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Join today<\/a><\/p>\n \n Already a member? On paper, Orlando<\/a> seems to be one of those unfilmable texts. Virginia Woolf<\/a>\u2019s tale of an Elizabethan nobleman who time travels across four centuries of British society, and wakes up one morning as a woman, is a lot to put on screen. Even tougher to capture is Woolf\u2019s voice: witty and ravishing, and frankly too leisurely for cellulose. Harvey Weinstein, then one of Hollywood\u2019s most powerful producers, recognised the ambition of such a task, saying he admired \u201cthe guts\u201d of Sally Potter, who had pitched her adaptation to him back in the 1980s. He ended up rejecting it. <\/p>\n The film is screening at London\u2019s ICA next week (25 October) as part of the Celebrating Free Thinkers festival, marking The Independent\u2019s 40th anniversary. In 2026, Orlando \u2013 inspired by Woolf\u2019s romance with the writer Vita Sackville-West, whom the author once admiringly described as \u201cmustachioed\u201d \u2013 feels more germane than ever, a work of social satire and feminist fantasy that preempted conversations about gender identity by more than three decades; this was an adaptation that set a new blueprint for filmmaking with its daring casting. The book remains not only timeless but prescient, as though forever casting a line into the vast future. Swinton, who played the titular androgyne in a breakthrough role, once said she re-reads it every four to five years, and every time, as if by magic, it \u201csomehow, reliably, keeps reflecting back each phase of my life at me, leaf by leaf\u201d. <\/p>\n It is almost impossible to imagine anyone but Swinton playing Orlando. The role seems practically made for the actor, who is also chameleonic and apparently ageless. That said, at that time, casting a single performer, albeit a famously androgynous one, to span genders and centuries challenged standard Hollywood casting protocol about sex and period-piece continuity. Here was a visual manifestation of the way Woolf\u2019s book interpreted gender as something fluid and porous \u2013 a belief that finds a most succinct expression in the moment when Orlando wakes from a five-day slumber to discover that he is, all of a sudden, inhabiting a woman\u2019s body. Turning to the camera, fully nude, Orlando addresses the audience: \u201cSame person, no difference at all. Just a different sex.\u201d <\/p>\n It\u2019s the way the world responds to Orlando that shifts, ways that differ between every epoch \u2013 \u201cthe spirit of the age\u201d, as Woolf called it. The Oscar-winning costumes of Sandy Powell reinforce that idea some more, making clear that any preconceptions we have of \u201cmasculine\u201d or \u201cfeminine\u201d appearance are, when you get down to it, merely a performance. Whether wearing the ruff collars of the Elizabethan era, the petticoat breeches of the 1700s or the minimalist pantsuit of the 1990s, Orlando remains Orlando. The clothes, it turns out, do not maketh the man. Or the woman. <\/p>\n Equally pivotal was the casting of Queen Elizabeth I, the virgin queen who, in Potter\u2019s adaptation, becomes so enamoured with Orlando\u2019s beauty that she bestows him with immortality, telling the young nobleman: \u201cDo not fade, do not wither, do not grow old.\u201d It was a role that, according to Swinton, \u201call the dames of the realm had been proposed to play\u201d \u2013 but one that went to 83-year-old author and raconteur Quentin Crisp, a gay icon and \u201cthe true queen of England\u201d. Crisp\u2019s camp and wry performance as the arthritis-stricken royal added another layer to the film\u2019s commentary on gender, as did his public persona as a gay man. That Crisp came out as a transgender woman years later adds to the film some more. <\/p>\n Swinton once called Orlando \u201ca magic mirror of a book\u201d \u2013 and in doing so evoked the ultra-personal nature of what it means to any one person. It goes some way in accounting for the differing takes on Woolf\u2019s book and by extension Potter\u2019s film. Some, including Jeanette Winterson, have theorised that Orlando is the first English-language trans novel. Others, like Swinton, interpret its meaning less literally. The actor told The New York Times in 2019 that \u201cit\u2019s about inevitable, perpetual change being the only thing that we can rely on, and it\u2019s about identity being positively negligible\u201d. Keen to broaden its meaning past any gender-specific interpretation, Swinton hypothesised that had Woolf continued her book for another thousands pages, Orlando could easily have turned into a mouse.<\/p>\n To this day, Orlando remains a vital text, and Potter\u2019s adaptation of it a vital film in its own right \u2013 fantastical in its world-building and futuristic in its outlook. To borrow a phrase from Crisp\u2019s Elizabethan monarch, it is not a film that will fade, wither, or grow old anytime soon.<\/p>\n \u2018Orlando\u2019 is screening as part of The Independent\u2019s first ever film season at the Institute of Contemporary Arts (ICA) on 25 October<\/a>. \u2018Celebrating Free Thinkers\u2019 will mark the paper’s 40th anniversary celebrations with a series of specially curated events and screenings. Independent Members get 20% off all tickets. For more information, visit https:\/\/www.ica.art\/films\/the-independent<\/a><\/p>\n
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The coveted role of Queen Elizabeth I went to \u2018the true queen of England\u2019, 83-year-old author and raconteur Quentin Crisp (\u00a9 Curzon Film 2026)<\/p>\n