How Did Caravaggio Influence Movies?

A LACMA film series asks the question

Comments (0) By Nick Pinkerton Thursday, Jan 17 2013

There are suggestions of Caravaggio in Mamma Roma's groupings of adolescent hoods on a slum stairwell, and in the lopsided, spotty face of pubescent Ettore Garofalo, but the affinity is, again, more a matter of ethos. The film's principal setting, ultramodern concrete block flats surrounding an overgrown lot and ruins of unknown antiquity, remind us of the persistence of history in the Eternal City, and the fact that Pasolini was perhaps frequenting the same side streets that Caravaggio had, and was sanctifying the same peasant class, as well as sharing, tragically, in their violence.

By avoiding clear stylistic analogs for such nearly invisible connective threads, LACMA's program argues that the great Tenebrist's most important cinematic descendant was not noir but Italian neorealism. For in Caravaggio's art as in few others, one sees the lesson "Blessed are the poor."

Nigel Terry, left, and Sean Bean in Derek Jarman's Caravaggio

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Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA)

5905 Wilshire Blvd.
Los Angeles, CA 90036

Category: Galleries

Region: Mid-Wilshire/ Hancock Park

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BODIES, SHADOWS AND STORIES: CINEMA AFTER CARAVAGGIO | Los Angeles County Museum of Art and the Italian Cultural Institute of Los Angeles | Jan. 18-29 | lacma.org, www.iiclosangeles.esteri.it