The Princess Bride (film)

This article is about the movie. For the novel, see The Princess Bride. For the game, see Princess Bride (game).

The Princess Bride is a 1987 film, based on the 1973 novel by William Goldman, combining elements of comedy, adventure, romance and fairy tale tropes.

The movie was directed by Rob Reiner from a screenplay by Goldman. The story is presented in the movie as a fairy tale being read by a grandfather (Peter Falk) to his sick grandson (Fred Savage), thus echoing the book's narrative style. The film stars Robin Wright and Cary Elwes. Mandy Patinkin, Wallace Shawn, Christopher Guest, Chris Sarandon and André the Giant play supporting roles. Billy Crystal, Carol Kane, Peter Cook, and Mel Smith have memorable cameo roles.

It is consistently placed in the Internet Movie Database's Top 250 list of films, with over 65,000 votes. This list is derived from the votes of IMDb registered users.

Taglines:

Scaling the Cliffs of Insanity, Battling Rodents of Unusual Size, Facing torture in the Pit of Despair. - True love has never been a snap.
It's as real as the feelings you feel.
Heroes. Giants. Villains. Wizards. True Love. - Not just your basic, average, everyday, ordinary, run-of-the-mill, ho-hum fairy tale.
She gets kidnapped. He gets killed. But it all ends up okay.
Inconceivable!

Storyline

The storyline listed below is of the main story. There is also a frame story, consisting of a grandfather's arrival at his grandson's home, where the grandson is sick, and his reading a book, The Princess Bride, to the grandson. The main story is occasionally broken by outbursts from the grandson.

The heroine of The Princess Bride, the beautiful Buttercup (played by Robin Wright in the movie), delights in verbally abusing her lowly stable boy Westley (Cary Elwes). Buttercup keeps asking Westley to do things for her and Westley's only answer is "As you wish". Buttercup soon realizes that when he's saying "As you wish", what he really means is "I love you", and soon after Buttercup realizes that she loves him as well. Westley leaves to make his fortune so they can marry, promising to return, but his ship is attacked at sea by the Dread Pirate Roberts, who is notorious for taking no prisoners. After several years of assuming him dead, Buttercup is forced by the law of the land to marry Prince Humperdinck (Chris Sarandon), heir to the throne of Florin. Heartbroken by the loss of her true love, Buttercup accepts her fate.

Buttercup is kidnapped by a bizarre trio of outlaws - the stunted Sicilian genius Vizzini (Wallace Shawn), the expert Spaniard swordsman Inigo Montoya (Mandy Patinkin), and the enormous and mighty Turk Fezzik (André the Giant) — who have been hired to murder her and frame Florin's enemy, the neighboring country of Guilder, so that Humperdinck can start a war. (As a side note, Florin and Guilder are names for the same Dutch coin.) A masked man in black clothing follows them across the sea to the Cliffs of Insanity, where Inigo Montoya is ordered to stop him. Inigo reveals himself as a man of honor who goes out of his way to arrange a fair fight with the stranger including a surprisingly pleasant conversation while the pursuer is allowed to get some rest before the duel. Inigo reveals in this conversation that he has been studying fencing all his life (including the teachings of Renaissance fencer, architect and engineer Agrippa) so as to gain the skill necessary to avenge his father, who was murdered by a six-fingered man. In the ensuing fencing match, the masked man wins, but leaves the Spaniard alive out of respect for his immense skill in swordplay and his honorable behavior, saying as he knocks Inigo unconscious with the hilt of his sword, "I would as soon destroy a stained-glass window as an artist such as yourself. But, since I can't have you follow me either..." (WHACK)

Vizzini, realizing that Inigo Montoya has failed to stop the man in black, leaves Fezzik behind with orders to ambush and kill him. Fezzik, also honorable, makes himself known to the masked man instead of ambushing him, and challenges him to a wrestling match. Though Fezzik is powerful, he is slow and used to throwing his weight around against swarms of men. The masked man uses this fact and his own agility against Fezzik, eventually climbing onto the giant's back and using a sleeper hold against him, thus non-lethally disabling him. His parting words to Fezzik are, "I don't envy you the headache you will have when you awake. But, in the meantime, rest well and dream of large women."

Finally, the masked man catches up with Vizzini, who is holding Buttercup hostage at knifepoint, and proposes a "battle of the wits to the death". Vizzini must choose between two cups of wine, one of which the man says has been poisoned with 'iocaine powder'. After trying to cheat, Vizzini loses the battle of wits and dies: the masked man, having previously developed an immunity to iocaine, has played on Vizzini's arrogance to provoke him into a false choice scenario and poisoned both cups. The masked man takes Buttercup with him as he flees from Prince Humperdinck, who is now in pursuit of his fianceè's kidnappers. Buttercup deduces that the man in black is the Dread Pirate Roberts, but it is only after she shoves him down a ravine and hears him shout "As you wish!" that she realizes he is also her long-lost love.

It turns out that the former Dread Pirate Roberts had indeed attacked Westley's ship, but had made an exception and kept Westley alive after Westley said to him "Please, I need to live", and explained the depths of his love for Buttercup. Eventually, Roberts secretly retired, passing the name and the ship on to Westley; Roberts' name had originally been Ryan (it turns out that by then the name Roberts was just a nom de guerre), and he had inherited the ship and name from another faux Roberts, who was originally named Cummerbund, who had inherited the name and ship from the original Dread Pirate Roberts, who had retired 15 years earlier to Patagonia.

After surviving the three terrors of the Fire Swamp (Lightning Sand, spurts of fire from the ground and the ROUSes, or Rodents Of Unusual Size), the two are captured by Prince Humperdinck and the menacing Count Rugen (Christopher Guest), who, incidentally, has six fingers on his right hand. Buttercup is returned to the palace to await her wedding – which, now that she knows Westley is alive, is a fate worse than death. Westley is taken by Count Rugen to the Pit of Despair, where he is tended to by an albino (Mel Smith). He there learns that he is to be tortured - for the Count's "pain research" purposes - by an elaborate device of the Count's own design, "The Machine," which functions by sucking life from its victim.

Inigo Montoya and Fezzik meet up again, and Inigo learns of the existence of Count Rugen and the capture of Westley. They decide to go on a quest to avenge Inigo's father's death and prevent the marriage of Buttercup and Humperdinck. Finding that Westley has been tortured to death by the Prince, they turn to Miracle Max (Billy Crystal), a washed-up wizard who was fired by Prince Humperdinck, and his wife Valerie (Carol Kane), who pronounce Westley to be merely "mostly dead" and resurrect him. Westley comes up with a plan to invade the castle, which succeeds, putting the three of them inside. They are split up, Montoya meets and defeats his father's killer, and Westley bluffs his way out of a swordfight with Prince Humperdinck, despite hardly having the strength to stand. In classic fairy-tale style, the party rides off into the sunset on conveniently-provided white horses. Westley and Buttercup reach for each other and the story concludes, noting: Since the invention of the kiss, there have been five kisses that were rated the most passionate, the most pure. This one left them all behind.

Reception

The movie was initially a modest success, though not a huge blockbuster, grossing twice its $15,000,000 (USD) production costs at the US box office. It received favorable reviews from some critics, including Roger Ebert and Gene Siskel who gave "Two thumbs up" on the television show Siskel & Ebert & The Movies. Roger Ebert also wrote a favorable print review.Roger Ebert, The Princess Bride, Chicago Sun-Times, October 9, 1987 Over the years, the film has gained popularity and a cult-like following, with occasional big-screen showings.

Soundtrack

The soundtrack was originally released by Warner Brothers in 1987. It was written and recorded by Mark Knopfler, the only person Rob Reiner felt could create a soundtrack to capture the film's quirky yet romantic nature. Reiner was an admirer of Knopfler's previous work but did not know him before working on the film – he sent the script to him hoping he would agree to score the movie. Knopfler agreed on one condition: that somewhere in the film Rob Reiner include the USS Coral Sea baseball cap he wore as Marty DiBergi in This is Spinal Tap. Reiner was unable to produce the original cap, but did include a similar cap in the grandson's room. Later Knopfler said he was joking.

The song Storybook Love was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Original Song at the 60th Academy Awards.

Soundtrack listing:

Once upon a Time...Storybook Love
I Will Never Love Again
Florin Dance
Morning Ride
The Friends' Song
The Cliffs of Insanity
The Swordfight
Guide My Sword
The Fire Swamp and the Rodents of Unusual Size
Revenge
A Happy Ending
Storybook Love (composed and performed by Willy DeVille)

Filming locations

The film was shot in various places around England and Ireland:

Burnham Beeches, Buckinghamshire, England
Castleton, Derbyshire, England
Cliffs of Moher, County Clare, Ireland (for the Cliffs of Insanity)
Haddon Hall, Bakewell, Derbyshire, England

Trivia

Cary Elwes and Mandy Patinkin learned to fence (both left- and right-handed) for the film, reportedly spending all their free time during the production practicing with an instructor and with each other. Elwes and Patinkin performed all of the fencing in the swordfight scene; the only stunt doubles were for the two somersaults. Reiner, Rob. The Princess Bride. DVD Audio Commentary. Directed by Rob Reiner. 1987; Santa Monica, CA: MGM Home Entertainment, 2001. (see Ch. 06, time 17:45)

André the Giant suffered from a bad back at the time of filming, and despite his great size, could not support the weight of the much lighter Cary Elwes or Robin Wright (at the end of the movie). For the wrestling scene, when Elwes was pretending to hang on André's back, he was actually walking on a series of ramps below the camera during close-ups. For the wide shots, a stunt double took the place of André; on close examination, it is apparent that the double is much smaller than André. Reiner, Rob. The Princess Bride. DVD Audio Commentary. Directed by Rob Reiner. 1987; Santa Monica, CA: MGM Home Entertainment, 2001. (see Ch. 08, time 25:40)

André the Giant had trouble with both the speed and clarity of his lines, prompting Mandy Patinkin to actually slap him in the face to get him to concentrate harder. It worked. Goldman, William. The Princess Bride. DVD Audio Commentary. Directed by Rob Reiner. 1987; Santa Monica, CA: MGM Home Entertainment, 2001. (see time 1:02:00)

In 2000, readers of Total Film magazine voted The Princess Bride the 38th-greatest comedy film of all time.

There are a few small differences in the published script/screenplay and the actual soundtrack, particularly in Billy Crystal's scenes. When being pursued by Carol Kane screaming "Humperdinck!", Crystal cries "Shtigin!". Where the script has him telling Valerie to "Shut up!", Crystal says "Sha!" (the Yiddish equivalent.) More significantly, right after Inigo says "Humiliations galore!", Miracle Max mutters something that sounds like "Hahaha! I did a lickvaldanation." This has been reported on the net in several unofficial transcriptions as "I'm gonna lick the dalmatian", but that's not what he's saying. An exhaustive search of the net provides no clues as to these ad-lib insertions. It has also been postulated that Crystal was engaging in playful linguistic infix wordplay and actually was muttering "Hahaha! Hudeminiliation!".

In 2006, William Goldman's adaptation of his novel was selected by the Writers Guild of America as the 84th best screenplay of all time.

Mandy Patinkin said he thought of his father dying of cancer for the scene where Inigo was attacking Christopher Guest's character (Count Tyrone Rugen).

Composer Adam Guettel and screenwriter William Goldman are collaborating on a musical version of The Princess Bride. On September 15 and 16 of 2006, a suite from the musical is set to premiere at the Hollywood Bowl.

While not the same as the rodents of unusual size shown in the film, the largest real-world rodent is the capybara, which weighs 35 to 65 kg (75–140 lbs).

References

External links