Your point, Henry, about Greenaway intending to juxtapose another system
against the narrative is quite accurate. In a series of interviews I have
done with Greenaway, he has often stressed this point. These opposing
systems vary from film to film: In ``Cook, Thief,'' he used an elaborate
color system to denote the meaning and symbolism of various spaces within
the larger Hollandaise restaurant, each color denoting a meaning derived
from the classical color coding of painting. In his new three-part epic,
``The Tulse Luper Suitcase,'' he's using a favorite number
system--1-92--which he also employed in the movie that stands at the end of
his totally experimental period and the beginning of his more narrative
period, ``The Falls.''
    Other narrative (as opposed to non-narrative) filmmakers who employ and
quote from the history of image production include Raul Ruiz, whose
extraordinary body of work is just as ambitious in its various experiments
(especially in terms of referencing painting and sculpture) as Greenaway. I
can't think of a film of his that doesn't elaborately quote and re-think
work from the image-based art forms. ``Hypothesis of a Stolen Painting,''
``L'Oeil qui Ment,'' ``The Top of the Whale,'' the list goes on and on.
    Antonioni--is there anyone out there interested in his work, I
wonder??-- has profoundly referenced and re-explored the visual strategies
of numerous (especially Italian) painters, especially DiChirico and Morandi.
Also Mondrian. He has also, unlike other directors, not only composed or
organized the mise en scene along the lines of painters, but used art work
inside the frame, often as a kind of ``image-character'' alongside the human
characters. Look at the amazing opening sequence of ``L'Eclisse,'' for
instance; the witty art gallery scene with Monica Vitti in ``L'Avventura'';
or Mastroianni's office in ``La Notte.'' There's also a strong element in
his films of using the surface design of spaces as original works of art, or
at least closely matching an art work. The space of Vitti's empty shop
begins to resemble various American abstract expressionists, such as Rothko.
And beyond, art and sculpture, Antonioni has frequently explored the history
and styles of architecture as an art form. There are too many examples, but
a great one is in``L'Avventura,'' when Gabriele Ferzetti--playing a
frustrated architect--intentionally spills ink over an artist's rendering of
a detail on a church, a masterpiece of Italian Baroque in the Sicilian town
of Noto. It's one of the most dramatic uses of a character interacting with
art, art history interpretation and the chasm between the old and the new in
art.
    ``Love is the Devil,'' the recent biopic about Francis Bacon which you
may have seen, bravely (some might say foolishly) re-visions Bacon's work. I
think it succeeds sometimes, other times not. But it is a serious work,
indeed.
    Saura's recent ``Goya in Bordeaux'' also attempts restagings, in
tableaux fashion, of various Goya masterpieces, linking them with thr story
of Goya's life up to his final days in exile in Bordeaux.
    The opening scene of ``In The Bedroom'' deliberately quotes from Andrew
Wyeth's melancholy landscapes of wind-blown spaces containing people in
solitude, while introducing the story's pair of ill-fated lovers.
    Sadly, though, I think fewer filmmakers today use such rich references.
Greenaway has lamented that few filmmakers (and I think here he's
specifically referring to fellow Brit filmmakers) are visually literate, in
the sense that they can draw upon the history of art for visual purposes. He
has also resented such statements as Wenders, who baldly stated (in so many
words), ``For filmmakers, Vermeer is the only painter there is.'' That's
silly , of course; this post and others have cited plenty of other artists
who have been referenced. One can think of various directors, and their
associations with artists: Fellini with Caravaggio; Kubrick with Joseph of
Derby (espcially ``Barry Lyndon''); Griffith with the classical school. For
the most part, in the narrative film you're asking about, Europeans have far
surpassed Americans in these visual terms.
   One last thought. While he was alive, Jarman and his work made for a
fascinating ``conversation'' with Greenaway's: Both trained as painters,
both made experimental work and slowly shifted into more narrative forms
(Greenaway more than Jarman) and both were perhaps the most explicit
post-modern directors working in the U.K. Greenaway has, gradually, become
more European and Asian over time (funding, locations, casting, etc).
Jarman, had he lived, would have remained fully English, I think. But with
each, their visual art-historical references were unapologetically
Continental.
Robert Koehler