Rembrandt

Charles Laughton's moving performance highlights Alexander Korda's biopic Rembrandt, a fine film that, after reading the Wikipedia entry on Rembrandt, is also fairly historically accurate. Films about painters, like writers, can be problematic since watching a man put paint to canvas is not in itself thrilling, but this is one of the best of its kind I've seen.

From 1936, Laughton stars as the famous Dutch painter. We first meet him at the height of his fame and fortune, but his beloved wife dies. He then takes a commission to paint a portrait of guild members, and the result scandalizes everyone (the painting, which is today known as "Nightwatch," was in reality very much acclaimed from the beginning). Rembrandt angrily sticks to his artistic principles, which means he soon wallows in poverty.

Meanwhile, his housekeeper, evilly played by Gertrude Lawrence, sinks her hooks into him. Korda uses some horror-film shadows to make her look even worse, and there is the not-so-subtle implication of sexual contact. After a disastrous trip to his father's farm in the country, Rembrandt returns and falls in love with a much younger maid, Elsa Lanchester. Lawrence tries to destroy them, but they live poorly but happily, but when doctors start showing up we know what's going to happen.

Laughton is absolutely brilliant. He looks just like Rembrandt's self-portraits, and captures both the uxoriousness and artistic temperament of the man. He's given many soliloquies, mostly quotations from the Bible, ending with a quotation from King Solomon. I know I'll never look at another painting by Rembrandt again without thinking of this film.