Roman Polanski's 1999 The Ninth Gate is superior horror hybrid that just misses greatness. Almost everything clicks in a strange thriller that presents unpredictable surprises almost all the way through. It has a basic detective story plot, except that Polanski's seeker of information is a rare book expert well acquainted with shady deals. The story takes us on a complicated quest to exotic locales. And the star Johnny Depp guarantees a fair shot at mass popularity.

Dean Corso (Depp) is a slick New York book appraiser fond of fleecing his customers; we see him overestimating the value of a collection, and then buying a rare Cervantes edition for a song. The vastly wealthy occultist Boris Balkan (Frank Langella) hires Corso to acquire various copies of a rare book said to be a tool for summoning the Devil. Corso is almost immediately caught up in intrigues with Liana Telfer, the widow of the owner of one copy (Lena Olin), a pair of Spanish bookbinders (both played by Jose Lopez Rodero, a noted second unit director) and other European book collectors. Corso is alarmed to discover that some of the collectors have taken their superstitions to extremes, especially after his bookseller Bernie (James Russo) is murdered in his own shop. But Balkan rebuffs Corso's request to drop the case. Most disturbing of all is a Girl (Emmanuele Seigner) that seems to be following Corso wherever he goes -- and protects him when things get dangerous.

The Ninth Gate begins with several scenes involving the rare book trade, an attractive world where specialized knowledge is everything. Corso keeps a low profile as he bookworms his way from one collection to another, cleverly raking off big profits. But even he is intimidated by Boris Balkan's collection of Devil books, locked in a glass vault in his high-rise headquarters. Corso is a more down-to-earth Indiana Jones, faulted by his willingness to take on crooked jobs for a big payday. He's Philip Marlowe, librarian extraordinaire.

The story soon spins off into a macabre thriller with connections to horror movies as diverse as Curse of the Demon, The Seventh Victim and Lisa and the Devil. Boris Balkan is a closet necromancer with grand ambitions to acquire unheard-of supernatural powers. He's convinced that the legend is true, that the book was co-written by The Devil and contains "nine gates" to power. The supremely sinister Liana Telfer may be a leader of a strange group of wealthy, decadent devil worshippers; instead of the devout Satanists of Rosemary's Baby or the Greenwich Village coffee-klatch in The Seventh Victim, Telfer's followers convene as a sort of naughty sex club.

The Lisa and the Devil connection is made explicit in Corso's trip to an ancient Spanish city, with its little shop sequestered in a narrow alley. Starting with subtle differences discovered in illustrations in copies of the demonic book, Corso finds himself confronted by a conspiracy that carries hints of the uncanny. His best friend is found hung upside down, as in a familiar Tarot illustration. Other contacts turn up dead, including Liana Telfer's husband, who committed suicide immediately after selling his copy of the book to Balkan.

As a thriller The Ninth Gate must walk a tightrope between the supernatural and a straight paranoid thriller -- something akin to Mr. Arkadin. And this is where the film finally gives out. Corso has an amusingly cynical sexual encounter with Liana Telfer, who may or may not be behind various hit men engaged to kill him and/or retrieve the book. The first sign of the fantastic at work comes through Emmanuele Seigner's "The Girl", a vagabond who shows up at a Manhattan lecture, on a French train and just happens to be present to rescue Corso from various attacks. On the Seine riverbank, Seigner reveals herself as some kind of spirit person, either an angel or a demon. She "flies" through the air to defeat a thug attacker.  ¹

The best extra is Polanski's relaxed commentary, in which he talks about the film and the casting and many of his directorial and story choices, including the ending.  ²   He also voices interesting opinions on subjects like storyboarding, marketing and special effects: the film is filled with dozens of undetectable effects shots. The movie was edited on an Avid non-linear film composer, which leads to a terrific discussion of the process. Polanski says that the Avid is faster but it also enables the director to tinker with cuts and to review older versions of scenes ad infinitum, which can be counter-productive. The ability to "keep making it better" can become a limiting illusion: Making it better can be the enemy of making it good".

Footnotes:

1. Emmanuele Seigner is of course Roman Polanski's wife, the star of his earlier Frantic, a great picture given short shrift by critics. Since Seigner's French adventuress in Frenzy died on the banks of the Seine, it's almost as if her character here is that woman's reincarnation ... cinematically, that is.
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