When Virginia Woolf first penned Orlando: A Biography she did not think to consider who might be chosen to play Orlando in a film adaptation and if it would be the same person to play him/her as both a man and a woman. It is very interesting that Sally Potter chose to you one actress to portray Orlando in both sexes. Tilda Swinton did an astounding job of playing both genders, convincing me that she was a man for the first half of the film so much so that I was almost surprised when she revealed her female body.
I think this casting choice only added to the film because it really drove home the point of how easy it is sometimes to overlook gendered differences and then how obvious it is when you’re confronted with it like when male Orlando tells Sasha that she has to stay with him because he loves her and then female Orlando is propositioned the same offer and finds it repulsive.
The film would have been drastically different if a man had been cast to play Orlando in both sexes. A male actor portraying a woman would not have been very convincing to viewers and probably would have been laughed at and not taken very seriously. Swinton’s androgynous look accounts for how easily she could play a convincing man and woman.
Although casting choices are usually not something that add much to the context of the film, Orlando would have been a much different movie if two actors had split the role.
How do you think the film would have been different if Orlando was played by a man throughout the film? Or even a less androgynous appearing woman?
I think that the movie’s casting was really interesting. From the article we read about Orlando & screening the movie, I think one of the most important points the film was trying to convey was that there could be a dialogue human existence that transcended gender. Orlando’s character stays the same throughout the movie; we see the character’s love of poetry both when Orlando is a man and a woman. Because Tilda is so androgynous, the film could really establish that gender is socially constructed – all that mattered in terms of how Orlando was perceived was clothing and how others reacted to the presence of him as a male and her as a female.
This is a really good point to discuss. Rarely do we discuss what the director’s purpose was when casting a specific actress, or in this case a certain sex, for a role. When you mentioned this point, this reminded me of the line in the film from the beginning which said something along the lines that males desire to have feminine attributes, such as a delicate and slender physique. So in this case, it made sense that Orlando (as a man) be played by a woman to achieve this look.
Also, did anyone take note that the Queen was played by a man? I think this plays into the fact that, a desirable look at the time was that of a slim and primped female, and that the old Queen was in the form of an elderly man, suggesting that having attributes like an elderly man is something less desirable for women, but is inevitable due to aging.
I think that the overall message of this gender casting is that regardless of what the sex of the actor is, they can perform a certain gender. In both characters, Orlando and the Queen, we never question their gender because they perform (they are literally actors, doing their job which is acting) their assigned gender appropriately.