Caravaggio (1986) on Netflix
NR19861h 33mBiographyDramaHistory
The painter Caravaggio paints with Cardinal Del Monte's funding, using drunks, prostitutes and street people as models for his religious pictures. A street fighter, Ranuccio, catches his eye.
- Netflix2.7/5
- IMDb6.5/107,919 votes
- Rotten Tomatoes82%
Trailer
Plot summary
Caravaggio's life is told in segmented episodes, opening with the painter in exile, attended by Jerusaleme, his mute companion, who was given to him by his family as a boy. He remembers a youth as a street ruffian who hustled and painted, and an illness spent in the care of priests, where Cardinal Francesco Maria del Monte took an interest in him. As an adult he lives under del Monte's roof and paints with his funding, brawling, gambling and drinking. Art circles call him vulgar and entitled because of his Vatican ties. Ranuccio, a fighter for pay, becomes a subject and a potential lover, and introduces Caravaggio to Lena, his girlfriend, who also models for the artist.
Cast
- Noam Almazas Boy Caravaggio
- Jack Birkettas The Pope
Did you know?!Facts and trivia about Caravaggio (1986)
Can contain spoilers, watch the movie first.
- Derek Jarman deliberately put modern anachronisms into his 16th-century Caravaggio: a bar lit with electric lights, a character using an electronic calculator, car horns heard outside the painter's studio, and Caravaggio leaning on a green truck.
- Jarman wrote the first draft of Caravaggio's screenplay in Rome in 1978 and roughly sixteen more over the following years, struggling to raise money; a 1982 draft had the filmmaker "Derek Jarman" persuaded to make a pornographic film about the painter.
- Derek Jarman auditioned actors in his own flat, filming them on video, and gave Nigel Terry the title role in part because Terry resembled the only known painted portrait traditionally identified as Caravaggio.
- Cinematographer Gabriel Beristain noticed that nearly all of Caravaggio's paintings are lit from a light source on the left of the canvas, so production designer Christopher Hobbs designed the film's sets to be lit the same way.
- Caravaggio marked Tilda Swinton's first feature film role: she played Lena, a relative newcomer like her co-star Sean Bean as Ranuccio, and went on to collaborate with Derek Jarman until his death in 1994.
- Derek Jarman and composer Simon Fisher Turner, who also wrote the film's score, searched the streets of London for supporting performers and extras, and a chance meeting with the secretary of the Circolo Gramsci, a society of Italian Communists, brought its members in to help with casting.
- Derek Jarman was shortlisted for the Turner Prize, the annual award for the artist judged to have made the greatest contribution to British art, with the Tate Gallery citing the outstanding visual qualities of his films and singling out Caravaggio.
