THE LUZHIN DEFENSE, based on Vladimir Nabokov’s novel of the same name, examines the effects of love and obsession. Director Marleen Gorris, best known for her Academy Award winning film ‘Antonia’s Line’, was attracted to these themes and on working with the material: “What interested me is how a man is incapable of living with two passions. I both wrote and directed my first four films and in those scripts I said all that I needed to say - for the moment, that is. After that, I wanted to face the challenge of working on somebody else’s material, as I did in ‘Mrs. Dalloway’. What attracted me to THE LUZHIN DEFENSE in the first place was to show how two passions could tear a man apart.”

Having presented Gorris with the first draft of the script, Caroline Wood, Stephen Evans and Louis Becker, the film’s producers, met with her two years ago and discussed working together. Says Gorris: “It was a fine experience working closely with Peter Berry [the screenwriter]. Our collaborative process was immensely stimulating. Like most of the novels Nabokov wrote in Russian, ‘The Luzhin Defense’ is not as widely known as it should be. Peter’s script adds events and details to the novel and produced an intriguing script that interested me from the first time I read it."

Born in 1899 in St. Petersburg, Vladimir Nabokov left Russia when revolution came and spent much of his life living on the Continent, largely in Berlin, where he came to be seen as one of the foremost Russian émigré writers. His best-known novel, ‘Lolita’, brought him worldwide fame and notoriety establishing him as one of the major and most original prose writers of the twentieth century. In 1940, he moved with his family to America where he held various academic posts. He died in 1977.

Says Gorris: "The film interweaves several stories in a non-linear way. Modern audiences are quite sophisticated at viewing films and most can quite easily predict a plot’s development because they have become attuned to how a story is told. Deviating from that expected pattern makes for an unpredictable and hopefully a more interesting film. In THE LUZHIN DEFENSE, the character of Luzhin is thrown into turmoil by his love for Natalia. Nothing in his past – his loveless childhood and his passion for chess – has prepared him for it. Connecting past and present, the known and the unknown, from the onset of the film was a problem that attracted me throughout. Then there was the thriller element embodied by Valentinov, the menacing link between Luzhin, the boy prodigy, and Luzhin the adult grandmaster. This seized my imagination from first reading the script. Translating all these strands into a coherent whole was an invigorating challenge that confronted me from beginning to end."

With the script for the film in place, the filmmakers knew that they would be able to attract a high calibre cast. Caroline Wood, Director of Development at Renaissance Films and the film’s producer comments: “It was a joyful experience, because everybody we showed the script to loved it. With a fantastic cast on board we were able to finalise the financing as a British, French and Italian co-production with Renaissance putting in the bulk of the money against foreign sales in the remaining territories.” THE LUZHIN DEFENSE was filmed during the autumn of 1999, over eight weeks on location in Italy and Hungary.

Gorris is delighted with the results of casting the two lead roles: "I have been very fortunate with both Emily and John. Putting the two together was a wonderful combination. There is a great chemistry between them and as good friends they work together very well. The love story has evolved brilliantly as a result of their obvious connection."

The character of Luzhin fascinated John Turturro. "When I read the script I thought it was very good. Luzhin is a very hard character although the flashbacks help to show from where he has developed. As a listless, apathetic boy he couldn’t connect with his parents, but once he got his chess pieces it was like love at first sight and he found a way out.” Gorris adds: “It’s at chess that Luzhin comes into his own and is at his strongest. The main problem with the life he leads is that he cannot combine chess with any other world, although he spends much of the film making an effort to do so."

Turturro’s interpretation and preparation for the role fascinated Gorris. “John has really put his mark on the character of Luzhin to the extent that I cannot imagine him portrayed in any other way. He is a tremendously concentrated actor and brought to life the spiritual world that Luzhin lived in throughout shooting.”

Turturro himself feels that the original novel helped him to explore and develop the role. “I recognised some of Nabokov’s voice in Peter Berry’s writing and read the book a number of times. The book is about the inside of his mind, it’s more of a chess game, less dramatic, but there were some useful ideas for me in there, since it’s a very well drawn character, which Peter has brought to the screen very successfully."

Turturro also read a number of chess books: “I’m now at a good beginners stage and it’s a great game but it’s so complex. I think that the fact that I have had experiences other than acting has helped me. Certainly directing and editing a film ensures that you deal with a number of processes at the same time, putting all the pieces together to make this big breathing body. Chess grandmasters know so many games and they can see so many moves ahead that when you play as a novice you realise how limited you are, unable to think in such a free, conceptual way."

Emily Watson partly took the role of Natalia due to Turturro’s attachment to the project. Says Turturro: “I worked with Emily on ‘Cradle Will Rock’ and we realised that we like working the same way with each other and off each other. It’s really fun to work like that and I enjoy working with people that I like to be around”. Watson adds: “John is one of the most interesting American actors around. It’s been very exciting watching him work, it’s like being around a whirlwind. He’s slightly terrifying at times because he’s so energised and full of ideas."

Gorris continues, “Emily was my first choice for the role of Natalia. Her intuitive intelligence created a very strong presence in the film. Emily’s moving performance gives an emotional depth to the plot which a lesser actress would not have embodied."

Watson was keen to take on the role of Natalia. “It’s a departure for me in that I’m the one watching somebody having a nervous breakdown. Natalia feeds and supports Luzhin who is spinning off into the wild. It’s also a very sane, centred, amused and healthy character which is unusual for me to play.” She adds: “Natalia is particularly of her time, of a dispossessed generation. She’s independent and modern and has a forward-looking feel about her. She starts off liking the idea of spending time with a genius, but he’s very beguiling and so full of life that I think she very genuinely falls in love with him."

Watson also likes the unusual tone of the film: “You can get seduced into feeling that you’re in this world of the costume drama. It is a period piece, but actually you’re dwelling in Nabokov’s imagination and that’s quite a strange place to be. It’s a very peculiar, odd, dark and funny world that we’ve been able to create in a marvellously collaborative fashion. Everything is up for grabs and every idea is welcome. Nothing is set and I love that."

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