New Season of Art-Themed Movies Fails To Paint the Full Picture

An upcoming series of films at downtown Manhattan repertory cinema The Metrograph, “The Lives of the Most Excellent Painters,” gets its title from a mid-16th century book by the renaissance painter and architect, Giorgio Vasari. Less a scrupulous historian than a pitchman with little shame, Vasari also placed sculptors and architects under consideration, but, on the whole, privileged the art of painting. He saw it as a divine pursuit best exemplified by his friend and mentor, Michelangelo. Why a movie about Il Divino hasn’t been included in the Metrograph’s line-up, I don’t know. Too three-dimensional, maybe, and too bad because Andrey Konchalovskiy’s “Sin” (2019) is epic in every sense of the word, capturing the fortunes and follies of a tempestuous figure who proved hapless in the face of competing interests. Nor should we forget Charlton Heston in his hairy-chested prime struggling to polish off the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel in Carol Reed’s “The Agony and the Ecstasy” (1965).When it comes to painting, the big screen tends to favor outsized personalities and troubled temperaments. A lot of excitement can be occasioned by putting brush to canvas — that is, after all, why we value painting — but watching someone putting brush to canvas is another matter. The Metrograph points up the solitary nature of painting against the communal endeavor that is filmmaking. “Which,” the venue’s nameless scribe writes, “perhaps explains the fascination that the practice of one holds for practitioners of the other.”There are stellar pictures the Metrograph could’ve been slipped in the program. Alec Guinness’s overbearing showmanship is a mixed blessing, but his take on the irrepressible Gully Jimson in Ronald Neame’s adaptation of the Joyce Cary novel, “The Horse’s Mouth” (1958), has some truths to tell. Charles Laughton may ham it up as the title character in Alexander Korda’s “Rembrandt” (1936), but the film is rich in contextual flourishes; a real knowledge of 17th-century Dutch painting informs the proceedings. Speaking of Dutchmen, “Tim’s Vermeer” (2013), a documentary directed by Teller of the magic duo Penn and Teller, follows one man’s attempt at divining the Sphinx of Delft’s techniques and, with that, his magic. Does he succeed? Not by a country mile, but it’s a fun and fascinating watch.There are worthwhile pictures on the docket. Henri-Georges Clouzot’s “The Mystery of Picasso” (1956) is a grand feat of showmanship. Working hand-in-hand with Picasso, Clouzot invented a means by which the viewer could watch a painting come to fruition seemingly on its own accord. Utilizing a semi-transparent screen and an array of specialized inks, Picasso would create an image whose progress would be filmed from the reverse side. The painter both played to and teased the director’s expectations by indulging in some vexing back-and-forth. It’s a fantastic film.Fans of the Japanese director Kenji Mizoguchi like to play up analogies between the auteur’s travails and those of the 17th-century artist Kitagawa Utamaro when mulling “Utamaro and His Five Women” (1946). Mizoguchi did have to do some feinting-and-dodging under the American occupation just like Utamaro had to pay the piper for depicting historical figures in a less than salubrious light. But I suspect Mizoguchi’s admirers make the comparison in the attempt to rationalize what is, essentially, a maundering soap opera about misguided love. Utamaro, played by Bandō Mitsugorō, is relegated to a supporting role in what is ostensibly his story. A beautiful film in many ways, but decidedly off-topic.The director Vincent Minnelli thought “Lust for Life” (1956) was his best film, which places such indelible cinematic ventures like “Cabin in the Sky” (1943), “An American in Paris” (1951) and “The Band Wagon” (1953) where exactly? The adaptation of Irving Stone’s 1934 biographical novel of Vincent van Gogh is lush in its trappings and Kirk Douglas, a veritable doppelganger for the troubled Dutchman, gives more of a low-key performance than you might think. Douglas is especially good when the erstwhile painter undergoes a spate of madness.Kirk Douglas promoting ‘Lust for Life.’The best scenes come early on when Vincent the wanna-be clergyman tries to bring solace to the downtrodden only to end up alienating the church fathers. When he arrives in the City of Light to lodge with his brother Theo (James Donald, very good), the movie turns increasingly to cheese. Still, cheesiness has its attractions, particularly when bit players are given leeway to bloviate as the painters Camille Pissarro and Georges Seurat. Anthony Quinn charges into the movie as Paul Gauguin and pulls the post-Impressionist rug from under the feet of both Minnelli and Douglas to distracting effect.Whether “The Lives of the Most Excellent Painters” truly is “a collection that puts to shame those in the Prado, the Hermitage, or the Louvre” is up for debate. But for this haimish venue on the Lower East Side, it ain’t bad.

New Season of Art-Themed Movies Fails To Paint the Full Picture

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