The Libertine

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! There May Be SPOILERS in the movie reviews !

Barry Didcock on the slow rehabilitation of a 17th century rake and libertine

HIS lyrics were peppered with obscenities and satirised peers and rivals alike. He scandalised polite society by partying hard with actresses and prostitutes and yet he has won many fans, among them feminist critic Germaine Greer. He was implicated in at least one murder, was an early practitioner of “dogging” and had a number of alter egos, including Dr Bendo. He could regularly be found quaffing claret in city nightspots and among his many affectations was a pet monkey. Predictably, he died young. And now Johnny Depp is going to play him in the movie biopic.

But this is no rapper with an itchy trigger finger, no rock star with a death wish. Instead it’s a description of John Wilmot, second Earl of Rochester, the most notorious rake and libertine of the 17th century. He was also a poet and playwright but despite being championed by Defoe, Voltaire and Tennyson, his verse had been all but excised from the canon of English literature when Graham Greene picked up the mantle in the early 1930s. Greene wrote a biography called Lord Rochester’s Monkey, but even it was deemed too fruity for his publishers, Heinemann, who feared prosecution under the obscenity laws. Only in 1974 did it finally see the light of day.

In a preface to that first 1974 edition Greene describes his book’s troubled genesis, stating (a little bitterly) that when he started the project Rochester was still viewed as a pornographic writer whose works were kept under lock and key in the British Library, “denoted there with donnish whimsicality by the Greek letter phi”. Moreover, he noted, the only modern biography was one published in German in 1927, while an English language edition of the poems destined for America in 1926 had been stopped at customs in New York. Every copy was destroyed.

Thirty years on, Germaine Greer is just one of many critics to have published books about Rochester, and his poetry is freely available. For Greer, he is one of a troika of great 17th century poets along with William Shakespeare and John Donne.

This month he gets another boost with the movie release of The Libertine, which stars Depp as Rochester and John Malkovich as his on-off drinking buddy, Charles II. Based on Stephen Jeffreys’s award-winning play and directed by Laurence Dunmore, it features Samantha Morton as Elizabeth Barry, the most famous of Rochester’s many mistresses, and Rosamunde Pike as Elizabeth Mallet, a woman the 18-year-old Rochester abducted and who later became his wife.

Depp, who viewed Rochester’s original manuscripts in the British Library in preparation for the part, is already being talked of as a credible Oscar contender . But the film has an 18 certificate and sticks, in language and content, closely to the spirit of the man who wrote poems about premature ejaculation (“A touch from any part of her had done’t” – and the next line’s even saucier) and once celebrated the pleasures of outdoor sex in a poem called A Ramble In St James’s Park. So, will America once more find Rochester too hot to handle?

“The puritanical New Christian lot will find the film incredibly offensive, but it will be great for Rochester’s ghost to be the subject of controversy again,” says Stephen Jeffreys, who adapted his play for the screen. “There’s a lot of nudity. It’s a sexy film. There’s one scene where Johnny Depp got so into it he kept adding more and more swear words. I conceived it as quite a profane script and it’s even more so in the performance.”

Despite a degree in English literature, Jeffreys went through university without hearing any mention of Rochester. Actually, it was his dentist who introduced him to the work.

“He was clearing his bookshelves of anything he didn’t want his 13-year-old daughter to read and giving the books to his patients. He said, ‘I’m giving you this play by the Earl of Rochester. It’s called Sodom. I think you’ll enjoy it.’ I read it and it was the most obscene play I’d ever read. That made me interested.”

In some quarters, Rochester’s authorship of Sodom is contested, though that didn’t stop a copy of the play being sold at Sotheby’s last year for £45,000. Moreover, many of his poems were destroyed after his death, so what remains of his work is only part of his prodigious output.

But where his life is concerned, there is fact enough to flesh out the character of the man. He was born John Wilmot in Ditchley, Oxfordshire on April 1, 1647, and died in 1680, aged 33, probably from syphilis. A precocious child, he crammed a lot into his short life. Enrolled at Oxford before his 13th birthday (“Oxford taught him to drink deep,” wrote Greene), he was on the Grand Tour by the age of 14 and returned four years later to execute the first of many flamboyant escapades.

In the early summer of 1665, he was one of several noblemen courting Elizabeth Mallet, a wealthy heiress. But his relative poverty counted against him and when he found himself losing ground to his rivals, he took action. On May 26, 1665, as Mallet travelled across London, her carriage was stopped by Rochester, who promptly kidnapped her. The abduction was ill-conceived and it wasn’t long before she was rescued and Rochester was sent to the Tower. Three weeks later Charles II released him, and Rochester went to sea and to war, distinguishing himself in a battle at Bergen – not the most glorious British naval action but no less bloody for it. Two years later, Rochester finally got the girl, marrying Elizabeth Mallet on January 29, 1667. He was nearly 20.

Rochester’s life after that oscillated between periods of relative sobriety at his country seat and drunken antics at court. There he developed a love/hate relationship with Charles II (whom he regularly lampooned in verse) and became a founder of what poet Andrew Marvell dubbed “The Merry Gang”. A sort of a 17th century Rat Pack, its other members included Henry Jermyn, Charles Sackville (Earl of Dorset), John Sheffield (Earl of Mulgrave), George Villiers (Duke of Buckingham), Henry Killigrew, Sir Charles Sedley and the playwrights William Wycherley and George Etherege. They liked to drink, whore, duel and, on one memorable occasion, strip naked and preach sermons from tavern balconies.

When one or other of Rochester’s satires hit too close to home, Charles II would ban him from court. It was during one of his enforced absences that he developed the character of Dr Alexander Bendo and spent a month pretending to be a quack doctor and astrologer on London’s Tower Hill. But the royal huff never lasted long: Rochester was too fine a wit, too enjoyable a companion for permanent banishment. Even when he killed a Mr Downes in a drunken fight, he was forgiven.

An atheist by inclination (though he would undergo a dramatic deathbed conversion), Rochester’s personal philosophy was shaped by the writings of Thomas Hobbes, who viewed freedom as meaning the ability to do exactly as you desired.

“He was an immensely gifted and complex man,” says Laurence Dunmore, director of The Libertine. “He had a fast mind and a fast wit that was supplemented and enhanced by his personality, which was one of restlessness. I think he had that in common with Charles II. They also shared this Hobbist philosophy – a belief that if it’s doing no harm to others then there will be no atonement. So he was also a very impulsive man.”

The satires and pornographic verses he began to pen at court were never intended for publication. Instead they were written for his own enjoyment and would be circulated in the coffee houses and inns.

“He would work out who was sleeping with who and then employ a footman to doorstep people as they came out of a house they shouldn’t have been in,” says Jeffreys. “He would write it up and by the time the unfortunate party was in the coffee houses or riding around Pall Mall he would have something on paper. But it was circulated mainly among his friends.”

In that, he anticipated the savage satires of Alexander Pope and Jonathan Swift and, perhaps, the excesses of the 20th century tabloid reporter. But beneath the urbane exterior was a tortured, quarrelsome, restless soul whose modern manifestations are people like Shane MacGowan, Kurt Cobain or man-of-the-moment Pete Doherty, London’s very own 21st century libertine.

In 1675 – the year before the Dr Bendo and Mr Downes incidents – Jacob Huysmans painted the portrait of Rochester that gave Greene the title for his book and which is today the most famous image of the man. It shows Rochester holding a sheaf of poetry and garlanding a monkey holding an open book. The garland, of course, was the mark of the poet laureate and the composition is a broadside from Rochester against those of his contemporaries whose portraits he found pompous and self-aggrandising. Even in committing his image to canvas, he could show he cared nothing for reputation, propriety – or even art itself.

Five years later he was dead . Marking his passing, the playwright Aphra Behn wrote of “the great, the godlike Rochester”, while Samuel Johnson remembered him as a man who “blazed out his youth and health in lavish voluptousness”. Tennyson could quote huge tracts of his verse, as could Goethe (and in English too). William Hazlitt thought his poems “cut and sparkled like diamonds”, while Voltaire took the trouble to translate them into French. Even Charlotte Brontë is thought to have had Wilmot in mind when she created the smouldering Rochester in Jane Eyre.

For Jeffreys, such an august fan club proves the poet’s worth. He hopes his own contribution will mark another stage in Rochester’s slow rehabilitation.

“I think there’s now a re-evaluation going on and people are taking his ideas quite seriously,” he says. “For a long time nobody could figure out what he’d written because there wasn’t a decent edition of his work. But I think his place is assured now where it wasn’t even 20 years ago. Will The Libertine help? I don’t know. I hope people are interested enough to find his poetry and read it – like when Four Weddings And A Funeral popularised that WH Auden poem.”

It’s a pleasing thought. Then again, Auden never wrote lines like:

By all love’s soft yet mighty powers, It is a thing unfit

That men should f*** in time of flowers Or when the smock’s beshit.

Or if he did, he kept it quiet.

Prince of Darkness
Booze, Oscars and tax breaks.. On set as Johnny Depp delivers his most outrageous performance ever in The LibertineWords Jonathan Crocker additional reporting Martyn Palmer

“This guy had been kept in the darkness for fat too long.” Says Johnny Depp, leaning towards Total Film.”if people know him at all they go.’Oh yeah, he wrote the bits about pussy and cocks,’ or ‘He made fun of the king with those witty little satires.’ But, oh man, he was very profound…”

We’re in Depp’s trailer on the Isle of Man. It’s cold outside. He’s wearing cuffs frilly enough to shame a poodle and passionatley telling us about John Wilmot, seconf Earl of Rochester. “ He’s an incredible character. I’m amazed that , like, Marquis de Sade has got more action, you know? But then I’m also amazed Marlowe hasn’t got as much action as Shakespeare…”

Depp in in his element.”It’s been great. It feels fucking great…” And he deserves to enjoy the moment. Becaue his journey to playing the titular 17th-century poet hellraiser in The Libertine has been much longer and more involved than simply nipping over the choppy water from his home in France.

It started in 1995. Depp watched John Malcovich playing Rochester in Stephen Jeffreys’ play. He was brilliant, Johnny told him so. Malkovich said he wanted him to star as Rochester on screen…

Jump to 2004 and after years of casting jiggerypokery and bank balencing, buoyed by tax-break incentives from the UK government(designed to help small British projects attract multiple investors), The Libertine is set to shoot in March. Jeffres has scripted. Producer and co-star Malkovich(who, having ducked Rochester, is playing King Charles II) has patchworked a $22 million budget and a feisty Brit ensemble, including Samanth Morton and Rosamund Pike. Depp has signed to headline, bringing freshly found box office clout in addition to his talent, having just starred in Pirates of The Caribbean. He also approves of edgy Accurist and BMW ad helmer Laurence Dunmore, whi is making his feature directorial debut.”I just had a feeling,” says Depp,”he would be all right…”

Then everything fell apart.

“Literally, one day we were funded and the next we weren’t,”Dunmore tells Total Film, shaking his head. Without warning, the Inland Revenue shut the tax loophole. Across the country, high profile productions, such as Jude Law/Keira Knightley romance tulip Fever, fell apart – producers fled, budgets evaporated, stars migrated, movies disintegrated. The umbilical cord became a noose.

“They didn’t cut any slack to films already in productio,” rues Dunmore.”They just ripped out a third of our funding a month before shooting was due to start. Suddenly, we had to find $8 million. It was catastrophic.”

Most films were sunk, gone forever. But then, most films don’t have Malkovich and Depp. The two stars poured in their own money to keep the production afloat.”they dug very deep,” Says Dunmore

“Johnny stuck by us, at a time when we could have been facing a cascade into a meaningless puddle. He stood his ground.”Malkovich, meanwhile negotiated a quick thinking deal to shoot in cut cost safe haven, the Isle of Man. Hence the frills and chills of our on set encounter with Depp, who doesn’t trumpet his own role in freeing The Libertine.

“You know it’s a great part.There are a million things to like about Rochester. It’s very easy for the take on him to be,’He’s a pig, a drunk,, he’s a randy. Psychotic madman,’ but he was brilliant. I mean for all his adventures and all his sexual and deviant encounters, he was quite sensative and loving. He was really a very caring man.And this sort of material only rolls around once. Material like this is just, I mean ,more prescious than any jewel.”

So, dunmore’s movie survivied. The rain sodden 45 day shoot (turns out we were there on a good day) was an endurance test for all involved (“It ranged from the absurd to the hilarious,”says Dunmore) but the result is extraordinary:Depp is extraordinary. His potty-mouthed display of time bomb hedonism centres The Libertine’s filthy delicious drama, with Dunmore realising the 17th Century as a grimy, conflicted netherworld.Superficially, the film may dip in the same ink pot as Philip Kaufman’s Quills, but it draws a darker, more intense picture.”It feels shocking in that it moves with this force of its own,” says Depp.”It has the energy of punk rock.It’s unforgiving and it’s ugly at times and it’s brutal and it’s flowery and it’s funny, all kinds of things, but it doesn’t let up…”

The star calls his Bacchanalism bad boy “Jack Sparrow meets the Marquis de Sade”. Dunmore calls it his” most complex” performance ever. And Harvey Weinstein calls it “ a contender.” He picked up the picture at the 2004 Totonto Film Festival and has held back the release, ostensibly while he and brother Bob negotiated their exit from Miramax and set up The Weinstein Company, but also surely to save it for the winter shop window for Oscar contenders? “No, we haven’t discussed that,” smiles Dunmore coyly.”They’ll obviously be thinking about the best way to market the movie. But we certainly intended it as a winter film. Its not one you can watch on a bright summer day – you need to hit the bottle after it.”

The Libetine opens on 18 November.

Barely two months since Rough Cut championed its cause as one of the Brit flicks pole-axed by Uk film funding cuts, Stephen Jeffreys’ acclaimed play finally completes its seven-year journey to the big screen. But despite (because of?) its modest budget, promo-helmer Laurence Dunmore’s debut shoulders us face-first into a remarkable vision of the 17th century. Lost is a swirl of shadow and mist, Restoration-era England appears here as a gloomy netherworld, with DoP Alexander Melman’s palette of muddy browns and fetid greens illuminated only by twitching candlelight. Long before we’re pulled into startling orgy montage that’s like a living Francis Bacon painting – all writhing flesh and fog – it becomes clear this is less musty time-capsule, more slurry psychoscape for Depp’s bad boy Earl.

Major claim to make, this, but on a CV that already reads like a test tube rack of mutants and misfits, Wilmot could be Depp’d most outrageous performance yet.”I’m up for it,” he warns us. “I’m up for it all the time!” And isn’t he just…
Binge drinking, binge swearing, binge shagging: his poet prurient struts the movie’s throughline to booze-soaked oblivion with pornographic glee, his eyes ever-glassy with cynasism.

JM Barrie he ain’t. Curling off the dry, filthy witticism with gutter eloquence and cultered contempt, Depp ensures the somewhat stagey script stays every bit as mucky as Dunmore’s rotting canvas. That said, it inherits a little of the murkiness, too, spluttering to crank up the film’s plot motors as we find Rochester wagering he can make shonky stage thesp Elizabeth (Samantha Morton) the finest actress in England – only to discover he’s fallen in love with her. Elsewhere, John Malcovich is astonishingly restrained as the belieagured King Charles II, who having commissioned Rochester to write a spectacular play, finds himself watching a midget riding a giant phallus-chariot while carved wooden dildos are handed out to the audience.
Through it all Depp’s charismatic dark star contines to burn up youth and health with irrisistable vulgarity. Thankfully, even on the brink of Father Jack style self parody(“Drink!Drink!”) the scenes of marital meltdown with his country wife (an impressive Rosamund Pike) spike the grand guignol excess with poignancy. Quite what we learn from Rochester’s infernal free fall from gross sensuality to just plain gross is debatable. But Depp finds soul in the show off.And, for all his protestations you will like him.

Jonathan Crocker

Verdict

We’ll just come right out and say it:Depp’s most outrageous performance ever. Decadent, witty, and deliciously obscene – it’s a murky delight.

4 Stars

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