York City on August 30, 1987, ran for 149 performances, and was nominated for the 1987 Tony Award (New York City) for the Best Play.
John Malkovich (Vicomte de Valmont) directed a 2012 French-language production of the Christopher Hampton play for the Parisian company Théâtre de l'Atelier. When it later toured the U.S., it was presented in French with English supertitles (even thought Hampton wrote his play in English).
Sarah Jessica Parker was originally offered the role of Cécile but turned it down.
Uma Thurman says she was really nervous about stripping for this film but agreed because she felt it was the right thing to do at the time. Thurman said: "I felt some trepidation going in, but it was an art movie. It was based on this classic novel set in eighteenth-century France, and the scene was appropriate." However, she says she was horrified by the "voyeuristic" way the scene appeared in the final cut of the movie. She added to Britain's Esquire magazine: "When 'Dangerous Liaisons' came out, the scene was sensationalist in this really creepy, voyeuristic way. It made it seem out of character, and it didn't make sense to me... I certainly didn't want to become a sensational sex symbol."
The film cast includes one Oscar winner, Peter Capaldi, and five Oscar nominees: Glenn Close, John Malkovich, Michelle Pfeiffer, Uma Thurman, and Mildred Natwick.
The only Best Picture Oscar nominee that year also to be nominated for Best Costume Design, a category where it won the award. (The competing film, Valmont (1989), also received a nomination for Best Costume Design the following year, which was that film's only Oscar nomination.)
Not only do Michelle Pfeiffer (Madame de Tourvel) and Uma Thurman (Cécile de Volanges) share the same birthday, April 29, but the two would go on to play Batman villains. Pfeiffer played Catwoman in Batman Returns (1992), and Thurman played Poison Ivy in Batman & Robin (1997).
The only film that year nominated for Best Picture at the Academy Awards but not in any Best Motion Picture category at the Golden Globes.
Included among the American Film Institute's 1998 list of the 400 movies nominated for the Top 100 Greatest American Movies.
Included among the "1001 Movies You Must See Before You Die", edited by Steven Schneider.
Glenn Close and John Malkovich would work again with Stephen Frears in Mary Reilly (1996). They also appeared together in the original 1977 Off-Broadway Production of Wendy Wasserstein's UNCOMMON WOMEN AND OTHERS.
One of the characters is billed as "Castrato". He is the opera singer in the chamber music performance. A "castrato" is a male singer who, in a now forbidden practice, has been castrated as a boy to prevent his voice from changing in adolescence, preserving his high pitched voice.
Included among the American Film Institute's 2002 list of 400 movies nominated for the top 100 top 100 America's Greatest Love Stories movies.
Many actors and actresses from the cast appeared in several films with Jason Robards: Swoosie Kurtz was in Bright Lights, Big City (1988), Keanu Reeves in Parenthood (1989), Glenn Close in The Paper (1994), and Michelle Pfeiffer was in A Thousand Acres (1997).
Spoilers
A scene was shot with Glenn Close's character facing the guillotine, but it was discarded. This was in keeping with the ending of Christopher Hampton's play, in which the silhouette of the guillotine is seen as the final curtain falls.
Glenn Close came up with her character's final scene. When director Stephen Frears gave her the line in the text about the character: "her soul was on her face," Close thought for a minute and stated: "I know how to show that."