«I chose Riccardo Scamarcio because he is as unpleasant as the director. I see Pasolini’s Accattone in his paintings. Today he could be a fororeporter ». Reality and fiction
«In the world of cinema they asked me, but why do you take Riccardo Scamarcio as Caravaggio? He is unpleasant, he has certain positions taken … But why, I replied, was Caravaggio nice? This is why I chose it », says Michele Placido.
They are moonless nights between narrow and dangerous alleys. A tavern in dim light, crossed by blades of light that are razor-cut. It already looks like a painting of him. At the Film Festival it is the day of The shadow of Caravaggio (out on November 3 for 01). Naples, 1609. Against the backdrop of a staging that possesses the splendor and misery of the Baroque age, continuous fights take place in the slums. Daggers, blood. “I wanted a dirty, neorealist film, lived-in scenes and not lacquered,” says Placido.
Then he appears, the painter who paints the truth: the pain of humanity, the miserable, the thieves and prostitutes, the poor christs, his saints who are street children, Pasolini before Pasolini. «He was a mystic, I see him in his paintings Beggar, the villages. Today he would be a photojournalist ». He put the people before the powerful, a new world broke in. And then Rome and therefore priests, aristocrats, “in the hustle and bustle of an infamous life”. Scamarcio sees the painter as “a rock star of painting, he reminds me of the cursed life of Elvis Presley”.
He says he has points in common: «We are two provincials who have arrived in Rome, moved by authentic passions. I saw his energy and fever in the eyes of Michele Placido. I tried to return it. ‘
The muse depicting his Madonna is Lena, a prostitute, Michela Ramazzotti. He lives like a stray dog, Champion in getting into trouble, is waiting for the papal pardon that would cancel the beheading for murder. His fate is in the hands of the marquise, Costanza Colonna, a widow with a lewd behavior, is the protector who had a love affair with the painter: the splendid Isabelle Huppert: «He identified himself in his rebellion and transgression, he was a Shakespearean character: good, evil, justice. But there is also Dostoevsky in the legitimacy of the rebellion ». In the cast we also find her daughter Lolita Chammah: she is Anna Bianchini, a courtesan with auburn hair.
In an imaginative and personal story, Placido carves out the role of the effeminate cardinal Del Monte, an art collector who has always protected the painter: «His art was opposed because it made us think, it awakened consciences».
The director imagines that Pope Paul V, to study that hothead, entrusts himself to a messenger, Louis Garrel, a servant of power once said: «He is a fundamentalist priest. There is the contrast between the beauty of those paintings and the legends of violence that flourished around him ».
He shows himself obtuse to the pictorial talent of Artemisia Gentileschi and to that of a man who portrays himself on the shield of a Medusa’s head with his eyes wide open, as if out of their sockets. It is that servant who is the shadow of the title, it is he who investigates the anarchic, impulsive, rebellious artist. Garrel is an injection of intelligence: “We are all reactionaries, like the shadow. Faced with the avant-garde, social and artistic; on impulse we say no, things are not done like this, before it was better … The shadow is fascism and conformity that arise from fear. I asked myself: what is fascist about me? I have many things. And I recited the shadow like this ».
The Roman churches did not give permission for the shooting. Placido: «I sent the script, they gave it back to me. So I turned to the Neapolitan churches, twins of the Roman ones, managed by private associations ».
The soundtrack is by Placido’s wife (the only “unforgivable” thing: for a film about beauty, he showed up wearing short German socks!). Federica Luna Vincenti is also a producer: the film cost 14 million. It is the last link of the many films on Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio: the biopic in 1941 with Amedeo Nazzari who said: “My career begins today”; the tv series with Alessio Boni; the hypnotic gaze of Derek Jerman, between symbols and surreality, Silver Bear at the Berlinale in 1986; the art film on Sky with the voice of Manuel Agnelli.
Caravaggio was a mystic and a carnal. His homosexuality is a peripheral issue. He rather he loved women, who here are bold, never submissive, free, passionate. With Isabelle Huppert, it could only be like this.
© Time.News
October 18, 2022 (change October 19, 2022 | 11:00)
© Time.News