I Never Promised You a Rose Garden (film)
| I Never Promised You a Rose Garden | |
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Theatrical release poster
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| Directed by | Anthony Page |
| Produced by | Daniel H. Blatt Roger Corman |
| Written by |
Novel: Joanne Greenberg Screenplay: Gavin Lambert Lewis John Carlino |
| Starring |
Kathleen Quinlan Bibi Andersson |
| Music by | Paul Chihara |
| Cinematography | Bruce Logan |
| Edited by | Garth Craven |
| Distributed by | New World Pictures |
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Release date
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Running time
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96 minutes |
| Country | United States |
| Language | English |
| Budget | $3 million |
| Box office | $3.2 million |
I Never Promised You a Rose Garden is a 1977 American fantasy drama film based on the Joanne Greenberg novel of the same name.Mel Gibson makes his film debut in a small uncredited role as a baseball player.
Pretty and privileged Deborah (Kathleen Quinlan) is, at the age of 16, a borderline schizophrenic who spends most of her waking hours in a bizarre fantasy realm. After a failed suicide attempt, she lands in a mental institution, where the hostile environment threatens to destabilize her condition even further. It's only through the focused attention of the sympathetic Dr. Fried (Bibi Andersson) that Deborah is gradually able to distinguish between dreams and reality again. The film was directed by Anthony Page.
In the wake of the success of One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, Roger Corman was able to get funding for a movie version of Rose Garden. Bibi Andersson played Dr. Fried, while Kathleen Quinlan played Deborah. All references to Judaism were removed, including the storyline of the vicious cruelty Deborah suffered from anti-Semitic peers, so that her childhood bout with urethral cancer becomes the sole reason for Deborah's "retreat from reality".
In an interview, Greenberg stated that the references to Judaism were removed because the producers were "terrified." The author added that the characterizations of mental illness in the film "stank on ice."
Deborah's name is changed from Blau (which means "blue" in German, and parallels the author's pseudonym "Green") to Blake. Another major theme of the book, Deborah's artistic talent which flourished in spite of her illness, was reduced to a scene in which she scribbles childishly on a drawing pad. The Kingdom Of Yr is portrayed on-screen, as are some of its gods, but never seen in its original ethereal beauty, only the wasteland that it became much later.
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Wikipedia