Paul Gauguin in The wolf at the door (1986)
Review by John A. Walker (2010), the author of Art & Artists on screen.
Since Paul Gauguin’s wife Mette was Danish, the Danes have a special reason to be interested in him. Henning Carlsen (born Aalborg, 1927), the Danish producer-director of The wolf at the door has explained that Gauguin had a poor reputation in his country because he abandoned his wife and five children in order to fulfil his artistic calling. Carlsen’s motivation for making a movie about Gauguin seems to have been, therefore, a desire to present a more rounded portrait of the man; he realised Gauguin was no saint, but he wanted to explain the reasons for his unconventional behaviour. However, the film is unlikely to rehabilitate Gauguin in the eyes of the Danes because the artist is permitted to describe Denmark as “that abominable little country”.
The wolf at the door, an Eastmancolour feature film was the result of an international effort. A team of European film-makers collaborated with a leading Canadian star— Donald Sutherland (b. 1934)— and a major Swedish star— Max von Sydow. Christopher Hampton, a British theatre and television dramatist, wrote the English-language screenplay; it was based on a scenario by Carlsen and Jean-Claude Carriere which in turn made full use of the detailed biographies and vast quantity of art-historical literature about Paul Gauguin. Carlsen is a film-maker who is fascinated by the plight of the radical modern artist in capitalist, bourgeois society. Donald Sutherland the 6’ 4" star of the film, looks like Gauguin and convincingly evokes the man’s swagger and confidence in his artistic talent.
During the title sequence we are shown a number of Paul Gauguin’s famous paintings, otherwise the film contains the usual mixture of real works, mediocre copies and half-completed works created by “special effects”, that is, Francois Marcepoil and Karl-Otto Hedal. The sets and costumes based on old photographs and contemporary descriptions are more successful reproductions.
Carlsen’s film focuses upon one short period of Paul Gauguin’s life, namely, the two years from August 1893 to July 1895 which he spent in Paris and Brittany. He had been to Tahiti and arrived back in France penniless but with a pile of canvases and woodcarvings. Some of the first scenes of the film— dramatic ones— concern the exhibition Gauguin held at the Durand-Ruel Galleries in Paris in November 1893. Gauguin had hoped this show would mark a triumphant return to Europe. There is a hostile public response and the critical reception is mixed. Only a quarter of the paintings are sold, though one is bought by Edgar Degas. “Gauguin”, Degas remarks, “paints like a wolf”. At the end of the film, having held an auction of his work which raises even less money, Gauguin departs again for the tropics never to return. So a central theme of the film is Gauguin’s settling of accounts with European society.
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