S I L H O U E T T E

The relationship between film and other art forms

The Draughtman's Contract by Peter Greenaway

Helena Tomasson

Before the opening sequence of The Draughts a ’s Co tract (dir.

Peter Greenaway, UK, 1982) we can hear a baroque song of castrate. Then
the song goes on more or less loudly, together with the credit sequences
surfaced on the mystical black frames with red and white letters on it and
then follows the openings sequences. Peter Greenway’s fil shows us a
dramatic episode which takes place in England in the seventeenth century.
The film begins with the opening scenes of the close-up face of an old man
and then a group of people, who talks and listens. Each scene remands the
old o le e ’s portraits in baroque. The first sequences of the film are like
frames or framed images. They outline the main characteristics of the whole
film: theatrical costumes, a lot of talking, frames, painting and
correspondence to the depicted time’s music. In his first full-length film
produced in 1982 Greenaway applies explicit or implicit almost to each of
the art forms - theater, painting, photography, architecture, sculpture and of
course music. The film is rich in allegorical signs in dialogs and in the images.
It tells a story that is why it makes sense to talk also about poetry and
literature. In spite of this a film is a thriller by genre which contains a murder
mystery. Before I analyze this film in details, I would like to take some
notions about the relationship between film as an art form and other arts in
the theories and methodologies.
One of the influential books in film theory is Bord ell a d Tho pso ’s
Film Art. David Bordwell belongs to eo-For alis [1] school and he
argued against so-called New Criticism and semiotics, which he called “LAB
theor . Semiotics theories, in books of Saussure, Lacan, Althusser and
Bathers were defining film and how it is different from the others mediums.
The book appeared in 1979 and had nearly 10 publications by now. Among
the other issues of the book
it argues that films should be evaluated along formal lines, according to internal
criteria such as unity, coherence, complexity, originality, and intensity. Given this
advice, we have not moved as far as we might think from the New-Critical ideal of
the ell- rought ur . [2]
Film Art represents a systematic introduction to film aesthetics and
puts film art in the context of changes through its history. It thinks over the
types of films, principles of narration and non-narrative form, film

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techniques and analyses the films. Bordwell was criticized by some scholars,
in particular by Ira Braskar for the polar position in his theoretical works
about film language and concerning to aki g ea i g in film theory.
Another work about film, which took some aspects of film genres, narration,
editing, reading and writing about films, is Corrigan and White’s book The
Film Experience. Of course we can find some of the sources about art forms
in classical aesthetics of Hegel in Introductory Lectures on Aesthetics, 1820,
i Lessi g’s Laocoon about temporal and spatial arts from 1766, in
Emmanuel Kant Critic of Judgment, 1790. Some of the thoughts from this
works became a ground for the modern film theories.
The discussion about film as an art form did not start from the very
beginning of the time when this medium appeared. During the first two
decades film was not considered as an art form. Rather it was an
entertainment or attraction which was divided to the different genres. Film
became accessible to the masses and thus considered as a social
phenomenon. This last statement which took to his attention German
philosopher Walter Benjamin shows us a basic difference between film and
the other art forms such as: architecture, sculpture, paining, music and
poetr (a ordi g to Hegel’s aestheti s) or literature as stated by the later
theories. Traditional art forms were produces for and consumed by elite,
upper class and the bourgeoisie until the beginning of the 20th century.
Me ha i al reprodu tio of art ha ges the rea tio of the asses to ard
art [3], - asserted Walter Benjamin in 1935. He defined an essence of
photography and film in his article The Work of Art in an Age of Mechanical
Reproduction and described film as a photographic media. Social significance
of film was immediately noted by the communists in Russia who were
constructed a new country during 1920th. Lenin proclaimed that film was
the most important of all the arts for them.[4] Some of the soviet film
makers and theorists as Eisenstein, Vertov, Bachtin described montage,
shooting, editing, work with diegetic materials, constructing frame, etc.,
which underlie to the formalist school in the film theory. In particular, one
can find it in the work Film as Art by Rudolf Arnheim. In the first decade of
the last century some early theories of the film were written film theories,
which was inseparable from the modernity. Such kinds of works are Riccioto
Ca udo’s The Birth of Six Arts in 1911 and The Art of Moving Picture in 1915
A eri a Va hel Li dsa . Ca udo alled i e a plasti art i otio [5]
and discussed the absorbing of this new art form the spatial (architecture,
sculpture and painting) art forms and the temporal (poetry, music and
dance) arts.
Peter Gree a a ’s fil The Draughts a ’s Co tract seems to me like
a motion picture absorbing other forms of art. Greenaway was not only
influenced by the history of painting and composed references and allusions
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to this art form in his film, but he was also the author of the script and
drawings. The last circumstance is not surprising because of well known
background of Greenaway as a painter but it is very impressionable for the
film viewer. I suggest that the perception of the narration and the plot of
this film is integral because we have a triple author a d thus a auteur
film. The drawings themselves are the meaningful elements of the
narration, the center of the plot and more over the finished drawings
became the important evidences in the end of the film. The end has a tragic
and unexpected upshot. There are many things in common between
painting as an art form and the representation of it in The Draughts a ’s
Contract. One of the specific characteristics of this film is framing which
related to painting. But in difference to painting it is known that film is a
collective medium. In spite of this after an appearance of New Wave
movement in European cinema and particular in France, in the theory of film

it becomes appropriate to talk about the author of the film like an author in
painting and in other classical art forms.
After it’s origi i si tieth in France this auteur theory extended to other
countries in Europe and to America. An American film theorist Andrew Sarris
proposed for example three criteria for recognizing an auteur: (1) technical
competence; (2) distinguishable personality; and (3) interior meaning arising
from tension et ee perso alit a d aterial .[6] I suggest the concept of
author is appli a le to this fil , which produced by Greenaway in 1982.
The concept of auteur is related to the de ate o er the fil ’s status as a art
form.
The whole of scene of the film The Draughts a ’s Co tract is set in
1694 in the vast estate, were young and modern painter Mr. Nevill signed a
o tra t ith Mrs. Her ert a out dra i g of her hus a d’s estate. A
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action of the film never goes out from the area of estate and it seems like
cutting from twelve painting which are all together created a whole picture
and the plot resolution in the end. In the beginning of the film Mr. Nevill
did ’t a t to deal ith this dra i g because of there was a time limitation
of 12 days while he was busy enough. Moreover, he said that he preferred
the life of idleness in general. He is playing a self-confident owner of the
situation and he agrees to make contract with some indispensable terms
such as private meetings for his pleasure with Mrs. Herbert and keeping the
garden clean from people and sheep while he will be drawing there. But
unfortunately the landscape and the garden around the houses are full of
servants, gardeners, and sheep.
Nevill wanted to freeze
the life by framing it, but in
spite that he did it well, the
price for that was his life. Mr.
Nevill created the drawings
with the photographical
accuracy. Some strange objects
appeared on the drawings.
These details indicated that it
was a murder of Mr. Herbert in the garden and he would never come back
from his 12th da ’s trip. The suspected person is Mr.Nevill. Painting in this
film is equal to photography and to the particular documentary
photography, which is useful in criminalistics.
He became the victim of a frame-up. His drawings frame him into an
accusation of murder. By trying to clear himself from the charge the
draughtsman signed another contract according to which he should give a
sexual pleasure to the daughter of Mr. and Mrs. Herbert. The theme of the
film, which we learned only at the end, was about the property, the wished
pregnancy of Mrs.Her ert’s daughter and about who will be an heir of the
estate. But Greenaway left the audience with an open end. The sexual
encounter between Nevill and Mrs. Herbert followed one more time when
she was explaining to him the semiotic of the pomegranates fruit. Here
again we have one more connotation. I am not going to analyze a great
u er of the allegories a d o otatio s i the Gree a a ’s fil , e ause
there are so many of them. However the repeating of the number twelve,
which grows to thirteen (plus rejected one), forced me involuntary to think
about Christianity and Twelve Apostles.
The visual look and visual images of the film are not related only to
painting and photography, but also to architecture. The viewer is in
immersion to the geometrical forms of the garden and to contemplation of
the buildings and that is why he/she distracted from the dialogues and
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conversations of the characters. The sound which consists of conversations
and music written by Michael Nyman could be considered as an implicit
narrator which is as well important to understanding the plot of the film as
visual images, watching the geometrical lines of the garden and even
evidences which were reflected on the drawings. As a film viewer I was so
fascinated by images that it was not always easy to follow the narration.
According to the newest theory of Tomas Elsaessar and Malte Hagener
concerning senses, I suggest that The Draughtsman’s Contract is a film of
losed for , in which the universe depicted in the film (its diegeses)
closes in upon itself in the sense that it contains only elements which are
e essar e ause i ter all oti ated. [7] The editing style of the film is
related to the formalist theory.
The Draughtsman's Contract
applies to a whole number of
representations between mediums:
painting, photography, literature
and music, between reality and
fiction, art and nature, time and
space. The film is also concerned
with politics, ethics, culture and of
course with aesthetics. Greenaway constructs the cinematographic world by
forcing it into artificial and pretended categories. There are some absurd
notions in this film. One of them is a naked man, who was sometimes with
make up as a sculpture. He looks free against a background of the others
grotesque dressed and acting characters. He was the only one who broke
the whole representation of the self-confident characters of the film and the
geometrical rightness of the park, where the film is setting. I think that the
relationship between film and other art forms in this film were shown
mostly on the example of painting medium, which plays the role of
documentary photography. Greenaway tried to use the main rules of
painting in the narration and film shooting, such as: composition, sun light
importance, symmetrical symbols of classicism and so on when he created
the film. It seems to me that it turned out well!

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END NOTES

[1] Stam, Robert, Film Theory, An Introduction., Oxford: Blackwell

Publication, 2000, p.122.
[2] Naremore, James, Authorship, in: A Companion to Film Theory: Blackwell
Reference, edited by Toby Miller and Robert Stam, Online, p. 7.
[3] Benjamin, Walter, The Work of Art in an Age of Mechanical
Reproduction" (1935), in: Continental Aesthetics. Romanticism to
Postmodernism, An anthology, Blackwell Publishing, Oxford, U.K., 2001, p.
173.
[4] Stam, Robert, Film Theory, An Introduction., Oxford: Blackwell
Publication, 2000, p. 32.
[5] ibid, p. 28.
[6] ibid, p.89
[7] Elsaesser, Thomas and Malte Hagener, Film Theory: an introduction
through the senses, London: Sage, 1999, p.16.

About contributor:

HELENA TOMASSON, born in USSR, has been living in Sweden from 2007.
Previously, she studied the sociology of culture and media and worked as a marketing chief in a
printing company in Kiev, Ukraine. Presently, she is studying Visual Culture at Lund University
where she is researching Bergman`s film in particular. She writes nonfiction, fiction and poetry. Selected
poetry were published in the collections The ironic lyrics of the new century, St.Petersburg, Russia,
2005, From the heart to heart, Malmö, Sweden, 2011. She is an author of the fiction book Georgian
Novel, Kiev, Ukraine, 2011.

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