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

Thus, it is no surprise that such a central aspect of Rembrandt’s work is
translated into the screenplay and the film. Both Zuckmayer’s drama and Korda’s
film often show “Rembrandt” as public speaker, giving long monologues during
which, in the film, the camera focuses on his mesmerized audience.
REMBRANDT’S SELF PORTRAITS IN ALEXANDER KORDA’S FILM (1936) AND
CARL ZUCKMAYER’S SCREENPLAY (1936) 194
Zuckmayer’s text and Korda’s film use interpretive ekphrasis of
Rembrandt’s self portraits to underscore their own creation of “Rembrandt” and
to reveal the artist’s deliberate creation of his public persona. To do so, both the
text and the film make extensive use of framing, both literally and metaphorically.
The film in particular has many examples of literal framing, by using door,
picture, or mirror frames in which Rembrandt’s “portrait” appears throughout.
These frames highlight the film’s use of ekphrasis because the frame identifies the
scene as an imitation of a picture, that is, as ekphrasis. Metaphorically, text and
film are framed by Rembrandt’s self portraits, in particular the Self Portrait as
Zeuxis from c. 1662. This self portrait appears both at the beginning and the end
of Zuckmayer’s screenplay, but only at the end of the film, which uses the Self
Portrait at the age of 34 as the opening of the film.
Moreover, whereas Carl Zuckmayer’s screenplay only refers to
Rembrandt’s Self-Portrait as Zeuxis which begins and ends the screenplay,
194 Rembrandt, dir. Alexander Korda, perf. Charles Laughton, Gertrude Lawrence, Elsa
Lanchester, and Edward Chapman, 1936, DVD, MGM Home Entertainment, 2001. Carl
Zuckmayer, Rembrandt. Ein Film, 1936 (Frankfurt am Main: Fischer Verlag, 1980). All
translations from this text are mine.
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