Casting Quentin Crisp as Elizabeth I adds another layer of intertextuality into the film and highlights the ambiguity and analogy in between the sexes.
While sailing back to England Orlando discovers her female traits.
Hand-drawn sketches of the 'revelation' scene.
Tilda Swinton addressing the camera.
'No difference. No difference at all. Just a different sex.'
The actual Sally Potter's shooting script with her handwritten annotations.
'He was a woman!'
Orlando's sex change.
This cover page of a leaflet playfully makes use of the main spirit of the book (and therefore of the film) and was used as a prospectus in Cannes – presumably to secure additional funding for the film.
'… she was a man, she was a woman; she knew the secrets, shared the weaknesses of each …'
'Orlando's clothes are like a catalogue of her life, from the relative freedom of breeches to the subjection of the crinoline.'
Orlando as a woman.
Composition of shots.
Orlando as a man.
As Sally Potter describes Orlando as a creature of paradox, his/her character indeed embodies many qualities. He commences as a boy, he becomes a man, a lover, a woman,...etc. One can find perhaps the most fitting description of Orlando in a part of the book when he transforms to a woman in Constantinople: 'The sound of trumpets died away and Orlando stood stark naked. No human being has ever looked so ravishing. His form combined in on the strength of a man and a woman's grace.'
The sexual ambiguity is the key feature of the book. This Virginia Woolf's rather androgynous point of view is masterly adapted in Sally Potter's film as well.
Orlando's meditation on struggles between sexes and the patriarchal society of the eras are very well documented and uncovered in both – the book and the film. 'Only parts of the essence of Orlando can become visible in each historical era, depending on what it is allowable for a man or woman to show and be.'