{"id":37230,"date":"2022-06-17T08:17:06","date_gmt":"2022-06-17T12:17:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/?p=37230"},"modified":"2022-06-17T08:41:46","modified_gmt":"2022-06-17T12:41:46","slug":"the-bootleg-files-chagall","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/2022\/06\/17\/the-bootleg-files-chagall\/","title":{"rendered":"The Bootleg Files: Chagall"},"content":{"rendered":"

BOOTLEG FILES 805:<\/strong> \u201cChagall\u201d (1963 Oscar-winning documentary short narrated by Vincent Price).
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\nLAST SEEN:<\/strong> On YouTube.<\/p>\n

AMERICAN HOME VIDEO:<\/strong> None.
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\nREASON FOR BOOTLEG STATUS:<\/strong> It fell through the cracks.
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\nCHANCES OF SEEING A COMMERCIAL DVD RELEASE: <\/strong>Probably not.<\/p>\n

If you\u2019re the type of a movie fan who feels the need to see every film that won an Academy Award, you probably experienced a frustrated pursuit of \u201cChagall,\u201d which won the 1963 Best Documentary Short Subject. For many years, the film was very difficult to locate \u2013 there has never been a home entertainment release and it was absent from YouTube until last August when an unauthorized posting based on a McGraw-Hill Films educational market video popped up.
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Sadly, winning an Academy Award is not always synonymous with having a work of great quality. In the case of \u201cChagall,\u201d it is rare to recall another documentary short subject that takes a vibrant subject matter and reduces it to a quotidian experience.<\/p>\n

\u201cChagall\u201d opens at the artist Marc Chagall\u2019s estate in southern France with Vincent Price\u2019s narration declaring, \u201cBorn in the shadows, he charted his course through a magic universe among his own imagination.\u201d Some contemporary viewers might be surprised to hear the voice of Price as narrator \u2013 today, he is primarily known from his horror films, but in the early 1960s the actor was also widely known as an expert on art, and having him narrate the production gave it a seal of authority.<\/p>\n

Price\u2019s narration acknowledges that Chagall\u2019s birthplace was \u201cthe dark confines of a Russian ghetto,\u201d but strangely at no point in this film is Chagall clearly identified as being Jewish. Indeed, the words \u201cJewish\u201d and \u201cJew\u201d never turn up, although \u201chis people\u201d \u2013 including \u201cthe rabbis\u201d \u2013 are briefly mentioned. Perhaps the viewers in 1963 did not need to be reminded of this fact, but Chagall\u2019s faith is such a heavy influence in his work that its omission is peculiar.<\/p>\n

The narration tries to explain the artist\u2019s approach to his work, with Price describing an early painting by noting Chagall\u2019s \u201cunmistakable stamp of his quicksilver personality, blending the somber shades of melancholy with colors whose brilliance reflects his glowing love of life.\u201d Yes, the verbiage is mature, but the problem here is that the film never bothers to build a foundation to give the viewer an understanding of how and why the artist approached this creative path. Where did this “quicksilver personality” come from and how did maintain a “glowing love of life” in an environment defined by poverty and anti-Semitic oppression?<\/p>\n

\u201cChagall\u201d might be the most maddeningly incomplete documentary on an artist ever created. The artist\u2019s biography is skimmed over with such an astonishing lack of depth that the viewer has only a rudimentary understanding of the emotional and physical forces that shaped his creative powers. <\/p>\n

Even more baffling is the fact that few of Chagall\u2019s paintings are identified by name or date. The camera pans over the vast canvases while Price emotes his narration with the gusto that he brought to Roger Corman\u2019s cinematic riffs on Edgar Allan Poe \u2013 the clueless viewer who is left wondering how Chagall came up with his phantasmagoric imagery and how he was able to achieve a level of fame for his work.<\/p>\n

Chagall himself turns up on screen for a few minutes, but is never allowed to speak for himself. He is seen painting (but we don’t see what he is making), walking around his villa with his second wife Valentina (we learn that his first wife Bella died in New York in 1944 when the couple were in wartime exile in New York City) and judging the products of a local farmer\u2019s market. Towards the end of the film, there is a very brief segment of on a series of Chagall-designed stained-glass windows that were installed in Jerusalem \u2013 but we never get to see him actually working on this project.<\/p>\n

By the end of \u201cChagall,\u201d we know less about Chagall as a person and a creative force of energy than we did when the film started.<\/p>\n

Even more mysterious than \u201cChagall\u201d is the film\u2019s director, Italian director Lauro Venturi. His only other credited work within the International Movie Database is input as a co-director on \u201cPictura,\u201d a 1952 production on the lives of several prominent painters. Venturi was a Harvard graduate who became famous as an art and cinema scholar and the editor of a publishing company. He made no further films after \u201cChagall,\u201d despite snagging the Oscar.<\/p>\n

Following its victory at the Academy Awards, \u201cChagall\u201d turned up in theatrical release in 1964 via United Artists on a double bill with the adventure film \u201cTopkapi.\u201d As mentioned earlier, McGraw-Hill made the film available for non-theatrical release to the educational market. The Academy Film Archive restored the film in 2008, but to date it remains absent from the home entertainment market.<\/p>\n

And as for that unauthorized YouTube posting, the initial section of the film is wobbly but the picture eventually becomes acceptable. Still, this is not the best introduction to Chagall\u2019s art \u2013 and even those who know something about the master painter will be disappointed in its offering. <\/p>\n