Main Cast: Anthony Hopkins, Natascha McElhone, Julianne Moore, Joss Ackland, Peter Eyre, Diane Venora
Release Year: 1996
Country: US
Run Time: 123 minutes
MPAA Rating: R
Plot
This unusual biography of the renowned Spanish artist Pablo Picasso is a Merchant-Ivory film. The team of director James Ivory, producer Ismail Merchant, and screenwriter Ruth Prawer Jhabvala has been responsible for many period dramas, including A Room with a View and Howard's End. The story of Picasso's remarkable misanthropy is told as experienced by his mistress Francoise Gilot (Natasha McElhone). Francoise was Picasso's lover from 1944 to 1954, and they had two children together, Claude and Paloma. The film shows Picasso (Anthony Hopkins) as a notorious womanizer, with flashbacks revealing his relationships with his wife Olga (Jane Lapotaire), the artist Dora Marr (Julianne Moore), and Marie-Therese Walter (Susannah Harker), an earthy type who sees the artist only on Sundays. Hopkins powerfully portrays Picasso as an artistic genius with an appalling habit of using and abusing women. He not only cheats on his wife but two-times his mistresses. Francoise has survived an abusive relationship with her father (Bob Peck), and she is 40 years younger than Picasso when they become lovers. The film was supposed to be based on Gilot's book Life with Picasso, but the filmmakers were unable to get the rights to it, so they settled for basing the film on Arianna Huffington's Picasso: Creator and Destroyer. The movie also uses imitations rather than Picasso's real paintings. ~ Michael Betzold, All Movie Guide
Humbert Balsan - Co-producer, Carol Ramsey - Costume Designer, James Ivory - Director, Andrew Marcus - Editor, Paul Bradley - Executive Producer, Donald Rosenfeld - Executive Producer, Richard Robbins - Composer (Music Score), Richard Robbins - Songwriter, Luciana Arrighi - Production Designer, Tony Pierce-Roberts - Cinematographer, Ismail Merchant - Producer, David L. Wolper - Producer, Ruth Prawer Jhabvala - Screenwriter
The soundtrack to the Merchant-Ivory team's portrait of Pablo Picasso (Anthony Hopkins) comes from composer Richard Robbins, who also worked on the filmmakers on their A Room With a View, Howards End, The Remains of the Day and Mr. and Mrs. Bridge. ~ Jason Ankeny, All Music Guide
Tracks
Track Title
Composers
Performers
Time
Grands/Augustins (Main Title)
Richard Robbins
(2:47)
Francoise
Richard Robbins
(5:02)
Menerbes
Richard Robbins
(4:24)
You'd Be My Woman
Richard Robbins
(1:14)
Marie Thérèse
Richard Robbins
(2:31)
Cubist Flashback
Richard Robbins
(1:16)
Olga
Richard Robbins
(2:07)
Grandmother
Richard Robbins
(2:49)
Jacqueline
Richard Robbins
(2:34)
Circus
Richard Robbins
(1:47)
Dora
Richard Robbins
(3:32)
La Galloise
Richard Robbins
(3:34)
Vallauris Corrida [End Credits]
Richard Robbins
(7:57)
Credits
Harry Rabinowitz (Conductor), Tony McAnany (Music Consultant), Richard Robbins (Composer), Geoffrey Alexander (Orchestration), Glen Neibaur (Engineer)
The film starts with a young woman named Françoise meeting Picasso in Paris during the Nazi occupation of the city, where Picasso is complaining that people broke into his house and stole his linen, rather than his paintings. It shows Françoise being beaten by her father after telling him she wants to be a painter, rather than a lawyer. Picasso is shown as often not caring about other people's feelings, firing his driver after a long period of service, and as a womanizer, saying that he can sleep with whomever he wants.
The film is seen through the eyes of his lover Françoise Gilot (Natascha McElhone). Because the producers were unable to get permission (as usual) to show the works of Picasso in the film, the film is more about Picasso's personal life rather than his works, and where it does show paintings, they are not of his more famous works. When Picasso is shown painting Guernica, the camera sits high above the painting, with the work only slightly visible.
