Latest news with #EnfantAssisenRobeBleue
Observer
08-06-2025
- Entertainment
- Observer
In Wes Anderson's new movie, real masterpieces get a starring role
At the end of Wes Anderson's new caper, 'The Phoenician Scheme,' there are some unusual credits. In addition to the cast and crew, the artworks featured in the film are listed, complete with ownership details. That's because the pieces onscreen are not reproductions. They are in fact the actual masterpieces from Pierre-Auguste Renoir, René Magritte and other well-known artists. In the past, Anderson has faked a Kandinsky and a Klimt. Here he went for the real thing. 'We have a character who's a collector, who's a possessor; he wants to own things and we thought because it's sort of art and commerce mixed together this time we should try to have the real thing,' Anderson said via a voice note. What he ended up with was impressive. The fictional collection of businessperson Zsa-zsa Korda, played by Benicio Del Toro, includes Renoir's 'Enfant Assis en Robe Bleue,' which was once owned by Greta Garbo and Magritte's 'The Equator.' There is also a selection of works from the Hamburger Kunsthalle in Germany that includes pieces from the 17th century. Getting a collector or an art institution to hand over a painting worth millions of dollars to a film production isn't an easy task and the negotiations fell mostly to Jasper Sharp, a curator who had worked with Anderson and his wife, Juman Malouf, on their 2018 exhibition at the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna, where Sharp is based. 'A film set has vast amounts of light, heat, no climate control, very lax security, people running everywhere with booms and lights and props,' Sharp said in a video interview. 'The walls that it will be hung on are made of plywood sometimes. There are less desirable places to hang art, but this was certainly a challenging environment in terms of me trying to persuade someone that they maybe want to lend an object.' To offset concerns, the production hired a conservator and a registrar to be on set overseeing the paintings. There, in a darkened, fenced-off corner, a security guard watched over the pieces and made sure they would not be exposed to more light than necessary. Benicio Del Toro's character is a businessman who prides himself on owning masterpieces like Floris Gerritsz van Schooten's 'Still Life of Breakfast With Roast Ox.' 'I felt, to have any real conviction in being able to ask somebody to lend an object, we needed to have that sort of support network to assure them that the works would be handled exactly as they were if they were lending them to a museum,' said Sharp, who explained that this network included insurers, art handlers and shipping services. Still, even with Sharp's connections, some of his initial outreach was met with 'howls' of laughter and hang-ups. His search was both creative and practical. After discussing with Anderson what would make sense for Zsa-zsa, a domineering man who prides himself on owning masterpieces, Sharp contacted museums and collectors in the vicinity of the set at Studio Babelsberg in Potsdam, Germany. Sharp considers the old master selections from the Kunsthalle more in the 'best supporting actor' category of the art in Zsa-zsa's abode compared with the Renoir or the Magritte, which draw your eye. Anderson said he thought Juriaen Jacobsz's 1678 painting of dogs fighting over meat was 'an encapsulation of part of what our story is about.' (The film is very much Anderson's exploration of capitalism.) But Zsa-zsa doesn't just collect classical still lifes and paintings of animals. Sharp said he suggested to Anderson that perhaps the character owned some impressive art from the film's period setting — to show his keen sense of taste, specifically a work of surrealism. Sharp reached out to collector Ulla Pietzsch, who had never heard of Anderson but was interested in the project. 'I wasn't surprised when Wes settled on Magritte,' Sharp said. 'If you think about where Wes grew up in Houston, the Menil Collection has, if not the greatest collection of Magrittes in the United States, very close to that. So he has been looking at Magritte for a long time.' Sharp noted that 'The Equator' is not the most recognisable of Magrittes — there is no bowler hat — but it is enigmatic. Anderson, meanwhile, envisioned that a Renoir would hang in the bedroom of Zsa-zsa's daughter, Liesl (Mia Threapleton). Sharp found one in the collection of David Nahmad. 'I think it was maybe even in the script,' he said. Knowing that the elder Renoir painted his son Jean as a small child, 'somehow I thought Renoir might have painted somebody in this family, maybe Zsa-zsa.' The loans from Hamburger Kunsthalle remained on set for about a month, but the Magritte was in and out in a day and the Renoir just stayed a night. Production designer Adam Stockhausen said in an email that he and set decorator Anna Pinnock had full-size mock-up prints made to roughly place the art and try multiple positions. 'Once Wes finalised the placements, the conservators brought in the art and we swapped with the mock-ups,' he said. Sharp visited the set only once — the day the Renoir was present — but he said he felt the stars of the film were deferential to a portrait of Renoir's nephew that they were able to acquire on loan. This revealed itself in a conversation with Del Toro. 'He confessed it made him and everybody quite nervous to have this here, in a good way,' Sharp said. Observing the dynamic between the stars and the star artwork gave Sharp insight into the reasons Anderson had pursued the actual paintings. 'It changed the energy and the atmosphere on set as it would do if you lived with an object like that,' he said. As soon as 'The Phoenician Scheme' wrapped, Sharp started to suspect that it wouldn't be the last time he and Anderson embarked on a project of this nature. Anderson, he said, agreed. 'It's really hard once you've done this for the first time to put it back in the bottle,' Sharp said. — The New York Times
Buzz Feed
27-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Buzz Feed
7 Films That Used Real, Original Props For Their Iconic Scenes
Set and prop design are essential parts of the movie-making process, and sometimes films end up renting or creating real costly props in order to make a scene pop or ensure historical accuracy. So, here are seven films that used real, expensive, original items for props: The Phoenician Scheme In Wes Anderson's most recent film, business man and industrialist Zsa-Zsa Korda has a vast mansion, filled with an array of artworks and antiques; acquisitions that continue to be made over the course of the film. 'Never buy good pictures. Buy masterpieces," Zsa-Zsa advices one of his sons, and it seems that director, Wes Anderson, had a similar ethos when it came to set-design. Art curator, Jasper Sharp, was brought in to assemble a real collection of original pieces worthy of the character, which included, René Magritte's The Equator (1942), Pierre-Auguste Renoir's Enfant Assis en Robe Bleue (Portrait of Edmond Renoir Jr.) (1889), and a 17th-century Floris Gerritsz van Schooten still Benicio del Toro, who portrayed Zsa-Zsa was enamoured by the Magritte, and told us: "[the painting] was so incredible, and between action and cut, that was MY painting." The Wolf of Wall Street Movies often use replica cars, particularly when they intend on destroying them. But for the iconic scene of Leonardo Di Caprio attempting to remove his limp, drug-riddled body from his car, it was a real Lamborghini Countach that was intentionally crashed for the scene. The film used two of the cars in production, intentionally destroying one. Wirth only 658 of this particular model being produced by the Italian car manufacturer, it was a fairly bold decision not to use a replica for the scene. Stuart little The children's film about a little mouse named Stuart actually featured a long lost Hungarian painting, Sleeping Lady with Black Vase by Robert Bereny. You may be wondering why the producers of Stuart Little thought that the film required the use of a masterpiece, and the answer is that they didn't. In fact, the painting had been lost since the 1920s until a researcher at Hungary's national gallery in Budapest, Gergely Barki, was watching the film with his daughter in 2009, and noticed the painting in the background. 'I couldn't believe my eyes when I saw Bereny's long-lost masterpiece on the wall behind Hugh Laurie. I nearly dropped Lola from my lap," Gergely said. After a flurry of emails, he eventually got a reply from the set-designer, who had picked up the painting for barely anything at an antiques store in Pasadena, California. The painting was eventually sold at auction and had an estimated worth of around $300,000. Back to the Future The iconic status of the DeLorean has as much to do with it's use in Back to the Future that anything else, and the film used a number of the cars in production. In fact, the production team bought three used 1981 DeLorean DMC-12's, which were referred to as the "A-car," "B-car," and "C-car," with all three having different roles for the film. As to why they chose the DeLorean for the car that would be the centrepiece of the movie, Screenwriter Bob Gale gave this reason: "When we were working on the movie, the company's founder, John DeLorean, was on trial for cocaine trafficking—he was in the news pretty much every day — and then, of course, his company went bust. But to us, there was something dangerous, something counterculture, something so very gorgeous about just how beautiful that car was. And we loved those gullwing doors." Pretty Woman One of the most iconic moments of the film features an incredibly expensive prop, one that had to be escorted by it's own security team when on set. For the scene where Vivian is dressed in red gown for a night at the opera and is presented with a ruby and diamond necklace, the production team actually loaned the jewellery from Fred's jewellers in Beverly Hills. It's estimated worth was around £116,000 – £193,000 at the time of production in the late 1980s. Costume supervisor, Dan Lester, remembered the day the necklace was brought onto set: "That day that she wore it we had to go to pick up the jewellery, and I had to sign for it, and then two security guards with me, and they spent the entire day on the set.'" Moulin Rouge! On the subject of expensive necklaces, Nicole Kidman's neckwear for Moulin Rouge! was worth an eye-watering $2.5 Million. Speaking about why the necklace was used, director, Baz Luhrmann said that, "in those days, you couldn't make something sparkle on film like real diamonds. You needed real diamonds." He and his wife, Catherine Martin, herself an Oscar-winning costume designer, brought their vision to life alongside jewellery designer Stefano Cantur, who spent weeks researching late-1800s French jewellery in order to nail the accuracy. The necklace was made using 1,308 diamonds and a Sri Lankan blue sapphire, it required two security guards when it was on set. The Hateful Eight When studios rent expensive items, there is always a risk involved, as proven by a costly mishap in the filming of The Hateful Eight. The studio had loaned an antique Martin guitar from the 1860s from the Martin Museum. In a scene where actor Jennifer Jason Leigh was playing the guitar, Kurt Russel's character comes up, snatches the guitar out of her hands and demolishes it against a beam. While Jennifer knew the guitar was a real one, and wasn't expecting Kurt to destroy it, he and director Quentin Tarantino were seemingly under the impression that it was the dummy-guitar, intended to be demolished. On the event, Jennifer said: "I don't think Quentin knew that it was the [original instrument], either. The scene was going exactly the way he wanted it to go, and he wanted to play one scene in the movie in real time without a cut, in one long take. Kurt felt terrible; he had no idea. When he found out, his eyes literally welled up."The guitar was worth $40,000, but it's antique, irreplaceable nature was the real loss, and the museum in question expressed it's sincere regret and discontent with the incident. What other films used expensive props? Let us know in the comments below!
