the white hotel Tagged Articles at Cinematical

It's not the type of role you would expect to find Brittany Murphy in, but I suppose the girl is set on trying some new things. Apparently, the actress is in negotiations to star in The White Hotel, an adaptation of the D.M. Thomas novel. It's taken a whole lot of time to finally bring White Hotel to the big screen -- at one time, folks like Barbra Streisand, Meryl Streep, Isabella Rosellini and Nicole Kidman were in talks to star. Just the fact that Murphy has now entered the equation (after all those fantastic names disappeared) goes to show that either folks were desperate for a female name (any name!) or Murphy really really impressed the right people. Which one do you think is most likely true?

Story follows an opera singer (Murphy) who looks to Sigmund Freud for help in post-World War I Vienna after she's haunted by dreams of a white hotel. Together, they begin to decipher those dreams, which include premonitions of the future and the Holocaust. Simon Monjack will direct off his own script, and there's currently no other casting announcements. Since Murphy grew up in New Jersey, her Jersey/NYC accent usually cuts through her dialogue and, more often that not, it takes away from the performance -- except when it's intentional. However, I had the chance to see a different side of Murphy recently in The Dead Girl. Although she once again took on a tough-girl role, her accent was gone and thus I enjoyed her on screen presence more than I have in the past ... even if her performance was a little too much. With that said, I have a feeling the girl has something special in her -- but will we ever see that special something? That's the question.

D. M. Thomas' The White Hotel was published in 1981, and has since then been both highly praised and dismissed as a piece of junk, as well as dogged by charges of plagiarism.* From the moment it was released, though, the book -- described as a surreal novel about Freud, an opera singer and the holocaust -- attracted the attention of Hollywood, and has served as a sort of revolving door for big-name stars and directors. Among those who have been connected to the project over the past 25 years are: Barbra Streisand, Anthony Hopkins, Bernardo Bertolucci, Meryl Streep, Terrence Malick, Dustin Hoffman, David Cronenberg, Nicole Kidman, Pedro Almodóvar, Ralph Fiennes, David Lynch and Cate Blanchett. Whew.

Of course, now that the movie version is actually getting off the ground, none of those people are anywhere to be found. According to Variety, The White Hotel will be directed by Simon Monjack, who also wrote the screenplay. He and producer Susan Stewart Potter claim they've raised about $20 million to shoot the film, and are currently casting with an eye to late-October start.

*Thomas was accused of lifting passages from A. Anatoli's Babi Yar. As far as I can tell, charges were never brought by either Yar or his publisher -- if you know otherwise, let me know in the comments.