The subscriber's contract

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Movie
German title The subscriber's contract
Original title The Draftsman's Contract
Country of production Great Britain
original language English
Publishing year 1982
length 103 minutes
Age rating FSK 16
Rod
Director Peter Greenaway
script Peter Greenaway
production David Payne
music Michael Nyman
Henry Purcell (anonymous)
camera Curtis Clark
cut John Wilson
occupation

The Draftsman's Contract is a 1982 British feature film directed by Peter Greenaway .

action

The time of the action is the year 1694 and the action takes place in Compton Anstey, the seemingly idyllic country residence of a British aristocrat in the southern English county of Wiltshire . The mistress of the estate, Mrs. Virginia Herbert, tries to win the highly talented, but conceited and arrogant artist Mr. Neville for a commission. Neville is asked to make twelve drawings depicting various exterior views of the property. Mrs. Herbert wants to surprise her husband, who is downright obsessed with his lavish and decorative possessions, and use this gift of love to bring about a reconciliation, because Mr. Herbert's interest in his wife has died. Probably there was never any affection on his part, because Mrs. Herbert brought Compton Anstey into the marriage, which was reason enough for Mr. Herbert to marry her.

Neville is initially not interested in the assignment. Only when Mrs. Herbert agrees to have not only a fee but also sexual compliance recorded by contract does he accept the assignment. Mr. Herbert goes on horseback to Southampton , and Neville can begin work.

He is a perfectionist and orders that no changes be made in the areas of the property where he sets up his easel after he has started work. However, he notes that this order is being violated from the outset. Little by little, various objects appear in the field of vision and transform the views of the house and garden to be drawn into a theater stage full of suggestive props. A ladder is set up under the window of a room on the upper floor, and parts of Mr. Herbert's clothing and his riding boots are carelessly deposited in various places. Even Herbert's stray horse shows up. Neville ignores the possible meaning of this information and conscientiously works the subsequent changes into his drawings.

When Mr. Herbert is finally found dead in a moat on his own property, any of the people involved comes into question as the murderer: Mrs. Herbert, who was humiliated and even disinherited by her husband for decades; Mr. Thomas Noyes, the steward of the estate, who had previously sought Mrs. Herbert's hand; Mrs. Sarah Talmann, the Herberts' grown daughter, who fully shares her mother's hatred, and her husband, Mr. Louis Talmann, who, in his hopes of marrying Sarah, heir to Compton Anstey, was passed on by Mr. Herbert was betrayed because Sarah Talmann, because she is a woman, will not inherit according to Herbert's will.

As an outsider and without a motive, Neville believes he is above suspicion, but Mrs. Talmann points out that he put himself in danger with his all too naively detailed drawings, which have captured the innermost secrets of the Herbert house. With the promise to “protect” him, she blackmailed him into another contract in which she in turn required sexual favors. Little did Neville know that in order to secure her own estate, Mrs. Talmann desperately needs a male heir whom she cannot expect from her impotent husband. Mrs. Talmann is an attractive woman, and Neville is too smug and too eager to take advantage of the amenities on offer to be alarmed by her warning.

That Neville is naive enough to let himself back and forth as a pawn in the finely spun maneuvers of the two women would not be the worst for him. The intrigue that finally costs him the neck comes from Mr. Noyes, who, as Mrs. Herbert's confidante, is a witness of her contract with the draftsman. Noyes can now be paid for his silence and blackmails Mrs. Herbert to give him the twelve drawings that he wants to monetize. The official reason given for the sale is that the proceeds will be used to finance a memorial for the deceased; in fact, it's all about getting Neville into the conversation as a murderer. When Noyes presented the drawings to Mr. Herbert's acquaintances one after the other, they actually drew all the desired conclusions from the image details. The strongest reaction is Mr. Talmann, who believes the drawings contain indications of an affair between his wife and the draftsman.

After an absence of several weeks, Neville returned to Compton Anstey to propose to Mrs. Herbert the execution of a thirteenth drawing, which she had initially rejected, without which, in his opinion, his undertaking would not be complete. It is, of all things, the view of the place where the dead Mr. Herbert was found, where the memorial for the dead, an equestrian statue, has now been erected. While he was still working on the thirteenth drawing, Neville was tried by Talmann, Noyes and other old acquaintances in a vein court , accused of adultery and the murder of Mr. Herbert, blinded , slain and thrown dead in the moat.

Levels of meaning

At first glance, The Draftsman's Contract is a crime film , a Whodunit . Mr. Herbert was murdered, and as in a story by Agatha Christie , almost all characters involved are possible perpetrators. The film is teeming with sophisticated hints that seem to lead to the solution of the riddle, but the viewer cannot find out who committed the murder, even after watching the film repeatedly.

The draftsman Neville forms the center of the film. In contrast to all other characters in the plot, Neville belongs to the lower social class, which by no means intimidates him, but on the contrary fills him with contempt for the beneficiaries of an inherited or married wealth. He believes that his superiority is based on his truthfulness and his rejection of all hypocrisy. He also pays homage to these high principles as an artist. Greenaway portrays Neville as a naive representative of a radical naturalism , which the director himself resolutely rejects, as this art concept leaves no room for imagination or creativity. The question of the task of art is a recurring theme in Peter Greenaway's films. In his view, art should not copy reality, but rather express what the artist creates in his mind. Neville's lack of imagination, his inability to see more than what is obvious to the eye, therefore leads to his downfall. After an absence of several weeks, Neville returns to Compton Anstey to make a thirteenth drawing to which he is by no means contractually obliged, but to which his particular conception of art compels him. Of all the manifestations of his artistic narrow-mindedness, the production of the thirteenth drawing constitutes the grotesque climax, the hubris , and it is no coincidence that Greenaway lets Neville die precisely at this point. The draftsman's contract can be compared in many ways to Michelangelo Antonioni's film Blow Up .

Fourth, the film Neville's restricted world of perception doubles, and that in ironic refraction. Greenaway plays his game with letting the viewer grope through his film, which is overflowing with allusions and references, just as ignorantly as Neville is led because he only takes note of the most obvious. The director not only "cheats" his audience about the resolution of the murder case, but deliberately misleads them, for example through the immensely aestheticized backdrops and costumes, which are reminiscent of Merchant Ivory productions in their craftsmanship and thus the viewer lull that he keeps “switching off” intellectually. The central message of the film: Using your eyes does not mean “seeing”.

Means of expression

Just like Alain Resnais ' film Last Year in Marienbad , The Draftsman's Contract is an intellectual puzzle . The film makes use of the sets, costumes and set pieces of the British Baroque period , when such puzzles were extremely popular. Peter Greenaway chose this epoch as a background to action because of its preference for artificiality, strict geometries and rigid rules. Neville's artistic limitations are reflected in the mental rigidity of this time. The director was by no means interested in producing a true-to-life portrait of the Baroque. The decorations and costumes are grotesquely exaggerated. Similar to Stanley Kubrick's film Barry Lyndon , the aestheticization has been taken to extremes. The actors' sentences, which are far too complicated, satirize the precious language of the time. In view of the dark plot of the film, the sometimes lively, lively music that Michael Nyman wrote based on six Chaconnes by the contemporary English composer Henry Purcell is alienating .

Origin background

The draftsman’s contract is Peter Greenaway’s first feature film after a series of documentaries and experimental films . The idea for this film came from Peter Greenaway, who had started his own career as a painter when he was making a series of drawings of his own house in Wales in 1981 .

The production cost of the film was comparatively low at around £ 320,000  . The script and the 13 drawings are from Greenaway's own hand. The shooting took place on the Groombridge Place estate near Tunbridge Wells in Kent , where the filming of Joe Wright's Jane Austen film Pride and Prejudice was made in 2005 . When casting the roles, Greenaway attached great importance to the use of stage actors because of the highly artificial dialogues and the sometimes very long takes.

In its original version, the film was 180 minutes long; The opening scene alone, in which the characters are introduced, was 30 minutes long. Greenaway probably made the shortening to 103 minutes with the intention of making the demanding film easier to digest for the audience, but many explanations for the peculiarities and puzzles of the plot were also omitted.

After Greenaway's earlier work was largely inaccessible by the public, The Draftsman's Contract brought him international recognition and his first commercial success.

Criticism and Effect

The draftsman's contract is a film that strongly polarizes its audience. The excess of subtext , the constant break with the conventions of narrative cinema, the lack of opportunity to identify with the characters frighten many viewers, who then quickly lose interest in the film. The complexity of the film, the abundance of metaphors, allegories and allusions, the witty but demanding dialogues require a good level of cultural education, the utmost attention and repeated viewing of the film. The draftsman's contract is considered by many British critics to be the most original film of the 1980s, to which the medium owes an interesting extension of its expressive possibilities. Many critics consider it Greenaway's best film.

The film made a big impression on many filmmakers and left its mark on their films - most clearly in Philipp Rousselot's British-French-German coproduction Der Schlangenkuss ( The Serpent's Kiss , 1997).

“An ironic-satirical historical film; excellently composed and photographed and matched to a corresponding contemporary music. "

- Lexicon of international film

Awards

The draftsman's contract was nominated in 1982 at the Festival Internacional de Cinema do Porto (Fantasporto) for the International Fantasy Film Award, category “Best Film”.

The painting

Of the total of 13 projected drawings of the property, only eleven are shown in the finished state in the film. The drawing from the west side of the house, like the additional thirteenth drawing, is only shown in the initial stages of production by the painter. In fact, this is a view of the entrance front (which can already be seen on a drawing) from a different angle.

literature

  • Peter Greenaway: Meurtre dans un jardin anglais (L'avant-scène cinéma; vol. 333). Édition L'Avant Scène, Paris 1984, ISSN  0045-1150 .
  • Michael Schuster: Painting in Film. Peter Greenaway . Georg Olms Verlag, Hildesheim 1998, ISBN 3-487-10663-9 (plus dissertation, University of Marburg 1995).

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Certificate of Release for the Subscriber's Contract . Voluntary self-regulation of the film industry , October 2006 (PDF; test number: 54 448 V / DVD / UMD).
  2. ↑ Internet Movie Database , accessed December 9, 2018
  3. ↑ The draftsman's contract. In: Lexicon of International Films . Film service , accessed May 5, 2018 .Template: LdiF / Maintenance / Access used