Mona Lisa
| Program section: | Special Screenings |
|---|---|
| Directed by: | Neil Jordan |
| Year: | 1986 |
| Country: | USA |
| Length: | 104 min. |
| Cast: | Bob Hoskins, Cathy Tyson, Michael Caine, Robbie Coltrane, Clark Peters and others. |
Screening:
- 20. 8. 2026 | 14:00 - Cinema Sokol Č. Šternberg (below castle - Sokolovna) / CZ subs /
Production: HandMade Films, Palace Productions
Script/Based on: Neil Jordan, David Leland
Director of Photography: Roger Pratt
Score: Michael Kamen
The British neo-noir Mona Lisa, not very well known in Czechia, is celebrating the 40th anniversary of its premiere this year. The film is sometimes described as a response to Martin Scorsese’s thematically similar Taxi Driver (1976), because in both films a morally ambivalent protagonist forms a protective bond with a young prostitute. Irish director Neil Jordan (The Company of Wolves, The Crying Game, Interview with the Vampire) very successfully captured the seedy underbelly of London during the height of Thatcherism. Bob Hoskins (known to NFF attendees from Who Framed Roger Rabbit) was cast in the lead role, and his task was to portray as accurately as possible – in Jordan’s words – “an utterly ordinary contemporary hero, the mug who is lost in a maze of guile, the big heart with the slow brain, the one with the child’s eyes, who believes too much.” Hoskins won numerous awards for his brilliant performance (a Golden Globe, a BAFTA, Best Actor at the Cannes Film Festival). (mh)
