Word: rembrandt
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Dates: during 1930-1939
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Second blow is the surly reception to Rembrandt's mass portrait of Captain Banning Cocq's conceited officers. This huge, sombre painting, generally called The Night Watch, is now recognized as one of the world's greatest. When it was unveiled, all Amsterdam laughed, both at the officers and at Rembrandt. Even his friends could not understand his modern chiaroscuro. As a result, Rembrandt's art went out of style, himself into bankruptcy...
Disheartened Rembrandt replaces Saskia by making his housekeeper Geertje Dirx (Gertrude Lawrence) his mistress...
Playing his part with enormous gusto against handsome Dutch sets, Actor Laughton dominates Rembrandt, gives one of his finest performances at a dignified pace which well befits the life of his noble, if somewhat ribald, model. Best shot: Sonorous Painter Rembrandt rolling off a long, sensuous soliloquy defining Woman, while the mouths of stolid Dutchmen flap open and servant girls go glassy-eyed with dreams...
...time has come for someone to rise up in blasphemous heresy and explode the myth that Charles Laughton is infallibly the greatest living actor. For people are being lured in droves to witness his inane eccentricities in "Rembrandt", a passed of foolishness that passes as acting and rides by on the immortal representations of Henry VIII and Captain Bligh; and critics are apparently too stunned to realize that Laughton and Korda can fizzle. In the first place the story is a mere chronological biography possessing practically no dramatic force, and in the second place Laughton's magnificent voice is toned...
Thowing precedent off the lot, Korda begins his version of Rembrandt with the painter at the peak of popularity and wealth and stops the cameras while the hero still lives and chuckles. The first axe to fall on Rambrandt's life is the death of his loved wife, Saskia, followed shortly by the failure of the painting "The Night Watch" to please the vain guardsmen. Rembrandt skids down hill, his style goes out of favor and his house-keeper-mistress (Gertrude Lawrence) becomes a shrew. He finds a few short years of peace and success with the adoring Hendrickje Stoffels...