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Release Date 10th July, 2008
Karlovy Vary Film Festival
Czech Republic
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Site established July 2003
"Bathory" (2007)
A tulfutott skót- Article in Hungarian media By Szabo G. Laszlo
Translation by Zita
After shooting "Half-light" Demi Moore was asked about her handsome Scottish partner, Hans Matheson.She answered the question not with three sentences, but with three words: I am impressed...Acting his umpteenth role in this Hitchcock-crime-style movie, he had a great effect on Demi - not only with his appearance, but his knowledge...
Where could Caravaggio meet Báthory Erzsébet? Jakubisko takes the idea upon himself: maybe just in his imagination.
"For they've been living in the same age, I think they have had the chance to meet.Italian historians don't even know, where he spent two years after a murder he committed. Maybe my story is fictitious but the dates are identical.Tailors of Venice had been working for Báthory Erzsébet, so they could have met in the Town of Lagoons. Caravaggio was in love with a student of the painter-school - this caused the tragedy. In my film he mentions, that he has never kissed anyone, never had a woman in his life ."
Jakubisko could ask anything - it was not a problem for Hans Matheson , he could play right away. " Working with him was very easy, because he is a highly talented boy. This role was shining out of him.
I like this kind of actors. He is asking, meditating, searching for different solutions, cooperates,believing in what he is doing.He is searching for fine extras, the tiny impulses of the figure. He's got so many ideas, that even in the moments of shooting he is able to add something new to the role.But he can also be rude, when it is required. He used to inspire himself always with the music of the scene.He was listening to the soundtrack before stepping in front of the camera. Working with him is like playing on a Stradivari. Each tones sound clearly out of it.
In the film he paints and plays music as well,just as in private life.Everyone loved him in the team. He's got grateful nature - it's easy to adore him.
There is a much more passionable loving scene in the film : after the death of her husband, Bathory Erzsébet and Caravaggio meet in the church and make love in a confessional. We shooted this scene in the Gothic church of Kutná Hora. Hans was performing with total devotion, but so much, that in the end during the cutting process I had to take back of his passion and I rather had to show Anna Friel's face. He was acting so hotly, that I thought I mustn't show everything to the audience - I have to leave some momentums to their own imagination."
Deana Horvathova, the producer of the film began to fight for Matheson a half year before the beginning of the shooting. His agency had other plans with the young artist. But the stubbornness of Horvathova got the better of him. She kept on struggling until she got him. In the end she also deployed Anna Friel, who rang him up, saying : Don't care about anything, here's your place in this film! And Matheson has been listening to her calling words.
" I was even caught by his photos - says the unshakable producer - There' s something in his eyes that you are not able to get rid of. He is a kind man. Even a man, but he may have the child in him. I felt, that he will be ideal in the role, because during the rehearsals I saw the two extremes in him - just as in Caravaggio, but in the course of the filming I've been surprised. He is really a Renaissance man in the film. Just as he has stepped out of a canvas of that age."
From the Hungarian site Vasanap [2007. 03. 30.]
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