by Sally Shafto
for senses of cinema

The work of some filmmakers seems regularly nourished and sustained by painting and art history. In the immediate post–war period, there was a flush of films about artists, including several by the young Alain Resnais, in an attempt, so it is thought, to bolster belief in the eternal value of great works of art. Starting with Stanley Kubrick’s Barry Lyndon in 1975, a new era in cinema-painting relations began as filmmakers increasingly referred to painting – Jean-Luc Godard’s Passion (1982), Derek Jarman’s Blue (1993), and Wim Wenders’ The End of Violence (1997), to name a few. The filmmakers, Jean-Marie Straub and Danièle Huillet, although long interested in the painter Cézanne, never cited an overriding interest in the cinema-painting dialogue. In a 1987 interview with Jacques Aumont and Anne-Marie Faux, Jean-Marie Straub commented:

Today you can’t read a shooting script without finding things like: ‘I would like a light like in a Vermeer painting,’ But it’s not possible: no filmmaker can make films under these conditions! […] This perpetual reference to painting is frightening. (2)

The French word Straub used for frightening is effrayant. His long-time collaborator, Danièle Huillet, goes even further, calling cinema’s referencing to painting a sign of film’s decadence. (3) Nor are these filmmakers particularly interested in exhibiting in a museum, as Godard, Agnès Varda and Chris Marker have all done, even though the first of their Cézanne films was commissioned by the Musée d’Orsay and the second was inspired by Cézanne’s visit to the Louvre. (4) In fact, Jean-Marie Straub has said that he doesn’t even like museums and that he wants to flee after half an hour in one. (5) What then is the source of their interest in Cézanne?

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