SOURCE: Greenaway, Peter, and Don Ranvaud. “The Belly of an Architect.” Sight & Sound 56, no. 2 (summer 1987): 193–96.

In the following interview, Greenaway discusses The Belly of an Architect and the importance of the characters and the setting in the film.

Peter Greenaway's new film [The Belly of an Architect], which opens in London in the autumn, relates the confrontation in Rome of two architects, one of whom is a historical figure, the other a fictional character. The historical figure is Etienne-Louis Boullée (1728–99), a visionary French architect whose latent influence can be detected in the neo-classical monumentality of the twentieth century Fascist style; and the fictional character is Stourley Kracklite (Brian Dennehy), a middle-aged American who, like Boullée, has received few commissions and who has come to Rome to organise a large-scale exhibition of his predecessor's work. As the film unfolds, Kracklite finds even this project slipping away from...