Modigliani Poster

Modigliani (2004)

Biography  
Rayting:   7.4/10 11K votes
Country: UK | Germany
Language: English
Release date: 10 February 2005

The story of Amedeo Modigliani's bitter rivalry with Pablo Picasso, and his tragic romance with Jeanne Hebuterne.

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User Reviews

rob2661 16 May 2008

Elsa Zylberstein gives a very irritating, mannered performance. Every time that she screams or yells (and she does that quite often in this movie)you wonder if she understands English well enough to understand what she's saying. She also changes accents several times throughout the course of the movie.

Garcia's accent lapses from Italian to Brooklyn, (which is odd considering he's from LA). Plus he's gotten old and fat.

As a biography, it doesn't really stick to the facts, especially with regard to Modigliani's death.

As a romance, it's a love story between a drug addict/alcoholic and his punching bag/doormat/unfit mother/ model. Hardly Romeo and Juliet.

As a tragedy, generally a movie about a tragic couple shouldn't make you think, "phew! Thank god those two aren't around breathing the same air as me anymore!" As a period piece, its set in Paris in the 1920's and filmed in Rumania with an anachronistic soundtrack.

As a movie about artists, aside from one nice sequence where Picasso and Modigliani converse with Renoir at his estate, it seems to be this movie's contention that painters spend most of their time drinking absinthe, mistreating their wives or mistresses, acting like pompous egomaniacs and occasionally firing or pointing guns at one another.

Pretty much a botched job from start to finish. Writer, director, and cast should all hang their heads in shame.

Ignore any positive comments you see here. Don't waste your time or money on this nonsense.

secondtake 1 October 2011

Fmovies: Modigliani (2004)

Wow, somebody besides Modigliani was smoking hashish when making this thing. It's incoherent, it takes fictional liberties that border on infantile (never mind trying to create an interesting story), and the acting and writing (basics, yes?) are strained and patched together. Stephen Holden is right, this is a movie about how not to make a movie about a famous artist.

Andy Garcia? I can see how people find him handsome, and Modigliani was a lady's man, for sure, so that much works. But he isn't an actor with either subtlety or fire, mostly just self-consciousness. His girlfriend, Jeanne, who was supposed to be 19 when the artist met her, is played with surprising unevenness by the usually talented Elsa Zylberstein, who was almost twice that age, 36. (She does have a naturally long face, which fits the elongated look of the artist's many portraits.) And then there is an even worse fit, the man playing the short fiery Spaniard named Picasso, an Iranian-British comedian name Omid Djalili. He neither looks nor acts like Picasso, who was filmed and photographed so much we know quite exactly what he was like.

So what is it about this film that makes sense? Nothing. There is snow in one direction and not in the the other. There is the foolish brandishing of guns, glasses smashed to the floor, hallucinations that play cheap cinematic games, an invented rivalry between Picasso and Modigliani as if they were the only two artists of note in town (this is Paris, 1917, remember). Oh, and speaking of that, where's the war? You know, World War I. Ha.

So, Modigliani impregnates this young Catholic student, Jeanne, and shows raging compassion and neglect in almost the same scene. He loves poverty and seems to never really paint--except when he gives up halfway through and destroys the thing in a fit. (This is only partly true--he drew and painted like mad, but not destructively.) The light is often nice, his T.B. is neatly invisible until the dramatic final bow, and Paris never looked so tawdry and small. It's a shame, because it could at least have been brimming with atmosphere. Or, taking it another direction, the movie could have leapt into complete fantasy like Derek Jarman's "Caravaggio" or the inventive (and more accurate) "Goya in Bordeaux."

I wouldn't recommend this to anyone. Anyone, not with all the better artist films out there. As a final note, even if you like everything I didn't, you'll have to keep track of the many side characters (artists who come and go like Max Jacobs, Diego Rivera, and Utrillo), and the put up with a pastiched together simultaneous scene of several of these painters all making their works for the competition, feverishly painting as club music plays in the soundtrack as if it were a high school football tournament.

Good luck. The death mask at the end? That's for real. And the final tragic suicide, as well. The truth of Modigliani is far more intense than this frivolous thing.

lucasorriso 21 August 2014

This movie simply spoils a great character and its incredibly rich environment with a long series of pseudo-romantic inventions, a poor direction, and an awful Andy Garcia. Too many facts are totally invented, and alter deeply the personality of Modigliani, as well as the real course of the events, relationships, and even time line (Edit Piaf was definitely not singing yet at the time of the movie). Some scenes are ridiculous, and the large use of little cinematographic tricks (such like Modi whistling the Italian anthem, the "hollywood manual" competition applause, to name a few) lower the level to unacceptable. Fully disappointing.

gradyharp 6 October 2005

Modigliani fmovies. MODIGLIANI is a difficult movie to review. It has some very strong features such as the cinematography that captures the artsy feeling of Paris 1919 and, despite excesses, manages to create some visuals of hallucinations and the wild madness of painters painting canvasses; a rather complex peak into the lives of several of the more revolutionary artists of the time; and a substantial feeling for the interchange between artist and model. The main problem with the film is a script that is banal, limited in historical validity, and concentrating on a single rather silly motif of a painters' competition.

Amedeo Modigliani (1884 - 1920) was a Sephardic Jew from Italy who moved to the mecca of Paris to create his brilliant portraits and sculptures of nudes and extended neck women and girls. His genius lay in his unifying the spiritual Eastern iconography (tribal art and Judaism) of his heritage with the Christian (read Catholic) traditions of the artists with whom he associated which resulted in his creations of the female nude from a feminist cultural perspective. What this film delivers is a rather annoying portrait of a young consumptive artist who drank and drugged himself to death at a moment in his career when renown was just beginning. The reasons for his place in art history are merely hinted all for the sake of the Hollywood biopic.

Andy Garcia plays Modigliani with a modicum of élan and a plethora of bad traits. The lovely model Jeanne Hébuterne (Elsa Zylberstein) who was the subject not only of his portraits but the mother of his illegitimate child and his live-in paramour is a bit long in the tooth on suffering, though despite the fact that Zylberstien is hampered by both a weak script and limited acting, she does have an uncanny resemblance to Jeanne. The artists with whom 'Modi' works include a strangely miscast Picasso (Omid Djalili), Chaim Soutine (Stevan Rimkus), Maurice Utrillo (Hippolyte Girardot), Diego Rivera (Dan Astileanu), Zborowski (Louis Hilyer), and the strangely non-effeminate Jean Cocteau (Peter Capaldi)! Dealer Max Jacob (Udo Kier) and Gertrude Stein (Miriam Margolyes!) are thrown in with the harlequins and 'Modi's' child spirit Dedo (Frederico Ambrosino) for atmosphere. The storyline is one that could have easily been told in the requisite time frame but MODIGLIANI taxes the viewers' attention for over two hours.

So aside from a visually exciting experience there is really very little to be learned from this liquor and opium soaked consumptive noisy melodrama that could have been about any one of the artists involved in the story. The genius of Modigliani is barely tapped. Grady Harp

Tiny-13 25 December 2004

The story of Modigliani is well-known. However, this film gives it life with a wonderful script, amazing cinematography, and mind-blowing performances by Andy Garcia and Elsa Zylberstein, a little-known French actress. I was glued to the screen from start to finish and have recommended it to everyone. If this film, Garcia, and Zylberstein don't receive Academy Award nominations, there's something wrong with Hollywood... at least more than is already wrong with it.

Run don't walk to the nearest theatre showing "Modigiliani". Forget the mega-publicized studio films being released now (Winter 2004-2005). See it while you can. It's a true find, and one that will stay with you long after you left the theatre.

yves_van_hastel 23 December 2004

I really liked the movie. it is beautifully shot and the acting is great and that also counts for the beautiful story of this painter. Sure, if you are not into 'art' movies this wont be something for you but if you like a movie that is not a Hollywood blockbuster and if you like Garcia, i'm sure that you will like the movie. Andy Garcia is far most the only 'star' in the movie but that gives the movie a certain amount of credibility. If there would have been to many A listers, the movie wouldn't have worked like it does now. Although the movie is set in the 1920-1930's there is also a modern part (the scene where everyone is painting their masterworks for the exibition with some lounge music on the background is gorgeous!). So if you want to see a true actor's movie check it out!

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