Plot
Mr. Neville (Anthony Higgins), a young and arrogant artist and something of a Byronic hero, is contracted to produce a series of 12 landscape drawings of an estate by Mrs. Virginia Herbert (Janet Suzman) for her absent and estranged husband. Part of the contract is that Mrs. Herbert agrees "to meet Mr. Neville in private and to comply with his requests concerning his pleasure with me." Several sexual encounters between them follow, each of them acted in such a way as to emphasise reluctance or distress on the part of Mrs Herbert and sexual aggression or insensitivity on the part of Mr Neville. Meanwhile, whilst living on the estate, Mr. Neville gains quite a reputation with its dwellers, especially with Mrs. Herbert's son-in-law, Mr. Talmann.
Mrs. Herbert, wearied of meeting Mr. Neville for his pleasure, tries to terminate the contract before all of the drawings are completed and orders Mr. Neville to stop. But he refuses to void the contract and continues as before. Then Mrs. Herbert's married, but as yet childless, daughter, Mrs. Talmann, who has apparently become attracted to Mr. Neville, seems to blackmail him into making a second contract in which he agrees to comply with what is described as her pleasure, rather than his — a reversal of the position in regard to her mother.
A number of curious objects appear in Neville's drawings, which point ultimately to the murder of Mr. Herbert, whose body is discovered in the moat of the house. Mr. Neville completes his twelve drawings and leaves the house. But fatefully he returns to make an unlucky thirteenth drawing. In the evening, while Mr. Neville is apparently finishing the final sketch, he is approached by a masked stranger, who is obviously Mr. Talmann in disguise, who is then joined by Mr. Noyes, Mr. Seymore and the Poulencs, a pair of eccentric local landowner twins. The party accuses Mr. Neville of the murder of Mr. Herbert, for the drawings can be interpreted to suggest more than one illegal act and to implicate more than one person. After he defensively denies such accusations, the group ask Mr. Neville to remove his hat. He agrees mockingly, at which point they hit him on the head, burn out his eyes, club him to death, and then throw him into the moat, at the exact place where Mr. Herbert's body was found.
Read more about this topic: The Draughtsman's Contract
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