Once Minghella completed his screenplay, and after Zaentz had begun assembling the finances for the film which included a considerable amount of his own money, the crucial task of casting was begun.

In early 1994, the script was sent to Ralph Fiennes who, as soon as he read it, committed himself to play the role of Count Laszlo Almásy. Minghella says of Fiennes, "He's immensely intelligent and has great emotional complexity. He can play a chord which, however sweet, contains the threat of discord. Juliette Binoche is the opposite. You have a direct route to her soul when she's working and her soul is full of joy."

"When Saul and Anthony talked to me about the film I read the book and felt I understood Hana," says Binoche. "But when I film, I never plan anything because I never know how a scene will be. Only when I'm talking before the cameras or touching another character, then it becomes real and I can say that I understand the truth of what is happening."

For the role of Katharine Clifton, the elegant upper class British wife who falls in love with Almásy, Minghella cast the Kristin Scott Thomas. "Kristin's screen presence has true stillness and she has elegance and poise which underpin Katharine's unvarnished candor and which seem to belong to another age," the director says. "I never felt quite so strongly about any role before and I can't exactly say why," Scott Thomas says. "I actually wrote to Anthony when I heard he was making the film and asked to meet him."

Colin Firth rounds out the principal cast in the role of Katharine's husband Geoffrey Clifton. Clifton is a bright and charming enthusiast, with a genuine love of the desert and of flying. Recruited by the British Government to obtain aerial maps for the whole region in the event of the impending war spreading to North Africa, Clifton is a decent man made mad by his discovery that Katharine is in love with Almásy. "Colin's an exceptional actor, one of the best of his generation," Minghella says. "Like Ralph he's a highly intelligent and adroit player and has in common with him an emotional rigor. In fact the whole company of actors from diverse backgrounds and nationalities shares the same insistence of emotional rigor. None of them will cheat and in such turbulent material that integrity is vital."

LOCATIONS
Rome and Tuscany Principal photography began on September 4, 1995. After three weeks of filming at Cinecitta, the company moved to the town of Pienza in Tuscany to film scenes which take place in and around the Monastero di Sant'Anna. They then moved on to Viareggio, a coastal resort town near Pisa, to create the emergency field hospital triage tent. The scenes that take place in Cairo's famed Shepheard's Hotel [right] were filmed in the Hotel des Bains on the Venice Lido. Filming began there in early November 1995. That the incomparable city of Venice was standing in for Cairo took on a special significance for many involved in the production. "In Italo Calvino's book Invisible Cities, he describes one city which is a town that can only be approached by sea and when you get there it's a desert," says Michael Ondaatje. "And that's how Venice was for us".

"Tunisia was the perfect place for us to shoot Cairo and the desert," Stuart Craig says. "Shooting on that location we were able to get the stunning visuals without any special effects."

"This was very important," Minghella explains. "There are three distinct time frames and locations in the film - Italy, Cairo, and the desert and the more separate and distinct these three images are visually, the more everyone has a better sense of where the action is without thinking about it. The greens and blacks they used in Italy contrast sharply with the palette of golden hues they created for the desert."

On November 13, 1995 the company flew from Venice to North Africa where, for 9 weeks, the remaining scenes were shot.

The British Ambassador's residence in Cairo were photographed in a spacious, unoccupied former foreign minister's private residence in Tunis, built nearly 150 years ago. "We chose this one," recalls Craig, "for the authentic Islamic elements in its architecture and design, its elegant arches and beautiful ceramic work. We also liked the central open courtyard around which the house was constructed. It projected the proper interior/exterior ambiance, a sense that the very streets of Cairo permeate the Ambassador's residence.

Filming the Christmas party [left] during grueling heat in this exotic residence made it seem all the more incongruous, adding in a way to the sense that the characters are at odds with their environment and somehow adrift."

The sequences of Katharine and Almásy strolling through the narrow, winding alleyways of Cairo's Medina were filmed in a souk in Sfax. After filming in Sfax, the unit traveled to the Mediterranean town of El Mahdia, which doubled for Tobruk.

For centuries Tozeur has been a staging point for Bedouin caravans en route from the desert to the Mediterranean coast in the north. It was in the environs of Tozeur that the production found oases and a variety of desert landscapes crucial for the film's narrative. One important location, 45 km from Tozeur, was the vast, dry salt lake called the Chott el Jerid which served as the Almásy-Madox expedition's base camp. Another was the undulating Sahara sand dunes close to the Chott. Littered with furrows made by the desert winds, the dunes look as if they have existed undisturbed forever.

COSTUMES
Ann Roth, who selected and supervised the creation of all the costumes, also made a significant contribution to the recreation of the period. "In 1938, the Duke of Windsor was the trend-setter for the upper crust English, so we had the dinner clothes the men wear made on Saville Row by the Duke's tailor, a man named Mr. Halsey. He had dressed the Duke when he was King. Mr. Halsey also made clothes for many movie stars in the 1930's." The military clothing used in the film is also authentic. "British and Canadian uniforms were made by a company called Nathans. After the war they were purchased by the costume house of Angels Berman who provided us with them for the film. The marvelous thing is that the uniforms the soldiers and nurses are wearing are real." [Click here for the full text at the Classical In Sites]