The uncanny element.

475 The portrait in cinema and

series: The Crown Case
Giulio Brevetti

Università degli Studi della Campania “Luigi Vanvitelli”

giulio.brevetti@unicampania.it
o retrato • on portraiture

Abstract

The contribution aims to focus on the portrait presence within

the films interpreted as a diegetic element, an object that in
many cases acts as a motor of the story narrated or as a disrup-
tive element. Just like in the case of the television series The Crown, that
has offered new and significant insights into the portraiture practice and
its multiple meanings.

Keywords
Portrait; Movies; TV series; Images of Power; Portrait sittings.

Preamble

The contribution intends to dwell on the portrait presence

within the films intended as a diegetic element, an object that in many
cases acts as an engine of the story told or as a disturbing element, trans-
versal to the eras and film genres. Many famous films of the past have
proposed the use of the portrait, largely painted, in order to increase
the main character’s charm and charisma, as in the case of the femme
fatale in the noir films of the forties and fifties, in many films of Alfred
 Hitchcock, like Rebecca (1940) and Vertigo (1958), not to mention its
current use in many horror and tension films (Aumont, 1992; Sykora,
476 2003; Barrientos-Bueno 2009; Jacobs - Colpaert 2013; Brevetti 2021).
In recent years, there has been a growing trend towards the pres-
ence of audio-visual works within which the portrait occupies a central
position. As in the case of the award-winning French film Portrait de la
jeune fille en feu (Céline Sciamma, 2019), mainly focused on the paint-
ing of the engagement portrait of a young woman in pre-revolutionary
France. The film reflects on the condition of the young female painters
of that period specialized in the portrait practice and on the different
phases of work: the recruitment, the preparatory sketches, the laying ses-
sions, the second thoughts. And, above all, the movie invites to reflect on
o retrato • on portraiture

the imaginary portrait that we see entering the artist’s eyes and head. The
portrayed object is therefore the true protagonist of the film, the result of
an artist’s work, from the moment of the commission to its realization.
But more specifically, this film offers the opportunity to reflect on the
female position of the woman artist at the dawn of the revolution and
on her social condition, as well as on the engagement portrait practice,
on the production of miniatures, taken from the original on canvas, on
the presence of young female scholars in the ateliers, on exhibitions and
salons.
A significant use of the portrait is particularly offered by some
films and television series on the English monarchy, as the successful
The Crown available on the digital channel Netflix (Brevetti 2019). As it
is well known, this series conceived and written by Peter Morgan recon-
structs the life of Elizabeth II, focusing, as well as on the crucial passages
of her life and that of the Kingdom, also on the private side, on the some-
times-painful choices, on the often tense and conflicting relationships
with those around her, starting with her sister and her husband. The first
two seasons (2016, 2017), which has been a great success with audiences
and critics, tell the rise to power of Elizabeth, starting from her marriage
in 1947 with Prince Philip of Edinburgh until the Profumo scandal of
1963 and the birth of the last son, Edward, in 1964. The third (2019)
and the fourth seasons (2020), instead, focus on the period between the
historic Labor victory of 1964 to the definite resignation of Margaret
Thatcher in 1990 and the first cracks in the marriage between Prince
Charles and his wife Diana. And precisely the portrait of the Queen
 served as an expedient
to facilitate the transi-
477 tion from the actress who
played the role in the first
two seasons (Claire Foy)
to the more mature one
of the following two sea-
sons (Olivia Colman). At Fig. 1. The Crown, ep. 21, Olding (B. Caron, 2019): the
the beginning of the third passage of the role of the Queen from one actress to another
underlined by the juxtaposition of two stamps.
one, in fact, to encourage
the viewer to switch from one actress to another, the past and recent
stamps are compared to show the passage of time and, therefore, the
o retrato • on portraiture

need for a different and older actress (fig. 1).

The painted portraits

During the first season, an entire episode is dedicated to a painted

portrait, not of the Queen, nor of another member of the royal family, but
rather of a central character in the early years of Elizabeth’s reign, namely
Winston Churchill (John Lithgow), the co-star of the series, who, after
the death of George VI (Jared Harris), holds the role of putative father
of the sovereign, to whom he dispenses advice not without disputes. The
old prime minister thus guides the young Queen to discover her power.
His proud and indomitable character is revealed in a sensational way
precisely in the circumstance of the realization of an official portrait,
commissioned by the two Chambers on the occasion of his eightieth
birthday, in 1954. The ninth episode, Assassins (Benjamin Caron, 2016),
in fact, reconstructs the genesis of the painting and, above all, the harsh
reaction of the person concerned. It was created by the painter Graham
Sutherland (Stephen Dillane), an artist with a surrealist background,
who embodied one of the leading names in the English avant-garde in
the 1950s (Hammer 2005). When Churchill, who delights in painting
landscapes (Coombs - Churchill 2004), learns of who is in charge of the
portrait, he exclaims: «Not sure I can trust a modernist with an English
name. Give me a German modernist. Or an Italian. They’re the ones
who have to start all over again. Whatever could an Englishman want to
change?». In this case, as well as in The Queen (Stephen Frears, 2006),
the famous film also written by Peter Morgan on Elizabeth’s facing the
 difficult moment of Diana’s death, the distrust of what modernity rep-
resents becomes central and in both cases the portrait creation can be
478 interpreted as a pretext for political confrontation. Unlike in the film,
however, the relationship between the portrayed and the artist in the
above mentioned episode is opposite (fig. 2): in the first case there was
in fact a total convergence between the old Queen and the old painter,
both united against Blair the modernizer, whilst, in the series we are
witnessing a clash between the old conservative prime minister and the
artist, of whom - according to Churchill - «you can smell the socialism».
The episode reconstructs in a philological way the ceremony of
the eighty years, subsequently taken up by the BBC and still traceable
online, in which we witness the unveiling of the completed portrait and
o retrato • on portraiture

the famous and ironic, actually very contemptuous, Churchill’s joke: «a

remarkable and patriotic example of modern art!» (fig. 3). He then takes
the portrait, offered him as a gift by Parliament, to his country house,
where he keeps it covered with a cloth. Sutherland, offended by the treat-
ment given him publicly,
seeks a private confron-
tation that leads to the
two artistic visions colli-
sion. For Churchill, the
portrait is cruel and dis-
honest since not faithful
to the true image of him.
Fig. 2. The Crown, ep. 9, Assassins (B. Caron, 2016): the
For Sutherland, however, laying session becomes a political confrontation between
it is age that is cruel, and Churchill and Sutherland.
therefore the decay and
fragility that emerge from
the portrait are the ones
he saw and did not intend
to hide. After these bit-
ter words of the painter,
as in front of a mirror,
Churchill takes note of
Fig. 3. The Crown, ep. 9, Assassins (B. Caron, 2016): the
his old age, recognizing unveiling of the portrait during the ceremony in honour of
himself in the painting. Churchill.
 This awareness leads him to resign as head of the government and
therefore to take that step backwards which he had been think-
479 ing about for some time but which he did not face out of pride.
The episode’s finale also reconstructs the fate of the paint-
ing, which was later destroyed by Mrs. Churchill (Harriet Walter) as a
visual reminder of her husband’s physical and political decay. But if the
material work has been recklessly condemned to the stake and damna-
tio memoriae, the image it carried continues to live on thanks to photo-
graphs and television footage, modern means that allow the perpetuation
of the memory, even through a serial narrative delivered and digitally
enjoyed which reconstructs the brief history of that painting, rose to the
swan song of a glorious statesman. Sixty years after those events, we are
o retrato • on portraiture

witnessing, thanks to ‘modern’ technologies, the due compensation for

a ‘modernist’ painter like Sutherland, who had dared to portray power
without its consent.
But more generally, throughout the television series, the pres-
ence of the painted portraits of the past represents, as in the movie The
King’s Speech (Tom Hooper, 2010), the weight of power and the com-
parison with the predecessors (Brevetti 2019). This use of the portrait
as an element of continuous comparison with the figures of the past and
therefore with the responsibilities that await the character is particularly
evident in the fourth season, in which the young Lady Diana (Emma
Corrin) is often combined
with portraits of noble-
women and queens of
the past to underline the
difference and the intol-
erance of being trapped
in situations and bonds
that she does not like, act-
ing as visual factors that Fig. 4. The Crown, ep. 40, War (J. Hobbs, 2020): the visual
comparison between a figure from the past in the portrait on
reveal her malaise (fig. 4). the wall and the young and lost Diana.

The photographic portraits

Alongside with the pictorial portraits, The Crown series offered a

lot of food for thought about another means of representation, specifically
 the photographic ones. A recurring moment in the narration of Elizabeth
II’s existential parable is in fact represented by the circumstance of the
480 laying session for the realization of the official portrait, aimed at sanc-
tioning the solemnity of a specific historical, as well as personal, pas-
sage. The numerous sequences dedicated to the reconstruction, albeit
certainly ‘fictionalized’, of the photographic sessions of the most famous
portraits that have marked the life of the British royal family thus play a
very specific dramaturgical role, so much so that they act as catalysts for
the dissension between the public and private, reality and fiction, sense
of duty and intolerance of etiquette, morals and transgression; contrasts
that constitute precisely the backbone at the base of the story of the
Netflix series. It is for this reason that these situations are given a weight
o retrato • on portraiture

similar - if not even more important - to that reserved for official cere-
monies; even during the photographic sessions there is in fact a specific
liturgy made up of roles, poses, words and script atmospheres so that
authoritative and reassuring images are born. The famous Cecil Beaton
(Mark Tandy) plays the role of hierophant, or effigy obstetrician, whose
important contribution in the visual communication of the royal family
was made between the 1940s and 1960s (Strong 1988; Brown 2011).
The great English photographer is present both at the beginning
and at the end of the first season. In the inaugural episode, Wolferton
Splash (Stephen Daldry, 2016), the session of the official photos of the
wedding between Elizabeth and Philip (Matt Smith), orchestrated by
Beaton as an affected master of ceremonies, offers the pretext to high-
light the contrast between the British royal family and that of the groom.
To sharpen the sense of unreality of these representations are the painted
backgrounds, depicting a fake and artificial nature, which flow behind
the couple like the scenographic backdrops of a pastoral drama. At the
end of the tenth and last episode of the first season, Gloriana (Philip
Martin, 2016), the consecration of Elizabeth as queen and heroine of
the series is sanctioned by a solemn pose for an official portrait, during
which Beaton arrives to shape with images and words - «All hail sage
Lady, whom a grateful Isle hath blessed. Not moving, not breathing.
Our very own goddess! Glorious Gloriana! Forgetting Elizabeth Windsor
now! Now only Elizabeth Regina» - his creature as a new Pygmalion.
During the second season, the presence of Beaton becomes
habitual, as does the role of rhetorical cantor of his noble subjects. In
the thirteenth episode, Lisbon (Philip Martin, 2017), in a mellifluous way
 he recites the emphatic verses taken from Ode on the Death of the Duke of
Wellington (1852) by Alfred Tennyson - «O, famous son of England, this
481 is he. Great by land and great by sea. Thine island loves thee well, thou
greatest sailor since our world began. Now to the roll of muffled drums,
to thee the greatest soldier comes. For this is he, O give him welcome.
This is he, England’s greatest son. He that gained a hundred fights, nor
even lost an english gun» - during the photo session following the cere-
mony of the conferral by the Queen of the title of Prince of the United
Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland of the North to her husband
Philip, Duke of Edinburgh. Similarly to what had happened at the end of
the first season for Elizabeth, the same procedure is reserved this time for
Philip: Beaton’s task is therefore to depersonalize his subject, cancel its
o retrato • on portraiture

individuality and idealize it, reaching thus a hieratic abstraction.

The photographer’s presence of reassuring and fairy-tale court
images is questioned in the fourteenth episode, Beryl (Benjamin Caron,
2017), in which the queen’s restless younger sister (Vanessa Kirby) shows
her intolerance towards him who visually celebrates that world with «just
one thing: fairy tales». As is customary, on the occasion of her birth-
day, Margaret poses for an official portrait in the presence of the Queen
Mother (Victoria Hamilton), delighted that in Beaton’s portraits of her
daughter the young girl resembles her (fig. 5). In support of the unsat-
isfied Princess, the lady-in-waiting, Elizabeth Cavendish (Catherine
Bailey) intervenes, giving voice to her thoughts: «I think birthday por-
traits should evolve and mature with age, like the subject. Show change
in the character. Complexity. Reality». The words of the young woman,
requested by Margaret «having at least one foot in the real world», are
immediately denied by the Queen Mother, convinced that «no one wants
complexity and reality
from us». The vision of
her and that of the pho-
tographer match per-
fectly, both aware that the
subjects must be able to
dream while looking at the
images of the royal family
and thus escape from the Fig. 5. The Crown, ep. 14, Beryl (B. Caron, 2017): Margaret
poses for a traditional Beaton portrait on the occasion of her
problems of everyday life. birthday.
 The contrast between the harsh world of the court in which
Margaret has fallen and the fairy tale that emerges from the portraits
482 is well represented in the frame in which the Princess, dejected for her
sad love life and clinging to a cigarette that smokes greedily, looks at the
prints of the shots taken by Beaton: a simple and sudden change of focus
transports us from reality to dream, from truth to fiction, from natural to
artifact.
But the episode mainly reconstructs the meeting between
Margaret and another photographer, the handsome and charming
Antony Armstrong-Jones (Matthew Goode), who would become the
Princess’s first husband (Snowdon 2000). Inside the house where the
two are guests during a party there are various shots made by the artist
o retrato • on portraiture

depicting human faces are displayed on the walls. Margaret is fascinated

by them and, when she uses the word portraits to describe them, she is
immediately corrected by their author: «I don’t like that word. It’s so
stuffy and traditional», preferring rather ‘people’ and ‘faces’. But what
strikes the Princess is the definition that the photographer chooses for
his work: «What people want to show of themselves, the idealized version,
is of no interest to me. What people hide… that interests me». Intrigued
by the man and intrigued by his way of portraying individuals, Margaret
asks him to be photographed; he accepts her, but on condition that she
lets «the titles and princess outside».
When the two meet again in the photographic studio, the session
takes on the contours of a real courtship. Margaret has never posed freely
and naturally in front of a lens, without the presence of her mother and
the court staff. But above all she is not used to being in front of a pho-
tographer so different from Beaton, not resorting to the use of pompous
words to flatter and using only a small and agile Leica instead of bulky
devices. To sharpen this distance between the family portrait painter
who is usually imposed on her and the one she herself has chosen, it is
Margaret’s decision to show Antony one of the recent portraits signed by
Beaton, thus inducing him to create an image of the opposite to. Passing
into the dark room to check the result of that session, the two pause on a
particular shot, which is not shown to the viewer, in which both, pleased,
no longer recognize ‘the Princess’, but an authentic and sensual creature.
If the comparison, or rather the contrast of a generational, sty-
listic, and even sexual nature - Beaton is alluded to as ‘simply queer’
- between the two photographers competing for the ‘subject Margaret’
 appears explicit and all too obvious, the more interesting aspect is the
perspective of Armstrong-Jones as an exact re-proposition, for the
483 photographic portrait of the Princess, of what Sutherland was for the
Churchill’s pictorial portrait: both highlighted what they saw of the sub-
ject, and that is the restless eroticism of Margaret, the non-compliant
old age of Winston. And if Churchill wanted the non-appreciated by him
painting to disappear, removing it thus from everyone’s view, Margaret
decides to show the whole world the shot taken by Armstrong-Jones but
suggested by herself, begging the photographer to send it to the news-
papers. Through this image, which we perceive to be so roughly differ-
ent from those made at court, Margaret decides to make a drastic and
independent choice, anticipating the media revolution that would have
o retrato • on portraiture

embodied, a few decades later, the daughter-in-law of her sister, Lady

Diana. And the Queen, unlike many curious and amused readers, will
be troubled both by the unprecedented version of herself offered by the
Princess and by the power of the means of communication, no longer
controllable and manageable by the Crown.
Only after being finished before everyone’s eyes, the image is
also shown to the spectators, revealed in its desperate need to be looked
at (fig. 6). The photographic portrait of Margaret - which appears beau-
tiful and with bare shoulders, so much as to suggest a free and emanci-
pated nudity - thus represents, in addition to a self-awareness, a subtle
revenge against a family and a social and existential condition that have
always been imposed on her by them, causing the constant lack of free-
dom of choice. Furthermore, it is not only the artist’s unprecedented
and ‘modern’ gaze that makes that snapshot ‘real’, but also the rough,
almost crude rendering of a newspaper print - which, in fact, formal-
izes the news and therefore the
‘reality’-, so far from the muf-
fled and fairy tale rendering
of painted or photographic
portraits reproduced on glossy
tabloids or on postcards. For
her birthday portrait, Margaret
has therefore wisely chosen to Fig. 6. The Crown, ep. 14, Beryl (B. Caron, 2017): the
appear not as the Queen’s sister, scandalous portrait of Margaret by Armstrong-Jones.
 rejecting the depersonalization operated by Beaton, but as a woman
ready to fall in love, precisely of the man who is photographing her with-
484 out filters and superstructures.

The family portraits

Even in the last episode of the second season, The Mystery Man
(Benjamin Caron, 2017), the expressive form of the portrait risks under-
mining the serenity of the royal family. In fact, the famous Profumo scan-
dal is reconstructed, the story that occupied the press for a good part of
1963 and which involved the Secretary of State for War, John Profumo
(Tim Steed), a frequent visitor to the home of osteopath Stephen Ward
o retrato • on portraiture

(Richard Lintern), in turn a hunter of girls for members of the London

high society that he loved to depict freehand. And a portrait of the Duke
of Edinburgh, Prince Philip, would appear among the papers found
in the home of Ward, who committed suicide following the accusation
of exploitation of prostitution: the risk of a possible publication of the
image would have constituted a huge scandal for the Crown.
After having thwarted this latest headache, as always both of pub-
lic and private nature, the birth of the last royal baby, Edward, represents
an opportunity to reunite the royal family before the candid and reassur-
ing goal of Cecil Beaton. After Margaret, this time it is Philip, unlike his
sister-in-law risked seeing his own portrait in the newspapers, to reveal all
the intolerance for that ritual directed by Beaton, so much so as to silence
the too noisy present and burst out violently: «Take the photo!». Philip’s
outburst of anger at the umpteenth situation of constraint that plastered
pose causes him, is mitigated by the imperturbable Beaton, intent on
enveloping those present in a spiral of rhetorical and redundant words,
taken this time from
Richard II by Shakespeare
- «This happy breed of
men, this little world, This
precious stone set in the
silver sea, Which serves it
in the office of a wall Or
as a moat defensive to a
house, Against the envy Fig. 7. The Crown, ep. 20, Mystery Man (B. Caron, 2017):
the usual family portrait made by Beaton on the occasion of
of less happier lands, This the birth of Prince Edward.
 blessed plot, this earth, this realm, this England» - which he uses for the
conception of a new image with a sweetish and fabulous flavor. Just like
485 the first season, the second one also ends with the birth of a suffered offi-
cial portrait called to reveal a ‘real’ pain behind the ostentatious Olympic
calm (fig. 7).
The group photo is repeatedly used as well in the fourth season
to highlight contrasts and frictions between the characters. Having to
appear together, in the same image as on a stage during a performance,
becomes a very effective narrative and visual expedient, such as in the case
of the official image between the Queen and Prime Minister Thatcher
(Gillian Anderson) in which the tension between the characters is palpa-
ble, forced to flaunt a haughty and serene image and to hide their pain or
o retrato • on portraiture

contrasts. It is therefore no coincidence that even at the end of this sea-

son, as well as the second one, the last image is dedicated to family por-
traits in which behind the smiles and elegant poses, resentment and pain
brood, as in the case of
the young and sad Diana,
who has become part of
a family unit to which
she feels alien, just like
her father-in-law Philip
at the end of the second
season (fig. 8). The dis-
turbance that can be seen Fig. 8. The Crown, ep. 40, War (J. Hobbs, 2020): the group
photo of the royal family gathered for Christmas.
on Diana’s face in the last
frame is in fact subsequent to a conversation she had just before with the
Prince of Edinburgh (Tobias Menzies) on the spirit of sacrifice that both
were called to have in order to be close to their respective spouses.
The spirit of sacrifice that a member of the royal family must
know how to indulge, showing himself calm and serene, starts right from
the portraits. It will be Diana who will overturn the relationship with
her own image, offering herself a modern version and not caged in the
meshes of a representation that is always the same and not spontaneous.

Final considerations

The Crown case makes it possible to add a further step to the

growing interest in the theme of the portrait in cinema, as shown for
 example by the recent conference Le portrait au cinema (Toulouse, 21-23
June 2021). But this series is not limited only to showing portraits and
486 using them to underline the passage from public to private vision, or the
conflict between personal pain and the image of strength to be commu-
nicated; to characterize the construction of many episodes and numer-
ous key passages are the laying sessions, moments in which the tensions
of the characters are catalysed and are hidden by the artist’s creative act.
A series that aims to reconstruct the most emblematic passages both in
recent British history and in that of the royal family, and to show there-
fore the private and behind the scenes of an institution and its choices,
thus finds in the representation of the laying session the most effective
expedient, the one that better than others summarizes the purpose of the
o retrato • on portraiture

series. The moment of the pose sessions thus arises as an interesting and
in many ways unprecedented field of investigation that would be worth
probing, analyzing and comparing similar moments in dozens of films
and television series.

Bibliographical references

R. Strong, Cecil Beaton: The Royal Portraits, Thames and Hudson,

London 1988.
J. Aumont, Du visage au cinéma, Editions de l’Etoile, Paris
1992.
Photographs by Snowdon: A Retrospective, National Portrait
Galleries Publications, London 2000.
K. Sykora, As you desire me. Das Bildnis im Film, König, Köln
2003.
D. Coombs, M. Churchill, Sir Winston Churchill: His Life and His
Paintings, Running Press, Philadelphia 2004.
M. Hammer, Graham Sutherland: Landscapes, War Scenes,
Portraits, 1924-1950, Scala, London 2005.
M. Barrientos Bueno, Celuloide enmarcado. El retrato pictórico en
el cine, Quiasmo Editorial, Madrid 2009.
S. Brown, Queen Elizabeth II: Portraits by Cecil Beaton, V&A
Publishing, London 2011.
S. Jacobs, L. Colpaert, The Dark Galleries. A Museum Guide to
 Painted Portraits in Film Noir, Gothic Melodramas, and Ghost
Stories of the 1940s and 1950s, AraMER, Gent 2013.
487 G. Brevetti, «Inquieto giace il capo che porta la corona». Ritratti
del potere nella cinematografia inglese, in La fantasia e la storia. Studi
di Storia dell’arte sul ritratto dal Medioevo al Contemporaneo, ed. by G.
Brevetti, Palermo University Press, Palermo 2019, pp. 199-299.
G. Brevetti, Il profilo del nemico. Ritratti del Casanova felliniano,
tra pittura e cinema / Enemy’s profile. Portraits of the fellinian
Casanova, between painting and cinema, in Nemico/Scelta – Enemy/
Choice, ed. by E. Sant’Elia, «La freccia e il cerchio / The arrow and the
circle», VIII, 2021, pp. 245-282.
o retrato • on portraiture

Giulio Brevetti is Researcher of History of Art Criticism at the

Faculty of Letters and Cultural Heritage of the University of Campania
“Luigi Vanvitelli”. He deals mainly with iconographic aspects. He is the
leader of the “IPSo – Images of Power and Sovereignty” project on the
production of portraits of power in the 18th century. He published sev-
eral essays on Bourbon and Murat portraiture and edited, in 2016 and
2020, the volumes Io, la Regina, focused on the Queen Maria Carolina
of Habsburg-Lorraine. In 2019 he edited the volume entirely dedicated
to the portrait La fantasia e la storia. Studi di Storia dell’arte sul ritratto dal
Medioevo al Contemporaneo, in which his essays on the history of Italian
studies on portraits and on the use of portraits of power in the English
cinema were published.