Probably the least likely book you’d buy to read on the beach is The Name of the Rose a debut novel by a professor of semiotics and was a densely plotted medieval murder mystery set in an Italian monastery. And yet it sold 50 million copies and remained on Best Seller lists for several years. A huge tome of a book it would seem unlikely, despite its sales, that it could be made into a film and yet for director Jean-Jacques Annaud that’s exactly what he wanted to do and visited the books author Umberto Eco to pitch the idea that he was the right man to make the film having had a lifelong interest with the medieval church despite having no belief in God himself.

The Name of the Rose story….

Set in 1327 the film followed a respected Franciscan friar William of Baskerville (Sean Connery) and his young novice Adso of Melk (Christian Slater) arrive at a remote Italian abbey to attend a theological debate. But their visit takes a dark turn when monk is found dead under mysterious circumstances. Using his sharp intellect and powers of deduction, William suspects foul play and embarks on his own investigation. When more of the religious men meet their maker, in increasingly disturbing ways; fear and superstition grip the abbey. With tensions rising, the Church enlists the revered inquisitor Bernardo Gui (F. Murray Abraham), an old adversary of William, to uncover the truth. In a race against time, William must unravel the deadly conspiracy hidden within the abbey’s walls before more lives are lost.

Getting The Name of the Rose cast….

Annaud spent several years getting the film together and was initially dead set against Connery in the role feeling he’d bring too much ‘007’ to the role and in fairness in 1983 he had revisited the role that had made him famous in 1983’s ‘Never Say Never Again’. But Connery’s career had been in a slump for most of the early 1980’s but it was a role he wanted and the actor turned up at Annaud’s office and performed five pages which immediately convinced the director to cast him though the studio were still against it. As Connery’s movie sidekick Christian Slater was cast in no small help to his mother who was a casting agent and encouraged him to audition. Rounding out the main cast was F Murray Abraham hot off his Oscar winning role in Amadeus (1984) and joined by Ron Perlman who had worked with Abraham in theatre but had appeared in Annaud’s 1981 film ‘Quest for Fire’. For Perlman it was very late minute casting having been rung up in the US in the middle of the night by the Europe based production which was now shooting that he had the role but only if he caught the first plane out there which departed in 7 hours time. His role was especially challenging as it required heavy prosthetic for the mentally challenged character who nonetheless was able to speak 7 languages conflated into one. There were no specific lines for him and so he took seven copies of the book in different languages and took words from each to construct his lines.

The film was a co-production between several European countries and was shot in a very cold Germany location where an impressive monastery was constructed on a hill before the interiors were shot in Italy before it was released in the Autumn of 1986.

Audiences reaction was mixed. In the US it did not perform at all well perhaps because of its setting and plotting, perhaps because of a sex scene between Slater and a young girl but in Europe it performed far better and it won two BAFTA awards – one for Connery and the other for Make Up and in Annaud’s native France he would win a Cesar for Best Foreign Film.

Those bonus features…..

The brand-new collector’s set is presented in a stunning rigid slipcase with new artwork by Liza Shumskaya, a 120-page book with new essays and comes complete with an array of special features including a new commentary, cast and crew interviews and much which includes:

– Dual format edition including both UHD and Blu-ray with main feature and bonus features on both discs

• UHD presented in HDR with Dolby Vision
• New audio commentary by James Marsh
• Audio commentary with director Jean-Jacques Annaud
• Charm of Humanity: a new interview with Jean-Jacques Annaud
• A Boy and His Dog: a new interview with actor Christian Slater
• Bringing the Mustard: a new interview with actor Ron Perlman
• Liquidating the Disk: a new interview with writer Andrew Birkin
• The Abbey of Crime: Umberto Eco’s The Name of the Rose

Limited Edition Content

• Rigid slipcase with new artwork by Liza Shumskaya
• 120-page book with new essays by Eugenio Ercolani and Gian Giacomo Petrone, Francesco Massaccesi,

Sam Moore, Gregory Mucci, Dan Schindel and Nadine Whitney

• Six collectors’ art cards

At its heart The Name of the Rose is a good old fashioned murder mystery and as has become the norm with Second Sight releases it has been accorded the now expected lavish extras and the interviews see the director and cast’s own fascinating retrospective views of the film and its making. As with every Second Sight release this is one of those films that might have been unfairly overlooked without their usual attention to detail and the film remains both intelligent and stunningly realised adaptation of a challenging novel.

related feature : Sir Sean Connery – OBITUARY

related feature : Toby-Alexander Smith on A Murder Between Friends, working with Joan Collins & life after EastEnders

Here’s the trailer……

The Name of the Rose is released on 4k UHD & BLU-RAY on 10th August 2026