The Secret Garden
Short description
Mary Lennox is a British girl raised in India who loses her parents in an earthquake and is sent to England to live with her uncle in his large, isolated house on the Yorkshire moors. The uncle, still grieving his wife's death a decade earlier, keeps his distance, and the household is run strictly by the housekeeper, Mrs. Medlock. Lonely and left to herself, Mary begins roaming the grounds and finds a walled garden that has been locked and neglected for years. With help from a servant boy, Dickon, and later from her cousin Colin, a sickly boy kept hidden away indoors, she sets about bringing the garden back to life.
Agnieszka Holland directed the film, which followed her 1990 picture Europa Europa and came before Total Eclipse in 1995. Caroline Thompson wrote the screenplay, and the cast includes Kate Maberly as Mary, Heydon Prowse as Colin, Andrew Knott as Dickon, Maggie Smith as Mrs. Medlock and Irène Jacob as Mary's mother and Colin's mother. It was produced by Warner Bros. Pictures with American Zoetrope, on a budget of about 18 million dollars, and took roughly 40 million dollars worldwide.
On IMDb, the film holds a rating of 7.3 out of 10 from around 48,000 votes, while on TMDB it sits at 7.4 from about a thousand votes. A film critics' rating of 8 out of 10 from 44 reviews places it noticeably above those audience scores.
What's left behind the scenes
- The role of Colin could have gone to Elijah Wood, but the young actor declined the offer. Open auditions were organized, and among those invited were students from the school where Haydon Prowse studied. This role remained his only acting job.
- The costume design was so detailed that the initials M.L. (Mary Lennox), embroidered on Mary’s stockings, can be noticed in every shot when Aya dresses the girl at the very beginning of the film.
- The corridor leading to Colin's room, and the room itself, are decorated with tapestries depicting English King Edward VI, who was seriously ill and died at the age of sixteen.
- The tapestries in Mary's room form a classic cycle known as 'The Hunt of the Unicorn.' In it, a young woman lures the Unicorn from the wild into a new life, which is, in a sense, a reflection of Mary's role in the story.
- John Lynch was cast as Lord Craven at 11 p.m., after the actor who had been previously invited suddenly dropped out of the project, necessitating an urgent replacement.
- The film is based on Frances Hodgson Burnett’s novel “The Secret Garden” (1911).
Similar movies
Auditions in India
Casting calls in USA
Castingi w Polsce
Кастинги в Україні
