Reception
The Wind and the Lion debuted in New York during May 1975 and Britain in October. It received considerable industry recognition, including Academy Award nominations for best music and best sound. Jerry Goldsmith's score also was nominated for the Grammy and the British Academy Film Awards. Additionally, the Writers Guild of America nominated Milius' screenplay. The film was also a financial success, though Steven Spielberg's movie Jaws distracted attention from it.
Shortly after its release, the movie was screened at the White House for President Gerald Ford and his staff, who reportedly loved it.
The film has also gained considerable recognition in the Islamic world for its accurate, detailed, and sympathetic depiction of Berber and Islamic culture.
Milius' next projects were uncredited dialogue in Jaws (also in 1975) and direction of Big Wednesday, a surfing film released during 1978.
A novelization of the film by Milius was published by Award Books in January 1975. Based on the screenplay, the story is slightly different from the finished movie, with several additional scenes (notably, Eden Perdicaris taking a bath at Raisuli's palace and Gummere watching the Atlantic Squadron arrive in Tangier) included, and the story's chronology slightly different. The first printing included a chapter about production events and brief biographies of most of the cast and crew.
Read more about this topic: The Wind And The Lion
Famous quotes containing the word reception:
“I gave a speech in Omaha. After the speech I went to a reception elsewhere in town. A sweet old lady came up to me, put her gloved hand in mine, and said, “I hear you spoke here tonight.” “Oh, it was nothing,” I replied modestly. “Yes,” the little old lady nodded, “that’s what I heard.””
—Gerald R. Ford (b. 1913)
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“To the United States the Third World often takes the form of a black woman who has been made pregnant in a moment of passion and who shows up one day in the reception room on the forty-ninth floor threatening to make a scene. The lawyers pay the woman off; sometimes uniformed guards accompany her to the elevators.”
—Lewis H. Lapham (b. 1935)