Homage to Chagall

Rating:
Summary: The Painter as Poet, Describing Life's Magic
Review: In 1978, the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation's production of "Homage to Chagall" was nominated for an Academy Award in the Best Documentary category. All these years later, this affectionate film by director Harry Rasky still inspires with its almost drunken praise of this painter.

Chagall was born in 1887, in the Russian village of Vitebsk, to working-class Jewish parents. By 1911, he had moved to Paris, becoming successful as a painter and acquiring a degree of fame for his unique talents. Chagall's Hasidic ancestry contributed to his mystical reverence for life and characteristic incorporation of Biblical themes into the majority of his paintings.

This 127-minute film opens with interview footage featuring Marc Chagall, then near his 90th birthday, sitting in his garden in the South of France. His second wife, Valentina, serves as his translator. The interview, which shows Chagall reflecting on his art, recurs at various points throughout the documentary in short segments usually lasting only a minute or two.

The core of the work consists of narrator James Mason relating the biography of the artist accompanied by imagery from over 100 of Chagall's paintings. The paintings are rarely showed in their totality, however. A camera mounted on an animation stand shoots fragments of the paintings with a range of impressionistic motion and these shots are then intercut with other stills of relevant painting detail. Joseph Wiseman also reads excerpts from Chagall's letters and poems at critical moments within the narrative.

"Homage to Chagall" is a hymn to the generous love of the artist for his subject matter. As the painter calmly relates: "It is only through love that we manage to live out our poor lives". This magical documentary is essential viewing for all fans of 20th-century art.

Rating:
Summary: Old But Cool
Review: More a droll comedy of manners than a horror movie. Similar to the fright flicks of Val Lewton ("Cat People", "Body Snatchers", Seventh Victim"), it's more amusing and thought provoking than actually frightening. Menace is implied, rarely shown. Lots of coded gay references and digs at sexual repression by the director, James Whale (profiled in the recent "Gods and Monsters"). Simpathetic, appealing perfs by Melvyn Douglas, Charles Laughton, Gloria Stuart and a hilarious,eerily convincing turn by Boris Karloff as a violent simpleton.

Rating:
Summary: Old But Cool
Review: More a droll comedy of manners than a horror movie. Similar to the fright flicks of Val Lewton ("Cat People", "Body Snatchers", Seventh Victim"), it's more amusing and thought provoking than actually frightening. Menace is implied, rarely shown. Lots of coded gay references and digs at sexual repression by the director, James Whale (profiled in the recent "Gods and Monsters"). Simpathetic, appealing perfs by Melvyn Douglas, Charles Laughton, Gloria Stuart and a hilarious,eerily convincing turn by Boris Karloff as a violent simpleton.