Caravaggio (1986 film)

The 1986 British/Italian film (IMDB Listing) by Derek Jarman is a strange, sensual, visually striking telling of the life of Michelangelo_Merisi (Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio) - with a great deal of poetic license.

Jarman's movie is involved with the love triangle (and triangle is the operative word) of Caravaggio (Nigel Terry), Lena (Tilda Swinton) and Ranuccio (Sean Bean) and dwells upon Caravaggio's use of street people, drunks and prostitutes as models for his intense, usually religious paintings (see the link above for examples). As with Caravaggio's own use of modern (well, modern for him - c. C.E. 1600) dress for his Biblical figures, Jarman depicts his Caravaggio in a bar lit with electric lights, or another character using an electronic calculator.

The texture and attention to detail, the intense performances and the idiosyncratic humor of this film make the film worthwhile, though at times difficult to fathom. Never a popular film it can be difficult to find.

This is not a biopic - no points for historical accuracy - but it does shed some light on one of the founders of the chiariscuro technique, whose own legend (according to this one he died of wounds received in a knife fight) eclipsed his enormous talent.

There is another 1948 Italian film, titled "Caravaggio" IMDB Listing.