Fine Art Films: Cinema Paradiso's Gallery of Great Painters

The first commercial feature about a painter to be directed by a fellow artist, Julian Schnabel's memoir of Jean-Michel Basquiat has divided opinion. Numerous critics praised it for its evocation of the New York art scene in the early 1980s, while there was universal acclaim for Jeffrey Wright's pugnacious performance as the teenage graffiti artist who burned brightly before being extinguished by heroin at the age of 27. Yet Wright has questioned the manner in which Schnabel turns the spotlight away from Basquiat through the alter ego character played by Gary Oldman. So, perhaps the best way to appreciate Basquiat's personality and achievement is to view this biopic in conjunction with friend Tamra Davis's documentary, The Radiant Child.

The winner of seven Césars, Martin Provost's life of French primitive painter Séraphine Louis is a thought-provoking treatise on deceptive appearances, treacherous celebrity and unendurable isolation. Yolande Moreau excels as the free spirit who is shunned by the residents of Senlis, as she performs menial chores to afford the materials she requires for her gloriously colourful pictures of flowers and fruit. However, the dramatic focus falls on her relationship either side of the Great War with gay German collector Wilhelm Uhde (Ulrich Tukur), as her trust in his acceptance corrupts her innocent attitude to both her life and art. Impeccably designed by Thierry François, this masterpiece is photographed by Laurent Brunet with a deceptive simplicity that matches Séraphine's own style.

It's impossible to watch this stylised recreation of tubercular Italian artist Amedeo Modigliani's last months without being moved by the fact that both leading man Gérard Philipe and the two directors involved with the project, Max Ophüls and Jacques Becker, would be dead within two years of its completion. Screenwriter Henri Jeanson was so disappointed with Becker's fantasia that he removed his name from the credits, while Jean-Luc Godard claimed 'everything rings true in this totally false film'. The scenes centring on Modigliani's relationships with aristocratic poet Beatrice Hastings (Lilli Palmer) and bourgeois art student Jeanne Hébuterne (Anouk Aimée) are engrossing, if conventional. But the insights into the demeaning disparity between the artist's toil and reward add humanist grit.

Seven years in the making and containing around 65,000 frames that were individually hand-painted by some 125 artists, Dorota Kobiela and Hugh Welchman's innovative investigation of Vincent van Gogh's last days in the French towns of Arles and Auvers-sur-Oise references over 130 of the artist's most cherished canvases. Following the efforts of Armand Roulin (Douglas Booth) to deliver a letter, the flashbacking structure recalls Orson Welles's Citizen Kane, as the postmaster's son becomes increasingly convinced that the anguished Dutchman was the victim of murder rather than suicide. The storyline is consistently intriguing, while the attention to detail in the rotoscoped images ensures that the first oil-painted animation in screen history is often deeply moving and overwhelmingly beautiful.

Hammer stalwarts Peter Cushing and Christopher Lee took small roles in John Huston's lavish adaptation of Pierre La Mure's novelisation of the short, sad life of Henri Toulouse-Lautrec. But fellow horror star Vincent Price was less than impressed with its 'sentimental soap opera'. Huston was less concerned with the facts of Toulouse-Lautrec's excruciating childhood and adult struggles with alcohol and unrequited love, however. He wanted to translate the vibrancy of his art into sensual imagery and invited celebrated photographer Eliot Elisofon to help cinematographer Oswald Morris use filters to tone down the sharp contrasts of the Technicolor stock. Yet, while production designer Paul Sheriff and costumier Marcel Vertes won Oscars for their exceptional contributions, Morris wasn't even nominated.

Even though Timothy Spall spent two years studying Joseph Mallord William Turner's elusive style, rarely has the act of creation played such a minor part in an art biopic than in Mike Leigh's illuminating portrait. Such is cinematographer Dick Pope's majestic use of light, however, that his widescreen imagery evokes the incandescent pre-Impressionist ephemerality that seems so at odds with the social gaucheness of the inarticulate, cantankerous and reclusive Londoner, whose home life was as complicated as his relationship with the denizens of the Royal Academy, who were so perplexed by his radical style. Struggling to understand his own talent as his light fades, Spall is outstanding and thoroughly deserved his Best Actor win at Cannes.

Making his first postwar film, Kenji Mizoguchi seemed to have settled for a safe topic in adapting Kanji Kunieda's novel about 18th-century artist Kitagawa Utamaro (Minnosuke Bando), who was feted for his bijin okubi-e studies of female beauty. Yet, by contrasting the court-approved methods of kano with the bold ukiyo-e style that Utamaro employed in his paintings and woodblock prints, Mizoguchi was able to smuggle political messages about contemporary Japan past the censors imposed by the occupying American forces. Moreover, in focusing on a courtesan, a geisha, a peasant, an artisan and an artist's daughter, Mizoguchi drew comparisons between Utamaro and himself, as each was known for his empathy with the lost souls dwelling in the capital's Floating World.

Given the excellence of Charles Laughton's performance, some might be surprised not to see Alexander Korda's Rembrandt in this slot. But Peter Greenaway's ingenious speculation on Rembrandt van Rijn's motives for painting 'The Night Watch' is not only gripping in itself, but it also comes with a ready-made companion piece in Rembrandt's J'Accuse, in which Greenaway delves more deeply into this 1642 masterwork. Himself an accomplished painter and art historian, Greenaway is in his element as he posits that Rembrandt (Martin Freeman) was goaded into exposing the crimes of his sitters by their nouveau riche arrogance. But he also considers the artist's domestic arrangements with an atypical compassion that is almost as captivating as the exquisite tableaux.

As a painter himself, director Derek Jarman was perfectly placed to collude with production designer Christopher Hobbs and cinematographer Gabriel Beristain in recreating the chiaroscuro that characterised the canvases of Michelangelo Caravaggio. The subdued lighting reinforces the sombre mood, as Caravaggio (Nigel Terry) lies on his deathbed in Porto Ercole in 1610 and reflects upon his youth (when the aspiring artist is played by Dexter Fletcher) and his often tempestuous relationships with married models, Ranuccio Thomasoni (Sean Bean) and Lena Antognetti (Tilda Swinton). Exploring the extent to which art can convey lived experience and emotional truth, this is as much an academic dissertation as a period drama. But the blend of performance, passion and poetry is potent and compelling.

When 20th Century-Fox bought the rights to Irving Stone's biographical novel, Fred Zinnemann was slated to direct Charlton Heston as Michelangelo and Laurence Olivier as Pope Julius II. However, production delays saw Rex Harrison don the papal robes and Carol Reed call the shots on a meticulous reconstruction of the Sistine Chapel on a soundstage at the Cinecittà studios. Despite playing down Michelangelo's homosexuality, the scenario is laudably historically accurate and a hint of the off-screen tension between Heston and Harrison informs their disputes over the ceiling frescoes. Contemporary critics were lukewarm. But the drama is consistently involving, as Michelangelo battles his doubts and demons, while Jack Martin Smith's sets and Leon Shamroy's cinematography remain imposingly impressive.