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

tableau vivant of the 1640 self portrait. However, while those other self portraits
could also be considered the subtext of Zuckmayer’s screenplay, which represents
Rembrandt similarly, the simultaneous visual interpretive ekphrasis of the Self
Portrait at the Age of 34 also hints at Korda’s adaptation of Rembrandt’s artistic
paragone.
The first shot of “Rembrandt” is not only a tableau vivant of the 1640 self
portrait, but moreover, a conscious self reference to the camera frame. The mise-
en-scène begins with a brief shot of the door, whose top part opens toward the
viewer, framing “Rembrandt” and thus constituting a frame within the camera
frame. When “Rembrandt” then steps out of that frame into the shop room and
toward the viewer, the film imitates the illusionism of the self portrait, in which
the artist’s leaning over a wooden wall appears as if he was leaning out of the
picture frame. Through this device then, the film underscores the way in which a
film can not only imitate portraiture and pictorial reality-effects, but is in fact able
to surpass them. The subsequent view of “Rembrandt’s” face through an empty
picture frame which the artist holds up further enhances that notion. Korda thus
adapts Rembrandt’s emulation of old masters to his own cinematic comparison
with (and desire to surpass) the visual arts.
It may seem curious then, that the film is in black and white rather than
color. However, as Walker has noted, since the chiaroscuro, the deliberate use of
light and darkness is central to Rembrandt, a black-and-white film is not
inappropriate, and “lightning was more crucial than usual to the look of this film”
(19). Moreover, Rembrandt was not only a painter, but also famous for his
178