What the real-but-hiden painting is about? - La Belle Noiseuse (1991) Discussion

[–] nudony2 19 years ago

Interesting question. There are two interpretations: one is that the "true" painting represented Frenhofer's "inner turmoil" (the plight of the aging artist who is trying to regain his lost inspiration); the other is that it represented Marianne's "dark side" (she was beautiful but her heart was cold). I'm guessing it was both. As a result, the painting was certainly very "unflattering." Hence Marianne's anger upon seeing it; and Frenhofer's decision to bury it, so as not to expose their "true selves" to the world.
I hope my interpretation helped.

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[–] GodfatherX 19 years ago

First, this whole topic should be marked as a SPOILER, because it gives away the end of the movie.
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About Yier's comment:
Frenhofer does NOT say "...after my death"!
When they brick up the wall, Frenhofer answers Magali's question "How long should I keep [the secret]?" with "Always. Even when I'm gone."

About nudony2's comment:
I think your interpretation is only half true and doesn't quite go far enough.
In my opinion it has nothing to do with Frenhofer's "inner turmoil". I don't even think that he lost his inspiration. I believe, when he startet the painting with Liz 10 years before, he realized where this painting and his search for the truth would lead to and it frightened him so much that he never dared to even try reaching the goal again. Only of course until Marianne came along. But even then in the beginning we can see him not really being determined yet to "go further" (actual words in the movie), because he became a coward.

Liz explains it all so clearly, when she is talking to Julienne (Nicholas' sister) sitting on a tree trunk. Read this little dialog and you'll understand.

[Excerpt from the dialog between Liz and Julienne, copy from the english subtitles on the DVD]
Liz: "Frenho is probably finishing the painting. Marianne'd better not see it when it's over."
Julienne: "Why? What can it do?"
Liz: "Frenhofer won't protect her."
Liz: "I'd been his model for a long time... his favorite model... unique, you could say."
Liz: "First he wantet to paint me because he loved me, and then... Then because he loved me, he didn't want to paint me. It was me or painting, that's what he said."
Julienne: "I don't understand. It wasn't a question of life and death."
Liz: "Why not? They say when you're drowning you suddenly see all your life. All the forgotten memories. In a fraction of a second. Is it really possible to capture a whole life on the canvas of a painting? Just like that... with a few traces of paint. It seems unbelievable, but actually this is what Frenhofer was searching for."
Julienne: "You mean this is something shameless?"
Liz: "Yes that's it... shameless. It's not the flesh that's shameless, it's not the nudity...it's something else."
[END Dialog between Liz and Julienne]

In this dialog at first we may not understand what Liz means by "protection". But when Frenhofer shows the picture to Marianne it becomes clear. Not even he as the painter can tell whether the painting is finished. When Marianne asks him - and she asks him twice, Frenhofer says "Maybe" and finally he says "You'll tell me". Then, when she's looking at it, Frenhofer only watches her reaction. It doesn't get any clearer: He can only tell if the painting is finished and that he went all the way, if he sees Marianne seeing herself, her inner self, her life.

nudony2 describes it in his comment as "Marianne's dark side (she was beautiful but her heart was cold)". I like that, but it goes further than that. I didn't like the word "unflattering" in your comment, because it sounds very shallow and to me it suggests a view that is based on pure optics. I believe the painting is not necessarily ugly looking but furthermore Marianne - and only she - sees the uglyness in her life. She realizes, that Frenhofer saw her without her mask (even only for a moment in the guestroom, when she turned her head and raised her arm in anger towards Liz). Marianne becomes aware of her vulnerability. And maybe - how Liz describes it in the dialog above - she sees her life and all the forgotten ugly memories and maybe mistakes "in a fraction of a second". She was not prepared to see all that in a painting. But Frenhofer couldn't "protect her", because he wouldn't have known if he reached the end of his search without seeing her reaction while looking at the painting.

Later on, when everybody meets in the garden, it is said that "Marianne put on her old mask again...or maybe she took a new one". Hiding the painting was the best possible protection that Frenhofer could give her. Now she can go on as she used to again, but the memory of this experience will always be in her mind. Maybe it will change her in the future piece by piece reflecting these new memories. We will never know. Anyway, that's another painting.

When I watched that movie with my wife, she was very angry, when she found out that we will never see the painting. But it is in exactly this ingenius way how Jacques Rivette accomplishes to let us understand the intensity of that painting. Not by looking at it from our point of view, but by looking at Marianne when she is looking at it from her point of view. Because she is the only person who can really tell the achievement of the painting.

If we wanted to feel the same intensity as Marianne, we would have to look at a Frenhofer painting showing ourselves and not at one showing Marianne.

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[–] samaraX 19 years ago

Very well said...I couldn't agree with you more GodfatherX.
I am not so angry any more...I understand the reason behind never seeing the
painting,and that in itself is ingeneous.

SamaraX

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[–] AllStarAlun 18 years ago

Well said and understood.

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[–] heynow123 18 years ago

Well put, GodfatherX!

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[–] Fred-S 18 years ago

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This series of comments is one of the more interesting I've seen, especially those of GodfatherX.

However... according to comments from director Rivette and writer Bonitzer you are putting far more meaning into this movie than either of them ever did.

It is true that it is Rivette's way of making a film of Balzac's "The Unknown Masterpiece". Rivette said that it began as a joke when someone ask what his next film would be and he told them it would be The Unknown Masterpiece, and if no one went to see it it would really be the unknown masterpiece. When he decided to make it, most of the thought went into how he had to change Balzac's story to make it something other than plagiarism and something that would work on film. The only thing that was a given was that the painting had to show the inner being of the model. Thus, the painting could not be shown to the audience.

Everything else was just made up to make the story work.

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My wife and I were extremely disappointed when we viewed the commentaries on the disc and learned what I just wrote, but it was a great work of cinematic art nonetheless.

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[–] GodfatherX 18 years ago

Wow Ki5440,

I have seen this film quite often in the last ten years and I was very thrilled when it came out on DVD.

BUT, I'm almost embarrassed now, I guess I should have watched this movie with the commentaries at least once. I can't believe I didn't do that yet.

On the other hand: I used to write some poetry in the past, and I always found it interesting that people often interpreted my poems in a completely different way than I originally intended them to be unterstood.
I found myself fascinated to see first hand that often there are many different ways to look at and understand a piece of art than only the one meant by the artist. A lot of times the artist even provokes diverse interpretation by not being as direct or writing in muliple comprehensive levels.

If Rivette wanted us to unterstand only that one meaning, then he would have made it a lot more obvious in the movie. The fact that he left room for interpretation leads me to believe, that ultimately he leaves it up to the viewer how to understand the movie's ending.

...and now I'm going to watch the movie's commentaries!

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[–] Fred-S 18 years ago

GodfatherX - I think you make a very good point. Even though Rivette was adding to, say, Liz's character (because he wanted to give Jane Birkin - clearly the outstanding actor/actress in the movie - a little meat to her part) it is very possible that he was intentionally or otherwise adding meaning that you and others so painstakingly teased from the story.

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[–] Asa_Nisi_Masa 17 years ago

And how the hell do you show that? I mean, you can't purposely create a painting that does that just so it can be used as a prop in a movie, right? I guess it's then inevitable that Rivette and the movie's other makers were left with no choice but NOT to show it, and leave it up to the audience's imagination to see it, or ever "feel" it in their mind's eye. Yet at the same time, whether this was intentional or not, leaving something to others' imagination is often a good way to give your oeuvre extra depth and meaning. It may well be that we've read too much into the movie and gotten all philosophical about it in the process , but surely that's a good thing, too, whether all that extra meaning was intended or not! Thanks for your feedback, btw.

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[–] Asa_Nisi_Masa 17 years ago

If we wanted to feel the same intensity as Marianne, we would have to look at a Frenhofer painting showing ourselves and not at one showing Marianne.

Yes. Excellent point. There is no way that Rivette could have showed us the painting - the whole beauty of the movie would have been up in smoke, IMO.

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[–] jruizs 18 years ago

You need to read Balzac's short story "The unknown masterpiece" where Frenhof is the main character. For some critics, it refers to the first abstract painting in moderrn history. Others says: Balzac's The Unknown Masterpiece is not about abstract art! It is about the destructive power of obsession for perfection. The artist Frenhofer over-paints and touches-up his masterpiece until it is not recognizable as anything but a mess.

An abstract of The Unknown masterpiece: In 1612 the young Poussin appears in the study of Porbus, painter to the service of Henry IV. There he meets the legendary Frenhofer, another old painter. The young Poussin listens the old teacher to criticize a picture of Porbus; later he executes a drawing that receives the praises of Frenhofer and is invited to have lunch in the workshop of the old teacher. There he hears speak of the secret work of Frenhofer, the Belle Noiseuse, in which he has worked during ten years. Wishing to know the Frenhofer's secret work, Poussin returns to house and proposes its young lover, Gillette, to model "for another one" in order to assure the future glory to himself. She sobs but eventually agrees.

Three months later Porbus visits Frenhofer and offers him "as a loan" the young and beautiful lover of Poussin in exchange for allowing them to see its masterpiece . The old one resists, visibly anxious, and says that its picture of Catherine Lescault, the well-known courtisane known as the Belle Noiseuse, never will be exposed to the criticism of the fools. Then Poussin and Gillette arrive. Frenhofer doubts, and finally it allows to compare the alive beauty with his masterpiece. They enter the shop and minutes later Frenhofer calls both painters, after to have determined that no flesh and bone woman can compete with her Belle Noiseuse. When both enter the room they look for the painting without finding it. Frenhofer indicates a linen cloth where they can only see "dough of colors, prisoners of a multitude of strange lines that form a painting wall". After a time they discover the only part of the picture that has escaped to "that incredible and gradual progressive destruction": a foot. After some courteous hesitations, Poussin finishes confessing that it does not see anything on the linen cloth. The old teacher finishes thus recognizing it, labels itself an idiot and lunatic, then call them envious and throws them out of the study. "On the following day, Porbus, anxious, returned to see Frenhofer, and it found out that it had died during the night, after burning all its pictures".

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[–] Krustallos 18 years ago

GodfatherX has it right, I think.

Note also that Nicolas the younger artist is dismissive of the painting - he tells Frenhofer that he has ended his career "making comedies".

Painting in this movie is a stand-in for (at least) two things, one of them being film-making, and Rivette's film-making in particular. After a career making "difficult" movies, some of which ("L'Amour Fou", "Out 1") dealt explicitly with very dark themes such as insanity, Rivette's more recent work was considerably more conventional and light-hearted. Perhaps he is making an apologia for that, and hinting that we don't want to see the things he could really show us about ourselves. And by extension why so much art, and the way we approach life in general, is so shallow.

It reminded me a little of the story within Antonioni's "The Passenger" about the blind man who suddenly gains his sight and is so disgusted by the ugliness of the world that he kills himself.

If you were to sum up the film's message in a single phrase, it would be "You want the truth? You can't handle the truth" (interestingly "A Few Good Men" was released the following year).

By the way, I don't think that's the artist's daughter, it's his servant's daughter.

"I don’t like the term torture. I prefer to call it nastiness."

Donald Rumsfeld

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[–] Asa_Nisi_Masa 17 years ago

This is what I thought it might be about: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0101428/board/thread/61821290

But then, this movie's true meaning seems intended to be left subjective (since it also deals with things - the appreciation of art - which aren't completely rational, but also intuitive). It's as if in part, Rivette left it up to the viewer to catch the true meaning of Piccoli's gesture. Or so I thought...

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[–] pfredmac 17 years ago

This will be a scratch-the-surface comment because I have not yet read Balzac's story: Just as the painting by Frenhofer was revealed, in the story, to be a mess of lines and smudges, as some said "the first abstract painting," the unrevealed painting in the movie gave us a hint - remember when the painter played by Michel Piccoli left it one night to get some sleep, and his wife went to have a look, and she, and we, saw her head partially smudged out by the new drawing, and on top of it all were a garish couple of bright red lines, looking almost like bloody gashes in the canvas. So perhaps this is what the painting was - something of a horror in the painter's mind. Could I have had a bit of the same feeling when I saw this as when I watched the young girl sitting up in bed, slapping the front of her shoulders with crossed hands while saying asa..nisi..masa!

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[–] Lu_tz 17 years ago

"If we wanted to feel the same intensity as Marianne, we would have to look at a Frenhofer painting showing ourselves and not at one showing Marianne."

"Yes. Excellent point. There is no way that Rivette could have showed us the painting - the whole beauty of the movie would have been up in smoke, IMO. "

I enjoyed this movie very much and I agree with your point. However, if Rivette had have been able to show us the picture without the movie going up in smoke. If he had have been able to imbue the picture with more power and meaning than anything the audience could have expected or made up in their mind -in not seeing it- then I think this movie could have been brilliant. Some film makers can do that to you, they can take you as far as the audience thinks their point can go and then throw you over the edge. Rivette only took this movie as far as the audience could go.

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[–] knele_lives 17 years ago

I find it astonishing that a man as sophisticated as Rivette would conclude his film this way. The idea that a painting can reveal the very essence of a human being -- ridiculous! That's why the painting can't be shown -- because such a thing isn't possible, and Rivette knows it. One look at the finished work, and the audience would've been allowed to judge it and not buy into the conceit that the Beart character has just seen her soul revealed. It's an extremely old-fashioned idea, just as the kind of art the Piccoli character is creating is very old-fashioned as well, yet he's venerated in the film as a kind of contemporary master. In my opinion, the film would've worked had it been set in the 19th Century, where it belongs.

Having said all that, I liked the movie very much up until the conclusion. And I'm not trying to suggest that a painting or any other work of art can't be tremendously insightful; I simply have problems with the ideas as they’re presented here. What seemed initially to be an interplay between model and artist ultimately turns into an indictment of the model, against whom the movie is stacked. If only one character had suggested that the Beart character was overreacting or that the painting itself was lacking in some way; but, no, everyone plays right along with the conceit that the master's dangerous game has concluded with his capturing "the truth." The hints of multifacetedness we see in the beginning are something the movie ultimately can’t deliver, and that gives the lie like nothing else to Piccoli’s painting. It’s a cheap shot, and again, very dated.

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[–] PunchB 16 years ago

The story in the movie is of course "abstract."

The painting in the movie can capture the essence of a person (or maybe not necessarily the very essence, but certainly one truth about the subject, one part of her true being) which was devastating for her to see "exposed." But, as another poster said, the theme (or one theme) of the movie was how art can show the raw, brutal truth. Whether or not a painting like the one in the movie could exist is beside the point.

The theme just mentioned is certainly true. Art *can* show the uncomfortable truth. It can actually make us think about things about ourselves that we don't want to think about, and I think the movie raises the extremely interesting question of whether this is ultimately healthy or productive in every case. This has certainly happened to me. I've always searched ruthlessly for the truth, but lately I've begun to suspect that some illusion might be necessary to survive.

In fact, the movie itself demonstrates how this is true, in a meta-way, because the movie itself shows us an uncomfortable truth, about art, about itself.

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[–] knele_lives 16 years ago

Nothing you've said negates my point.

Of course art can show the uncomfortable truth. That goes without saying. We've all been told as much from the day we entered Art History 101 -- the few of us, in these times, who've taken such a class.

From someone like Rivette, I would expect a more sophisticated argument. Perhaps it's true that the model sees herself or, in any case, a facet or version of herself, in the finished painting. But might also her displeasure at the painting have to do with her vanity? Might it have to do with her neurosis? Might it have to do with the artist distorting her in some way so as to feed his own notion of himself as the "truth-teller"?

But none of those possibilities are ever really raised; and the film, which seems so multi-faceted up until the unveiling (or in any case shortly before), ends up telling us what we already know, or those of us with brains enough to have apprehended it long before. Art raises uncomfortable truths. Duh!

Had we ourselves seen the finished painting, we might have been able to wonder a bit more at the reactions of the characters, and even about the thesis you're proposing. (This is, to be fair, the thesis of the film.) Maybe it's only our idea that art raises uncomfortable questions that makes them uncomfortable. Maybe we attribute far too much importance to the insight of "masters" or, in any case, authorities. Maybe the model's boyfriend saw her in a completely different way -- a way that contradicted the artist's authoritarian stamp, even though the boyfriend is young and callow by comparison. But, no, he too ends up seeing “the truth” that's portrayed, along with everyone else. As I said, the movie is stacked, and it's stacked, ultimately, to serve a sophomoric or, in any case, outdated idea.

Is illusion necessary to survival? That's an interesting question, but it's certainly not one raised by this film. It could give a damn less about the model’s survival. It’s come to its decision about her, based on little, just as I could easily come to a decision about you based on “art raises uncomfortable truths.” But I won’t. I don’t know enough. Or maybe I already do.

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[–] PunchB 16 years ago

I'm not going to try to argue with you point by point. I saw this movie a little differently than you. My point was mostly about your claim that the idea that a painting can show the essence of a person is ridiculous. It may be fantastical if taken at face value and applied to the real world, but it was part of the premise of the story as I see it (to be seen as a metaphore more or less).

I don't think the important thing is whether the theme is "something we already know", but how that theme is presented through the telling of the story. It's the delivery more than the message. We may "know" that art can show us uncomfortable truths, but if we've just been told so in class, I would say we don't really know it necessarily. There are many forms and fascets to that thesis, not just a trite fortune cookie message. What I'm trying to say is that it can be explored in many ways, and to me this movie did explore it.

A small point: the boyfriend never saw the painting. Only Marianne, Liz and the child saw it. And very interestingly, the child doesn't react at all when seeing it. She doesn't see the "truth," it seems.

I don't see that the movie is stacked against Marianne. I think the movie does explore the things you mention; how much of the painting was Frenhofer's manipulations and how much was the real Marianne, etc. Liz thought of it as the death of Frenhofer as an artist. His whole life he had been searching for the truth, is this his death because he found it? Or because he only showed a part of it and thereby distorted it? I really need to see it again and get more of the conversations between Liz and Frenhofer.

I'm not really saying you're dead wrong. But to me the movie didn't have many clear answers, and I didn't find it had come to the decisions you say.

Also it seems a lot of your objections are based on art history, in that you deem the movie "dated." To me it's strange to object to an idea because it's set in a certain era and it belongs in another era. Seems like over-analyzing to me. Like not being able to enjoy a good song because you know too much music history and the song doesn't exclusively use the modern techniques and styles that are built on previous music. Following that viewpoint, ultimately you can only listen to contemporary music (meaning new avant garde music).

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[–] evanouschka 16 years ago

As I recall it, the painting might look like "Emmanuelle spanked by a public figure who hides his evilness and who claims power over the country..."
Notice that just after the death of Robert Altman, the painting has been showed in Paris (I have not seen it)

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[–] Sanjuro-15 14 years ago

I liked the little girl's reaction to the painitng. After the four hours of anguish it seems to be causing everyone she just glances at it and says 'That's pretty'. It seems to let you consider that despite all the 'a painting can reveal an entire life' stuff that in the end, perhaps it's just a pretty picture.

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[–] BwlBoy 14 years ago

The only clue about the real painting was that the bottom of it was painted red which was shown when he put it into the wall. The only other thing you can say with certainty is that it would be a complete load of rubbish as every other drawing was.

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[–] SidoS 12 years ago

I totally agree! As I watched that movie, even though it was mostly good, I kept getting distracted by how utterly horrible the main artist's drawing skills were. If he actually looked like he was even trying to draw, I might have been more sympathetic to his artistic dilemmas, both spiritual and physical, but he obviously was not an artist in real life...

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[–] franzkabuki 10 years ago

About that painting that WAS shown in the end though... did he really need Beart posing for THAT? Couldn't he just have painted an anonymous female butt from memory or something? And was the approving reaction of the others supposed to be ironic? Because it sure was one lousy painting.

"facts are stupid things" - Ronald Reagan

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