Death of a Princess
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Death Of A Princess is a British 1980 drama-documentary, produced by ATV, about a young princess from a fictitious Middle-Eastern Islamic nation and her lover who had been publicly executed for adultery. The drama is believed to be based on the true story of Princess Masha'il.
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[edit] Form
The film was based on numerous interviews by journalist Antony Thomas who, upon first hearing the story, grew passionately curious about its veracity, soon drawing upon contacts in the Arab world for their insights and opinions. Because of the candid and sometimes critical nature of the interviews, Thomas and ATV bosses decided not to make the film as a straight documentary but instead to dramatise it with actors.
Thomas himself was played by Paul Freeman under the name 'Christopher Ryder'. The identities of the interviewees were obscured, and the actors chosen to replace them were based only loosely on their subjects. There was only one exception, a Lebanese family who played themselves. The fictitious nation in which the play was set was called 'Arabia' and as such was perceived by some observers to refer to Saudi Arabia. The name of the Princess was never mentioned.
[edit] Story
Death Of A Princess depicts Thomas' focus on 'the Princess', as her story became his vehicle through which important parts of Muslim culture was revealed, showing facets of Islamic tradition, custom, society, gender and social roles, sexuality, politics, myth, and identity. Thomas later explained that he had only reconstructed scenes where he was confident that they did happen, although he included film of interviewees telling him information which he did not believe it.
[edit] Controversy
A critically acclaimed film, it originally caused a great deal of controversy when it was shown on ATV in the UK on 9 April 1980. It provoked an angry response from the Saudi government, which drove a UK press reaction against the attempted censorship. However, when export orders began to be cancelled, the press began to question whether it had been right to show the film. A misunderstood remark by the film's associate producer that scenes had been 'fabricated' (by which she meant that some dramatic licence had been taken) led to a later backlash.
Similarly, the US government received enormous political pressure from Saudi Arabia to censor its broadcast, and after some stalling, it was eventually broadcast by the PBS programme World in 1980.
In a retrospective interview for the Frontline rebroadcast, Thomas described his reasons for making the film:
'I set off to investigate this story with the idea of doing it as a drama, and gradually I realized that something completely different was developing. Where I traveled through the Arab world, the story was celebrated. Everyone had their own version of that story, all very, very different. ...Whoever I spoke to —whether they were Palestinians, whether they were conservative Saudis, whether they were radicals —they attached themselves to this princess. She'd become a myth. And they identified with her, and they kind of co-opted her to their cause. People were discussing things with me about their private lives, about their sexual feelings, about their political frustrations, that they'd never discussed with me before. ... Somehow this princess was sort of like a catalyst. And after thinking about it seriously, I thought, my gosh, this is perhaps an even more interesting story to tell.'
The film has never been re-broadcast in the UK; although a clip was shown on a 2005 BBC documentary called Imagining The Truth. There was a private screening at the British Academy of Film and Television Arts in 2005. It was re-broadcast in the US by Frontline in April 2005, for its 25th anniversary, under limited terms described in its original contract. Because of copyright and issues with royalties, it is not available for Internet viewing through PBS.
[edit] References in popular culture
- A Yes Minister episode ("The Moral Dimension") refers to a diplomatic incident as "the greatest crisis since Death of a Princess."
