Portrait of the artist as a collection of clichés

fuente-2

This more or less completely useless film is hopelessly stuck in a romantic (as in 19th century) view of the artist as a lonely, struggling genius. The film (if not its subject's life) is a catalogue of clichés: The miserable childhood, the penniless adulthood, the difficult love life, the threat of insanity, the critical incomprehension, the refusal to 'sell out' (possibly the most long-lived of romantic clichés, it's still thought to be relevant in the world of rock and roll) and the god-damned post mortem vindication are all present and accounted for. Add to this lookalikes of the usual suspects of Paris between world wars - Cocteau, Picasso, Gertrude Stein etcetera - and an audience with the godlike Auguste Renoir (courtesy of Picasso) and you get this: Two hours of rehashed ideas trying to convince the viewer of an artist's originality by equating him with every stereotyped image of the troubled genius. This extreme conventionalism is hardly suited to the memory of an unconventional artist like Modigliani, is it?

score 2/10

fuente-2 20 April 2005

Reprint: https://www.imdb.com/review/rw1063960/