The Adventures of Baron Munchausen

The Adventures of Baron Munchausen is a 1988 film directed by Terry Gilliam, starring John Neville (as the Baron), Sarah Polley, Eric Idle, Jonathan Pryce, Oliver Reed, Uma Thurman, Robin Williams and a great many more.

Background

Baron Munchausen is a character from The Surprising Adventures of Baron Munchausen (or Baron Münchhausen's Narrative of his Marvellous Travels) by Rudolf Erich Raspe - a collection of tall stories published in 1785, based on the German adventurer Karl Friedrich von Münchhausen, but with many debts to earlier works. The tales were adapted and re-published in German by Gottfried August Bürger in 1786 as Wunderbare Reisen zu Wasser und zu Lande, Feldzüge und lustige Abenteuer des Freyherrn von Münchhausen and became much more popular in this edition.

Related Topics:
Rudolf Erich Raspe - Tall stories - Karl Friedrich von Münchhausen - Gottfried August Bürger

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The stories were also made into films in 1911 (Les Aventures de baron de Münchhausen), 1943 (Münchhausen, script by Erich Kästner), 1961 (Baron Prásil) and 1979 (Tot samyi Münchhausen by Russian director Mark Zakharov). Gilliam's film has many visual similarities to the 1943 version and the production company was legally obliged to add a disclaimer to the film's posters and closing titles to the effect that Gilliam's Munchausen was an original movie unconnected to the earlier version.

Related Topics:
Erich Kästner - Mark Zakharov

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Quite unusual for a Terry Gilliam film, the movie ends on an upbeat note, without Gilliam's usual trademark "final dark plot twist".

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Taglines: Remarkable. Unbelievable. Impossible. And true. It's all true! We've got the film to prove it!

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