The Mandrake Root

A comedy by Niccolò Machiavelli
A Movie by Malachi Bogdanov

Malachi Bogdanov translated the play from a 19th century Italian publication of La Mandragola, giving the dialogue a more contemporary feel than in the source material. However, it does remain faithful to the text, although the majority of comic inventions, particularly in the visual humour are entirely Malachi’s.

The working title was La Mandragola – The Mandrake Route. It was simply a choice to title the movie The Mandrake Root rather than the more common title of The Mandrake, but there are a number of translations of the play which use either title.

+ Click here for the shooting script PDF >>
+ Click here for the transcript PDF >> coming soon.
+ Click here for the draft schedule PDF >>

The final draft of the script, version 5, was used as the shooting script. Essentially it is the same as the rehearsal draft, version 4, but developed during the two week rehearsal process when Malachi worked with actors as an ensemble cast. While this is an unusual method of working in film, the process of rehearsal is central to Malachi’s comedy. As the rehearsals took place immediately before the shoot, it did create problems for the production team as the choice props and occasionally location would change as the rehearsals developed.

The actual text which appears on the screen has some differences from the shooting script due to decisions by Malachi and the actors to shift the emphasis of a line or phrase. The most notably changes are the shortening of the Prologue and the shifting of the Road Sweepers from their original position, both decisions made during the editing process. It was intended to shoot a number of scenes inside a church, however, due to the subject matter and the reputation of Machiavelli it was impossible to find a church that would agree and after the start of shooting it was decided to move these scenes to the steps of a church a few metres from the square.

Originally it was hoped to shoot the movie in sequence, but due to location problems, weather and ongoing road works, it was shot out of sequence. Ongoing noise problems form building work required that the schedule was constantly revised during the 14 day shoot. A sample of the shooting schedule is provided here, but eventually there were so many revisions no definitive schedule exists.

The transcript provided here was produced after completion of the movie and has been used for the subtitling of the film in English and other languages. It is used for the foreign language dubbed versions but again some variance exists due to the performance needs to make the dialogue work in another language.

Niccolò Machiavelli 3rd May 1469 – 21st June 1527

Now most famous for his political handbook The Prince, which was not published until after his death. La Mandragola was enormous hit for Niccolò Machiavelli in the 16th century. Having fallen from favour with the ruling elite following his defence of the Florentine republic against the Medici’s, Machiavelli’s political career was at an end and he turned to writing comedies to make a living.The Prince is still considered to be a relevant book on political and business life and is taught in Business Schools across the world. Due to the publication of The Prince, Machiavelli was denounced by the Vatican and subsequently become one of the most notorious names in medieval history.