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Caravaggio (1986)
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Overview
User Rating:
Director:
Writers:
Release Date:
29 August 1986 (USA)
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Plot Keywords:
Awards:
3 wins
&
1 nomination
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NewsDesk:
User Comments:
Beautiful to look at, but lacking a third dimension
more (15 total)
Cast
(Cast overview, first billed only) | Noam Almaz | ... | Boy Caravaggio |
| Dawn Archibald | ... | Pipo |
 | Sean Bean | ... | Ranuccio |
| Jack Birkett | ... | The Pope |
| Sadie Corre | ... | Princess Collona |
| Una Brandon-Jones | ... | Weeping Woman |
| Imogen Claire | ... | Lady with the Jewels |
 | Robbie Coltrane | ... | Scipione Borghese |
 | Garry Cooper | ... | Davide |
| Lol Coxhill | ... | Old Priest |
| Nigel Davenport | ... | Giustiniani |
 | Vernon Dobtcheff | ... | Art Lover |
| Terry Downes | ... | Bodyguard |
 | Dexter Fletcher | ... | Young Caravaggio |
| Michael Gough | ... | Cardinal Del Monte |
Additional Details
Parents Guide:
Runtime:
93 min
Country:
Language:
Color:
Color (Technicolor)
Aspect Ratio:
1.85 : 1 more
Sound Mix:
Certification:
Filming Locations:
Company:
Fun Stuff
Trivia:
Tilda Swinton's debut.
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Goofs:
Anachronisms: (At 81:00) When Ranuccio confesses about his crime, there is a truck behind Caravaggio.
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Movie Connections:
Referenced in Incident at Loch Ness (2004)
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Soundtrack:
MISSA LUX ET ORGIO
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FAQ
This FAQ is empty. Add the first question.more (15 total)
Message Boards
Discuss this movie with other users on IMDb message board for Caravaggio (1986)| Recent Posts (updated daily) | User |
|---|---|
| the contortionist actress, who is she? | byllyrs |
| It was kinda difficult to me | hsspg |
| is this out on dvd? | teejay6682 |
| Script | estheleda |
| Soundtrack? | akaffircat |
Recommendations
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What we know of Caravaggio suggests a strutting brawler with a healthy sense of entitlement who lived amongst whores and thieves and hustlers and put them on canvas. His works' themes were sex, death, redemption, above all, finding the sacred within the profane. He lived at a time where homosexuality carried a death sentence and political intrigue normally involved fatalities in a society defined by the maxim "strangling the boy for the purity of his scream".
You can't fault Derek Jarman for his cinematography, nor his recreations of Caravaggio's paintings and you certainly can't accuse the man of shying away from the homosexuality. But frankly, Jarman never strays beyond 80s caricature. Italian patronage becomes the 80s London art scene complete with pretty waiters and calculators. Sean Bean is a sexy bit of Northern rough oiling his motorbike. Tilda Swinton performs a transformation worthy of a Mills and Boons ("Why, Miss Lena, without that gypsy headscarf, you're beautiful..."). Jarman provides Caravaggio with a particularly trite motive for the murder which left him exiled.
This could have been a visually stunning treatment of a man whose life was dangerous, exciting, violent and decadent but who nonetheless elevated the lives of ordinary people to the status of Renaissance masterpieces, looked on by Emperors and Kings. Instead, what you get is Pierre et Gilles do Italy. The pretty bodies of young boys are shown to perfection, but never the men who inhabit them. Jarman appears to satirise the London art scene, showing it shallow and pretentious. To use Caravaggio and Renaissance Italy to make the point is to use a silk purse to make a pig's ear. In fairness, this film remains visually stunning, but ultimately as two dimensional as the paintings it describes.