The Name of the Rose (film) The Name of the Rose (film) The Name of the Rose is a 1986 Italian-French-German mystery historical drama film directed by Jean-Jacques Annaud, based on the book of the same name by Umberto Eco. Sean Connery stars as the Franciscan friar William of Baskerville and Christian Slater is his apprentice Adso of Melk; they are called upon to solve a deadly mystery in a medieval abbey. As an old man, Adso of Melk recounts how, in 1327, as a young Franciscan novice (a Benedictine one in the novel), he and his mentor, Franciscan friar William of Baskerville, traveled to a
The Name of the Rose title "Adso of Melk", but that was vetoed by his publisher, and then the title "The Name of the Rose" "came to me virtually by chance." In the "Postscript to the Name of the Rose", Eco claims to have chosen the title "because the rose is a symbolic figure so rich in meanings that by now it hardly has any meaning left". The book's last line, translates as: "the rose of old remains only in its name; we possess naked names." The general sense, as Eco pointed out, was that from the beauty of the past, now disappeared, we hold