Trivia for
Atonement (2007) More at IMDbPro »

• The small English town of Redcar stood in for the French city of Dunkirk.
  
  
• Both Emily Watson and Kristin Scott Thomas were approached to play Emily Tallis.
  
  
• Abbie Cornish was considered for the role of Briony - 18 years old but backed out due to scheduling conflicts with Elizabeth: The Golden Age (2007).
  
  
• The 4.5 minute long take through the Dunkirk beach scenes took under 5 takes to film.
  
  
• The celebrated 5 1/2 minute tracking shot was done in four takes (the third one was used). It was conceived out of necessity, for the crew only had a day to film and had limited time with the 1,000 extras and had to shoot before the tide would come in and wash away the set.
  
  
• Shooting the five minute Dunkirk beach scene was arguably the toughest portion of shooting. The shooting schedule dictated that the scene must be completed in two days. However the location scouts report indicated the lighting quality at the beach was not good enough until the afternoon of the second day. This forced director Joe Wright to change his shooting strategy into shooting with one camera. The scene was rehearsed on the first day and on the morning of the second day. The scene required five takes and the third take was used in the film. On shooting, Steadicam operator Peter Robertson shot the scene by riding on a small tracking vehicle, walking off to a bandstand after rounding a boat, moved to a ramp, stepped onto a rickshaw, finally dismounting and moving past the pier into a bar.
  
  
• Director Cameo: [Joe Wright] Appears during the lengthy tracking sequence on Dunkirk beach.
  
  
• Romola Garai shot her scenes in 4 days.
  
  
• The Dunkirk street scenes and generator room scenes were filmed on Grimsby Docks.
  
  
• Joe Wright had wanted Keira Knightley to play the role of Briony in her late teens, but Knightley immediately liked the character of Cecilia, and also wanted to get away from playing girls on the brink of womanhood and play a more mature character for once.
  
  
• James McAvoy considered the script the best he had ever read.
  
  
• The opening film of the 2007's Venice Film Festival. Director Joe Wright, at 35, is the youngest director to have a film open this prestigious event.
  
  
• Local government in Redcar gave permission for a bandstand to be erected and for a shipwreck to be placed on the beach for authenticity. A number of houses along the beach front were painted to suit the era. The cinema, which looked the part already, merely had an advertisement painted on the side of the building to complete the set dressing. Everything was undone after filming was complete and Redcar seafront now looks like a normal seaside town again.
  
  
• The locals of Redcar, who served as extras in the Dunkirk scene, were paid 50 pounds.
  
  
• The set of Dunkirk, built at Redcar, was the most expensive set, costing an estimated 1 million pounds.
  
  
• Release prints were delivered to theaters with the fake title 'Saturday' (which is the title of author Ian McEwan's subsequent, though unrelated, novel).
  
  
• As Robbie is hauled off by the police and his mother frantically yells "liar" while running up the road, Briony peers from a staircase landing through a window decorated with figures in stained glass. The figure in the window Briony stares through is labeled Matilda. This is an allusion to a famous children's poem by Hilaire Belloc entitled "Matilda", whose first line runs, "Matilda told such dreadful lies, it made one gasp and stretch one's eyes". By the end of the poem, Matilda has burned to death, having called wolf one time too many.
  
  
• Briony's appearance next to the stained glass window featuring Saint Matilda, may also be a reference to the saint's status as patron of falsely accused people.
  
  
• The green dress which Keira Knightley wore in the film has been named "the best of all time" by InStyle magazine, exceeding some classics as Audrey Hepburn's little black dress in Breakfast at Tiffany's (1961), Marilyn Monroe's white dress in The Seven Year Itch (1955) or Vivien Leigh's red dress from Gone with the Wind (1939).
  
  
• This was the last HD DVD release by Universal Studios.
  
  
• Keira Knightley is 3 years younger than Romola Garai but played her older sister.
  
  
• According to a BBC article, in order to achieve one aspect of the film's extraordinary visual style, Christian Dior stockings were stretched over the camera lens to achieve a soft focus.
  
  
• Joe Wright conducted three weeks of rehearsals beforehand, ensuring that by the time the cameras rolled all the actors were comfortable with their characters and the environment(s) they inhabited. Vanessa Redgrave noted that "Saoirse Ronan and Romola Garai and I did some improvisations on body language, among other things, for Briony. Joe - who is brilliant with actors - was able to pick and choose what he wanted focused on during the filming."
  
  
• Filming of the film's three sections was done almost entirely in sequence.
  
  
• Only eight U.K. military ambulances from WWII remain, and Atonement made use of them all.
  
  
• Post-production took nine months.
  
  
• For scoring, Dario Marianelli reconvened key Pride & Prejudice (2005) collaborators, including - to perform the score he composed - the English Chamber Orchestra.
  
  
• Richard Eyre was originally attached to direct the project. However, as time passed he became busy with another film project and stage play. The producers and himself decided that, if they could find a director they all approved of, he would hand the project over. Joe Wright was found.
  
  

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