Water Lilies by Monet, the father of the Impressionist movement hits the big screen
- The event movie dedicated to Claude Monet, with the participation of Elisa Lasowski and photographer Sanne De Wilde, will hit Italian cinemas on 26, 27 and 28 November with Nexo
The friendship between former French Prime Minister George Clemenceau and the father of the Impressionist movement, Claude Monet was a long and intense relationship, secured by a visit to Giverny, where a Treaty of Versailles statesman later found several canvases stacked up in the cellar representing exotic flowers, presented for the first time at the 1889 Universal Exposition of Paris. The flowers floating on the surface of the marsh-like water are lillies, but for Monet they will always be the Nymphéas. It’s precisely in order to talk about this passion and obsession, that Monet's Water Lillies have been brought to the big screen in Water Lilies by Monet – the Magic of Water and Light – an event movie directed by Giovanni Troilo and produced by Ballandi Arts and Nexo Digital.
The documentary film takes the audience to the Musée Marmottan, Musée de l'Orangerie and Musée D'Orsay in Paris, before heading to the Monet Foundation in Giverney, the artist's house and garden, and the magnificent views of Étretat. Guiding viewers in the discovery of places, works of art and events in Monet’s life is Elisa Lasowski – Queen Maria Teresa of Habsburg in the TV series Versaille,, and soon to star in Sympathy for the Devil [+see also:
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film profile] by Guillaume de Fontenay. Scientific musings are entrusted to the historian and writer Ross King, author of the best seller Il mistero delle ninfee. Monet e la rivoluzione della pittura moderna (lit. The Mystery of the Water Lilies. Monet and the Revolution of Modern Painting). Additional precious contributions shedding new light on Monet and his work come from the Flemish photographer Sanne De Wilde and Monet Foundation's gardener, Claire Hélène Marron. The film's original soundtrack was composed by Remo Anzovino, while editing was entrusted to Antonello Pierleoni.
Through voices and sounds, the viewer discovers how Claude Monet re-emerged from the depression that led him to abandon painting in order to devote his body and soul to his most colossal undertaking: the Grand Décoration. Huge panels depicting a pool of water lilies, so enveloping that the viewer's gaze is lost in an atmosphere of serenity and peace. Following the route of the Seine, we start in Le Havre, where Monet spent the first period of his artistic life, before heading up stream to the various other towns where he lived, to demonstrate how innovative, radical and modern both his approach to art was and the sporadic nature of his search for this particular aquatic element: from Poissy, to Argenteuil, Vétheuil and Giverny. Here, a recluse in his garden, while the bombs of the First World War rained down, Monet unabatedly painted his work of resistance and peace. At the Musée de L'Orangerie in Paris, his dream finally found proper fulfilment in the magnificent oval rooms he designed himself. It was here, in May 1927, that his friend George Clemenceau finally inaugurated the museum dedicated to the Grand Décoration.
Water Lilies by Monet – the Magic of Water and Light will be screened in Italian cinemas with Nexo Digital, and in collaboration with TIMVision Production, on 26, 27 and 28 November.
(Translated from Italian)
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