The Impressionists and the Man Who Made Them ***
Dir: Phil Grabsky.
Documentary with the voices of Robert Lindsay, Glen McCready. 91 mins. Cert: U.
The latest in the
Exhibition on Screen series – playing for one night only next Tuesday – finds
documentarist Phil Grabsky applying his defiantly old-school house style
(talking heads, diary readings, steady rostrum camera in the tradition of Kens
Burns and Morse) to the acclaimed Inventing
Impressionism show now installed at the National Gallery. Interviewees
acknowledge these long-canonised works make it hard to convey the shock of the
new Impressionism represented; Grabsky wisely deploys his Manets and Monets to
illustrate the struggles of Paul Durand-Ruel, the young dealer whose keen
commercial and curatorial instincts eventually smashed down the Salon’s locked
doors and cracked these artists in America. Given all those
personality-oriented “journeys” in TV land, it’s refreshing to encounter a doc
that commits ninety minutes to disseminating its info in considered, scholarly
fashion: fascinating theories and titbits abound, and the way these canvasses
reflect light renders them newly immersive on the big screen. An enriching
experience.
The Impressionists... screens in selected cinemas for one night only this Tuesday.
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