Copyright by Laura Mareike Sager 2006 - The University of Texas at ...

But even at the beginning of the 20 th century, the romanticized view of
Rembrandt had begun to be challenged and negative facts about Rembrandt’s
character were known, although they did not contribute to the prevailing public
view of the artist. 180 In view of these changing faces of Rembrandt, how do
twentieth-century literary texts and films interpret his self portraits and construct
his identity for the reader or viewer, thereby shaping the public view of
Rembrandt? Do these literary and cinematic works of “high art” (among which I
count Korda’s film as well) contribute to the Rembrandt myths and the
stereotypes about artists or do they aim at revealing a different Rembrandt by re-
interpreting his self portraits? Or are they really about “Rembrandt” at all?
In this chapter, I compare the use of Rembrandt’s self portraits in
Alexander Korda’s film Rembrandt (1936) with their uses in Carl Zuckmayer’s
screenplay-drama 181 for that film from the same year. At first sight it may seem
180 In his biography of Alexander Korda, Paul Tabori mentions that the actor Charles Laughton
criticized Korda’s Rembrandt for romanticizing and making Rembrandt look nicer than he actually
was, thus indicating that other versions of Rembrandt’s life were known at that time. Cf. Paul
Tabori, Alexander Korda (New York: Living Books, 1966) 164. Likewise, Martin Stockham
mentions that disagreements arose between Korda and Laughton when Korda refused to film a
“factually true scene where Rembrandt sells the grave plot of his first wife to pay of the wedding
to his second” for fear that the movie public would not like it. Cf. Martin Stockham, The Korda
Collection: Alexander Korda’s Film Classics (London: Boxtree Limited, 1992) 72.
181 As various critics have noted, Zuckmayer’s Rembrandt, his first screenplay that was actually
filmed and composed entirely by Zuckmayer, actually appears more like a play than a screenplay.
In fact, according to Horst Claus, all that reminds one of a film are the rapid changes of locale and
an initial dissolve (271).Like a drama, this screenplay is divided into 5 acts with a total of 35
scenes, and its “progression is not based on a spectacular or complicated plot but on the inner
development of Rembrandt” (ibid), a focus which, for another critic makes Rembrandt a “typical
Zuckmayerian hero” (Wagner 152). Hans Wagener also indicates the double status of this text as
both screenplay and drama in the title of his article, “Carl Zuckmayers Rembrandt: Drehbuch und
Drama,” and he focuses on the play’s dramatic structure with anti-climactic action and a series of
“blows of fate” (153). Moreover, Zuckmayer himself has emphasized the literary significance of
this screenplay as a text, and its equal value to his plays (noted on the front inside cover of the
book). Cf. Horst Claus, “Whose Film is it? Alexander Korda’s Adaptation of Carl Zuckmayer’s
Film Script Rembrandt,” Text into Image: Image Into Text, eds. Jeff Morrison and Florian Krobb
[Amsterdam and Atlanta: Rodopi, 1997] 271), and Hans Wagener, “Carl Zuckmayers Rembrandt:
158