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

concretized by the film for an audience. In other words, the concretization of the
screenplay by the filmmaker is always public. Therefore, the screenplay, although
often published and available to the public as “text,” must be read in terms of its
filmic potential, as text to be visualized and concretized in(to) filmic images.
Thus, Zuckmayer’s use of attributive ekphrases in the screenplay may become
interpretive ekphrases in their possible concretization.
Although the film was highly praised by some critics when it was first
released, it has also been harshly criticized and was, in fact, a box office failure. 183
For Graham Greene, writing in The Spectator on 20 November 1936, “the film is
ruined by a lack of story and continuity: it has no drive. Like The Private Life of
Henry the Eighth, it is a series of unrelated tableaux” (Drazin 152). Another
criticism, voiced for example by John A. Walker in his Arts & Artist on Screen,
regards the lack of actual art works in the film, which, in his view “somewhat
contradicts the film’s relentless propaganda on behalf of Rembrandt and his art.”
And he concludes by asking “[i]f it is so great why is it not shown?” (24). In fact,
although Rembrandt is often shown in the act of painting, very few of the
paintings he works on or has finished are represented. Furthermore, throughout
the film, Rembrandt has long monologues that show him more effective as a
speaker than as a painter.
As I will show, however, an ekphrastic approach to this film will
challenge these negative assessments, demonstrating that the film, instead of
showing Rembrandt’s paintings, transforms them into tableaux vivants, and thus
183 Cf. Paul Tabori, Alexander Korda (New York: Living Books, 1966) 149-65 and Charles
Drazin, Korda: Britain’s Only Movie Mogul (London: Sidgwick & Jackson, 2002) 150-53.
161