Drowning by Numbers

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Drowning by Numbers
Drowning by numbers.jpg
Theatrical release poster
Directed by Peter Greenaway
Written byPeter Greenaway
Produced by Kees Kasander
Denis Wigman
Starring Joan Plowright
Juliet Stevenson
Joely Richardson
Bernard Hill
Jason Edwards
Cinematography Sacha Vierny
Edited by John Wilson
Music by Michael Nyman
Distributed byPrestige
Release date
  • 10 September 1988 (1988-09-10)
Running time
118 minutes
CountriesUnited Kingdom
Netherlands
LanguageEnglish
Budget£1,020,000 [1]
Box office$424,773 [2]

Drowning by Numbers is a British-Dutch crime comedy-drama 1988 film directed by Peter Greenaway. It won the award for Best Artistic Contribution at the Cannes Film Festival of 1988. [3]

Contents

Plot

The film opens with a little girl jumping rope and counting stars to "a hundred". The film's plot centres on three married women — a grandmother, her daughter, and her niece — each named Cissie Colpitts. As the story progresses, each woman successively drowns her husband. The three Cissie Colpittses are played by Joan Plowright, Juliet Stevenson and Joely Richardson, while Bernard Hill plays the coroner, Madgett, who is cajoled into covering up the three crimes.

The structure, with similar stories repeated three times, is reminiscent of a fairy tale, most specifically 'The Billy Goats Gruff', because Madgett is constantly promised greater rewards as he tries his luck with each of the Cissies in turn. The link to folklore is further established by Madgett's son Smut, who recites the rules of various unusual games played by the characters as if they were ancient traditions. Many of these games are invented for the film, including:

In Drowning by Numbers, number-counting, the rules of games and the repetitions of the plot are all devices which emphasise structure. Through the course of the film each of the numbers 1 to 100 appear, the large majority in sequence, often seen in the background, sometimes printed on cattle, sometimes spoken by the characters. [4]

The repetitive, obsessive motif of the film echoes that of the soundtrack by Michael Nyman.

The film is set and was shot in and around Southwold, Suffolk, England, with key landmarks such as the Victorian water tower, Southwold Lighthouse, and the estuary of the River Blyth clearly identifiable.

Cast

Music

Drowning by Numbers
Drowningbynumbers.jpg
Soundtrack album by
Released
  • 1988 (1988)
Recorded1988
Genre contemporary classical music, Minimalist music, film score
Length44:48
Label Virgin, Caroline
Director Michael Nyman
Producer David Cunningham & Michael Nyman
Michael Nyman chronology
The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat
(1988)
Drowning by Numbers
(1988)
La Traversée de Paris
(1989)
Professional ratings
Review scores
SourceRating
Allmusic Star full.svgStar full.svgStar full.svgStar full.svgStar empty.svg [5]

On Greenaway's specific instructions, the film's musical score by Michael Nyman is entirely based on themes from the slow movement of Mozart's Sinfonia Concertante in E flat, which is heard in its original form immediately after each drowning. Greenaway alerted Nyman to the potential of this piece in the late 1970s and had previously requested he use bars 58 to 61 as material for part of the score of his The Falls , and Nyman adapted other themes from the piece for "The Masterwork" Award Winning Fish-Knife and Tristram Shandy . [6] "Trysting Fields" is the most complicated use of the material: every appoggiatura from the movement, and no other material from the piece, is used.[ citation needed ]

The album is the tenth by Nyman and the seventh to feature the Michael Nyman Band.

Track listing

  1. "Trysting Fields"
  2. "Sheep and Tides"
  3. "Great Death Game"
  4. "Drowning by Number 3"
  5. "Wheelbarrow Walk"
  6. "Dead Man's Catch"
  7. "Drowning by Number 2"
  8. "Bees in Trees"
  9. "Fish Beach"
  10. "Wedding Tango"
  11. "Crematorium Conspiracy"
  12. "Knowing the Ropes"
  13. "Endgame"

The back cover of the album booklet has a large number "58". Fred Ritzel has pointed out that the Skipping Girl (played by Natalie Morse) reaches number 58 in her counting game. [7] These are subtle ways of drawing attention to the key bars of the Mozart piece.

Reception

Reviews for Drowning by Numbers were mostly favourable. On the review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes , 88% of 16 critics' reviews are positive, with an average rating of 7.1/10. [8] Roger Ebert, however, gave the work two stars, praising its landscapes as beautifully photographed but also concluding, "When the movie was over, I was not sure why Greenaway made it." [9]

Box Office

It made £220,000. [1]

References

  1. 1 2 "Back to the Future: The Fall and Rise of the British Film Industry in the 1980s - An Information Briefing" (PDF). British Film Institute. 2005. p. 22.
  2. "Drowning by Numbers". Box Office Mojo.
  3. "Festival de Cannes: Drowning by Numbers". festival-cannes.com. Retrieved 26 July 2009.
  4. "Number locations". Archived from the original on 14 January 2018. Retrieved 31 August 2019.
  5. Cook, Stephen. Drowning by Numbers at AllMusic
  6. Michael Nyman, sleevenotes to Drowning by Numbers CD, Virgin Records CDVE23, 1988
  7. Fred Ritzel, "Planspiele, zum Verhältnis von Bild und Musik bei Peter Greenaway und Michael Nyman", 1993 (in German)
  8. "Drowning by Numbers (1988)". Rotten Tomatoes. Retrieved 12 December 2022.
  9. Ebert, Roger (7 June 1991). "Drowning By Numbers Movie Review (1991)" . Retrieved 27 January 2017.