The Monk (1990 film)

The Monk
Directed byFrancisco Lara Polop
Written byFrancisco Lara Polop
Matthew Gregory Lewis (novel)
Produced byFrancisco Lara Polop & Muir Sutherland
StarringPaul McGann
Sophie Ward
CinematographyAngel Luis Fernandez
Music byAnton Garcia Abril
Distributed byCeltic Films/Mediterraneo Cine-TV
Release date
  • 1990 (1990)
CountryUnited Kingdom/Spain
LanguageEnglish

The Monk (also known as The Final Temptation or The Seduction of a Priest) is a 1990 historical drama film directed by Francisco Lara Polop and starring Paul McGann and Sophie Ward.[1] Based on the 1796 Gothic novel The Monk by Matthew Gregory Lewis, it was adapted for the screen by Polop, and employs the common depiction of the 18th century representing “the stately, the lavish, the sensuous, and even the lubricious.”[2] In this way, The Monk can be seen as a heritage film, in which “the past is delivered as a museum of sounds and images, an iconographic display,”[3] though these films are sometimes discredited as attempts to “transform the past into a series of commodities for the entertainment market.”[4] The film was Lara Polop's last as a director, and continues the themes of eroticism and horror found throughout his works.[5]

  1. ^ The Monk, IMDb.com
  2. ^ Robert Mayer, "Is There a Text in the Screening Room?" Eighteenth-Century Fiction on Screen (2002), p. 1.
  3. ^ Andrew Higson, "Re-Presenting the National Past: Nostalgia and Pastiche in the Heritage Film," Fires Were Started: British Cinema and Thatcherism, ed. Lester Friedman (Minneapolis: University of Minneapolis Press, 1993), p. 115.
  4. ^ Christopher Orr, "The Discourse on Adaptation," Wide Angle 6 (1984), p. 73.
  5. ^ Francisco Lara Polop, IMDb.com