A misleading portrait of the artist as a tragic hero

ferdinand1932

While this film looks good it has the values of a pop clip which is indicated by the use of music: either it's from the wrong era (Edith Piaf)and just a French cliché, or just new age nonsense.

But the biggest problem is the film deceives the audience with a tragic story and portrayal of the artist which is not true. Furthermore Andy Garcia's performance emphasizes the unfair tragedy, as it is serene: as if the world has pitched everything against him.

The real Modigliani was a very disturbed, self-destructive and unpleasant man. He was an addict, alcoholic, prone to violence - against women and Jeanne too - who despite all that, could paint pictures. His brain chemistry and personality would have been changed from years of abuse. In the last year of his life, as this film is set, he was emaciated, eating only rarely, and toothless. Not an attractive thing to look at on a movie screen. Real poverty and addiction is not.

In the last weeks of his life he had been drinking very heavily and went home where the tubercolar meningitis and alcoholism caught up with him but he still insisted that Jeanne give him more to drink. The perils of an addict. He ate just sardines, and the account is his clothes and mattress were smeared in sardine oil.

At his end he was not beaten but found by a neighbor in his apartment with Jeanne cuddled beside the comatose painter. They had been in that position for 2 days.

He was taken to a hospital and died. Jeanne saw him later, with her father, and it is said by witnesses that she did not kiss Modigliani. She screamed. There was no farewell scene, nothing tender just the death of a junkie, albeit one who painted well. If that had been on screen it would have knifed an audience by its power.

No one has deciphered Jeanne well: impressionable young woman, devoted, or perhaps a bit mad like the rest of Modigliani's circle of painters.

When she committed suicide she underlined Modigliani's life (the value of his paintings rose 800% overnight) and our complicity in enjoying tragic stories about artists.

This film has several defects, and its final one is the dedication to the daughter of Modigliani and Jeanne, who herself, died in 1984 and had an unhappy life. It's a smug gesture.

This film is probably about an artist, but it is not about Modigliani.

score 1/10

ferdinand1932 24 May 2008

Reprint: https://www.imdb.com/review/rw1879737/