Cinematography technique · used in 6 films
Composing and lighting shots to echo specific paintings, or building sets in which characters step inside famous artworks. The frames feel like historical art come to life.
Examples
Ingmar Bergman · 1957
Gunnar Fischer's photography keeps arranging people in tableaus, still compositions that look like medieval illustrations. You see silhouettes against the sky, processions and the chess game at the edge of the sea. The look tells you this story belongs to the history of images as well as the history of events.
Where to see it: The opening. Death and the knight are at the shore, in a composition that recalls a medieval church painting.
Ridley Scott · 1977
Scott has said he tried to match the lush look of Barry Lyndon, which echoed naturalistic paintings of its time. The last scene references paintings of Napoleon in exile. The images feel like museum pieces, which gives the violence a strange calm.
Where to see it: Final scene: Feraud walks alone through the woods, a shot that references paintings of Napoleon in exile.
József Gémes · 1984
The look follows 19th century Romantic painting, according to the Hungarian National Film Institute. Battles and crowd scenes are staged the way a painter would stage them.
Where to see it: Battle scenes: Armies and knights are framed in wide, painterly compositions that feel like a history painting come alive.
Akira Kurosawa · 1990
An art student steps into Van Gogh's paintings, and Martin Scorsese plays Van Gogh. The crew even replanted a barley field with wheat to match Wheatfield with Crows. You walk through the art as if it were a real landscape.
Where to see it: Crows. The student chases Van Gogh through his paintings and ends up in the wheat field as a flock of crows takes off.
Mamoru Oshii · 2004
The gynoids are based on the ball-jointed dolls of the artist Hans Bellmer, which Oshii saw at an exhibit in New York. Their stiff, doll-like bodies make the question of whether they have souls feel physical.
Where to see it: The ghosted gynoids: Batou investigates the gynoids that malfunctioned and discovers that they held human consciousnesses copied into dolls.
Ridley Scott · 2023
Scott and Wolski have said they took cues from period painters such as Jacques-Louis David and Eugene Delacroix. Wide, carefully lit frames of crowds, uniforms and ceremonies feel like paintings that moved.
Where to see it: The coronation: The pope crowns Napoleon as Emperor, but Napoleon places the crown on his own head.
Questions