The English Patient (1996) on Netflix
In 1944 Italy, Hana, a French-Canadian nurse, stays behind in a bombed monastery to tend a gravely burned man who cannot recall his name. His past in the Sahara returns.
- Netflix3.5/5
- IMDb7.4/10215,382 votes
- Rotten Tomatoes86%
Trailer
Plot summary
October 1944, Italy. Hana, a French-Canadian nurse with the Royal Canadian Army Medical Corps, learns that her boyfriend has been killed; when a fellow nurse dies in front of her, she comes to believe she brings misfortune to everyone she loves. Her unit moves on, and she stays in a bombed monastery with a patient burned beyond recognition, a man with an English accent who does not know his own name. His sole possession is a copy of Herodotus's Histories, holding notes and mementos. Lieutenant Kip Singh, a Sikh sapper clearing German mines, and David Caravaggio, a Canadian Intelligence Corps operative, join them, and Caravaggio presses the patient about his past. In the late 1930s, Hungarian cartographer Count László Almásy surveyed the Sahara on a Royal Geographical Society expedition with British couple Geoffrey and Katharine Clifton.
Cast
Did you know?!Facts and trivia about The English Patient (1996)
Can contain spoilers, watch the movie first.
- After months of disputes, 20th Century Fox pulled out just three weeks before production was to begin because the studio wanted bigger actors; Zaentz recalled executives asking, "Could we cast Demi Moore in the role?" Harvey Weinstein acquired worldwide rights for Miramax Films for $27.5 million, and Minghella's preference for Scott Thomas as Katharine was honored.
- To help the film get made, cast and crew agreed to salary deferrals totalling $10 million, due to be paid after it broke even. More than three years after release others were still waiting, and Zaentz sued Miramax Films in 2006 claiming $20 million; the case was still unresolved when he died in 2014.
- Murch, with a career that already included the Godfather trilogy, The Conversation and Apocalypse Now, dreaded editing a film with multiple flashbacks and time frames. Once he began, possibilities emerged that took him away from the order of the original script, and the final cut features over 40 temporal transitions.
- The film is referred to in the Seinfeld episode "The English Patient", where the character Elaine is shunned by her friends and co-workers for disliking the film.
