"When murder is the motive, seduction is the last defense."

"The case is a dog. The defendant is a pig. And the law is an ass"

Summary:

This film was released in the UK as "Hour of the Pig;" it was released as "The Advocate" in the USA. It's the 15th Century. Europe is changing.The Middle Ages are transcending into Renaissance. In France in 1452, a Parisian lawyer Richard Courtois leaves Paris for the simpler life in the country. Instead he discovers that there is as much corruption and class prejudice in the villages as he had encountered in the city. Courtoise's failure to successfully defend a woman who is charged with being a witch is dispiriting enough... but then he finds himself defending a pig against the charge of murdering a young boy. When Courtoise finds there has been a rash of killings involving local Jewish children, he smells a rat. The subplots include Courtoise's tenuous relationship with the powerful local monsigneur; there is the priest who seduces the housewives that come to him for confession; there is the disillusioned, aging prosecuting attorney, who urges Courtoise to return to Paris; and also Courtoise's forbidden love for the Gypsy woman, the owner of the accused pig. Eventually the lawyer returns to the capital, having learned that cynical sophistication is not so easily evaded.

Colin Firth was in trouble–and not just because the 1995 BBC drama he was starring in revolved around a pig accused of murder. No, the problem was not the plot. The problem was the leading lady: a half-pig, half-boar named Gwinny who was, to put it delicately, no Babe. "Gwinny had tusks," says her owner, Joe Henson of England's Cotswold Farm Park. "She had already bitten another actor twice." As Firth, playing a medieval attorney defending the swine, entered an old London dungeon to shoot the first scene with his temperamental costar, Henson stood close by in case the beast needed soothing. She did not–not by him at least. Firth sat down next to Gwinny and began talking to her. "Then he started scratching behind her ear, and she literally rubbed up against him and laid down with her head in his lap. The pig," says Henson, "fell in love with him." 

In quiet moments, she even slept on Firth's feet.

(Movie)

Memorable Quotes from "The Advocate / The Hour Of The Pig":

Albertius: In a world where nothing is truly reasonable, nothing is truly mad.

[Richard is nude and embarrassed.]

Maria: Don't worry, I have brothers.

Full credits here

The film was released in the UK as "Hour of the Pig;" it was released as "The Advocate" in the USA.

Runtime: UK:117 min / USA:102 min

Country: France / UK

Language: English

Color: Color (Rankcolor) 

Sound Mix: Dolby SR

Certification: UK:15 / USA:NC-17 (original rating) / USA:R

MPAA Rating: R (Restricted: under 17 requires accompanying parent or adult guardian)

Also Known As (AKA): 

	Writer/director Leslie Megahey [left in above picture] about the film: "My film is a very unusual story. When I first started thinking about it, I realised this is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity, something as new as this falls into your lap, an historical period so unusual and so closed, and I hope the film will reflect that. There were lots of animal trials in the Middle Ages. Some of them were ecclesiastical: an animal would be tried, and then ex-communicated or anathematised for destroying a harvest. But most of them where civil cases, resulting from an animal running amok and destroying property or killing someone. The animal's defence was paid for by the state, and it was kept in the same prison as humans while awaiting trial. The law said all prisoners had to be treated in the same way and be given the same food, and that was applied to the animals as well." [Stockholm Film Festival, 1994] Megahey chose his leading pig carefully: "I avoided the nice, fat P.G Wodehouse kind of pig. I wanted a pig with sinister potential." Sally, a cross between a wild boar and a Tamworth pig, fitted the bill perfectly: "You look into her eyes and you don't know what is behind them, just that strange, direct stare." [The Times, Januari 1994] * Alongside his own filmmaking, Leslie Megahey has been producer, executive producer or editor of many prestigious series on British television. He was appointed Head of Music and Arts for BBC Television in 1988.

Release Dates 

Filming Locations 

DVD details 

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Goofs 

Posters   

Music: "Quant Voi en la Fin D'este" Written by Perrin D'Agincourt

Performed by the St. George's Canzona.

Production Company/Company Credits 

Cast:

Some information courtesy of The Internet Movie Database.

Also with thanks to the Colin Firth Career Timeline