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When Saltburn was released in the fall of 2023, it immediately drew comparisons to several literary works that have been adapted for the screen. Some critics described it as this generation’s The Talented Mr. Ripley, pointing to the 1955 novella by Patricia Highsmith as one source of inspiration. In Highsmith’s novella, adapted into a movie starring Matt Damon and Jude Law in 1999, a dangerous young conman strikes up a friendship with the son of a wealthy American shipping magnate in Italy. Their relationship, marked by both fraud and flirtation, ultimately yields grave consequences. 

Other critics compared Saltburn to Brideshead Revisited, a 1945 novel by Evelyn Waugh that was adapted into a TV series in 1981 and a film in 2008. Waugh’s novel follows a young Oxford student in the 1920s who accompanies a wealthy fellow student to his family’s palatial home, named Brideshead. Others more daringly drew parallels to Dracula, Bram Stoker’s 1897 gothic horror novel that has had an outsized legacy on the big screen. Emerald Fennell herself endorsed this latter interpretation during a post-screening Q&A held at the Academy Museum in Los Angeles, describing Saltburn as a “vampire movie.” Though there are no supernatural elements in Fennel’s film, its protagonist Oliver Quick seems, in a more metaphorical sense, to “feed” upon the magnetic Felix Catton, with destructive consequences for Felix and his family.  

Though Saltburn is not an adaptation of a novel, it is a movie that is deeply engaged with literature and literacy, both in its influences and in its many allusions to major works in canon of English literature. When Felix tells Oliver about his family’s background, Oliver notes that the Cattons sound like something from a novel by Evelyn Waugh. Many of Waugh’s novels, including the previously discussed Brideshead Revisited, focus upon members of the English aristocracy as they adapt, or fail to adapt, to the rapidly changing cultural climate of the 20th century. Felix, however, surprises Oliver by claiming that Evelyn Waugh in fact based many of his characters on members of his family. Here, and elsewhere in the novel, allusions to literary works establish the class background of characters. For Oliver, Waugh’s novels represent a remote world of privilege and opulence. Felix, however, was raised in the aristocratic environment of these books. At Saltburn, he casually points to an incredibly valuable copy of Shakespeare’s Folio lying around in his father’s library, another sign of his family’s lineage and wealth. Conversely, Oliver, Farleigh, Felix, and Venetia all read a shared copy of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, helping to establish the film’s setting in the summer of 2007, when the novel was first released.  

Familiarity with literature also serves as a marker of class, education, and cultural background throughout the film. During breakfast at Saltburn, for example, Felix mentions to Oliver that his family had just been discussing “that Shelley biography.” Pamela, confused, thinks that Felix is referring to a mutual acquaintance, and Sir James impatiently informs her that they are talking about the Romantic poet Percy Bysshe Shelley, who died in 1822. Here, Pamela’s lack of familiarity with the poet marks her as an outsider. Though Oliver does not share the Catton’s aristocratic background, he demonstrates both his education and his ability to keep up with them by recognizing the reference and even correcting Farleigh, who mistakes Shelley for another romantic poet, Lord Byron. In Saltburn, literature proves to be another way of gauging socioeconomic class and education.  

The literary work that plays the largest role in Saltburn is Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream. When the Cattons decide to throw a birthday party for Oliver, they select the play as the party’s costume theme, decorating the grounds of Saltburn with props and scenery reminiscent of the forest where the play is set. In Shakespeare’s play, several groups of people from different social classes find themselves in a forest ruled over by magical fairies. As these various groups mix, and the play’s subplots come together, Shakespeare presents a chaotic jumble of disguises, transformations, role-reversals, and false-identities. In Saltburn, Oliver engages in the kind of “role play” that characterizes much of the play, assuming a false background and performing the role that he thinks is expected of him. When the dust settles, Oliver finds himself, yet again, in a new role, as the owner of Saltburn.  

 

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