Skip to main content
Filmarian
All films
Poster for The Draughtsman's Contract
Sign in to rateBe the first to rate
+ write a review
Released
1982 · FILM

The Draughtsman's Contract

“A landscape of lust and cunning.”

Directed by
Peter Greenaway
Written by
Peter Greenaway
Runtime
108 min
ComedyDramaMystery

Synopsis

R. Neville, a young and assertive draftsman, is employed to create a dozen landscape illustrations at the estate of Mr. Herbert and his wife, Virginia. In addition to payment, the arrangement includes a sexual relationship offered to Neville by Virginia while her husband is away on a trip. However, when Mr. Herbert's murdered body is found at the estate, strange clues discovered in Neville's drawings begin to reveal the identity of the killer.

Credits

Actors
Editor
Director of Photography
Writers
Director

Related titles

No curated related titles yet. Use the edit affordance to add "More from this director", "Same franchise", or "Adaptation source material" entries — every change goes through the wiki review queue.

How many hands made this film

The scale of the collaboration

Principal cast & crew: 16

These are the principals we have on file — the full crew ran to the hundreds. Every film this size was made by far more hands than any credits list ever names.

Why a floor?

This is a minimum, not a total. We only count the credits we’ve captured so far, and coverage is uneven — a blockbuster might show a few hundred names while another of the same size shows a couple dozen. The real crews all ran into the thousands. The number here only grows as full credits are enriched — so we frame it as a floor, never a headcount.

Craft leads on file

Edited by John WilsonShot by Curtis ClarkScored by Michael Nyman

Box Office

1982 · Box office

💰 Box-office hit — grossed 6.1× its budget

Why 2.5×?

Cinemas keep roughly half of every ticket sold, and a wide release’s marketing often costs about as much again as the film — so a movie needs to gross around 2.5× its production budget just to break even theatrically. It’s a rule of thumb, not the studio’s ledger (home video and streaming come later).

Worldwide gross

$2.3M

Budget$371K
Worldwide gross$2.3M
break-even (2.5×)

Also known as

  • Der Kontrakt des Zeichnersde
  • The Draughtsman's Contracten
  • Meurtre dans un jardin anglaisfr
  • I misteri del giardino di Compton Houseit

Community tags

Be the first to tag this page — tags appear right away. Try a theme, capability, or subject (e.g. WWII, heist, slow burn, time travel, A24).

Help complete this page

We’re missing mpaa rating, logline. Sign in to add what you know.