The Hypothesis of the Stolen Painting
Synopsis
Two narrators, one seen and one unseen, discuss possible connections between a series of paintings. The on-screen narrator walks through three-dimensional reproductions of each painting, featuring real people, sometimes moving, in an effort to explain the series' significance.
Credits
Director (1)
Actors (17)
Production and distribution (2)
- Executive Producer : Institut National de l'Audiovisuel (INA)
- French distribution : Hors Champ
Full credits (11)
- Screenwriters : Raoul Ruiz, Pierre Klossowski
- Director of Photography : Sacha Vierny
- Editor : Jorge Arriagada
- Sound Recordist : Xavier Vauthrin
- Costume designer : Rosine Venin
- Author of original work : Pierre Klossowski
- Voice : Gabriel Gascon
- Camera Operator : Maurice Perrimond
- Assistant editor : Anita Perez
- Production Designer : Bruno Beaugé
- Sound Mixer : Jean-Claude Voyeux
Media Gallery
Technical details
- Type : Feature film
- Genres : Fiction, Experimental
- Themes : Painting
- Production language : French
- Original French-language productions : Unspecified
- Nationality : 100% French
- Production year : 1978
- French release : 04/04/1979
- Runtime : 1 h 5 min
- Current status : Released
- Approval : Unknown
- Color type : Black & White
Box-office & releases
TV broadcasting
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Selections (2)
About
(L’hypothèse du tableau volé). A satire on the urge to define and thus control art, The Hypothesis of the Stolen Painting concerns a doddering art collector anxious to show off his life’s work: the recreation—in human form—of several paintings by a great (imaginary) artist in the various rooms of his monstrous estate. Unfortunately, one painting in the series has been missing for years, the one that could be the clue to understanding them all—or not. Quizzed by a somewhat restless narrator, our art collector turns his theories one way, then another, fishing for meanings in an increasingly emptying sea. Meanwhile, the paintings themselves (or the humans recreating them) are beginning to grow restless. On one level, Hypothesis is a parody of creaky intro-to-art public television shows; for Ruiz, it’s also a detective story in which the pleasure “comes not from solving the mystery, but from moving from one level of interpretation to another, which complicates what has previously seemed straightforward.” A precursor to recent art-focused festival films like Greenaway’s Rembrandt’s J’Accuse and Majewski’s The Mill and the Cross, Hypothesis is one of the dryest, most deadpan satires on art and culture ever created.
© Jason Sanders, bampfa.berkeley.edu
