Directed by Carlos Saura, 1999, 100 minutes

Nearing death, Painter Francisco Goya (Francisco Rabal) looks back at his life and art. He’s haunted by memories his lost muse Cayetana (Maribel Verdu) and the political turmoil that led to exile from his homeland.

In Goya’s painting ‘The Colossus or Panic’ painted between 1808 and 1812 a hulking, monolithic giant looms over a chaotic plain. He faces away from the viewer as if self-absorbed, unaware of the tiny figures milling around beneath. Building on the work of Jacques Callot, Rembrandt and Velásquez Goya prefigures much that is now commonplace in our visual culture. His portraits have the stark honesty of candid photography and his engravings, particularly the ‘Disasters of War’ (1810-1820) have the immediacy of photojournalism. His alarming depictions of the terrors of the imagination foreshadow surrealism and have inspired artists like Paula Rego and the Chapman brothers. Saura’s portrait of Goya reveals a life lived in turbulent times, battered by mental and physical pain. Like his painted colossus, Goya bears witness to horrors without and horrors within, a pitiful and lonely figure despite his imposing stature.

Carlos Saura is better known for his dance studies such as ‘Blood Wedding’ (1881) and ‘Flamenco’ (1995). In keeping with these films ‘Goya in Bordeaux’ eschews narrative realism for a musical and colourful theatricality. Working with cinematographer Vittorio Storaro and production designer Pierre Louis Thévenet the transitions from Goya’s daily life into his imagination are often achieved with lighting and set design rather than conventional edits. Characters move behind backlit, transparent walls; Coloured lighting fades in from black to reveal changes of scene or time and mark the boundaries of Goya’s internal world. The artist often painted at night and the film favours candlelit interiors with very few exterior locations that reflect the loneliness of Goya’s exile and his regular forays into the realms of dream and nightmare. Art is completely integrated into the film: For example, the ‘Meadow of San Isidro’ (1788) is brought to life with actors in front of the backdrop from Goya’s painting to capture the vigour and incident of the holiday crowds. ‘Goya in Bordeaux’ begins with the visceral reds of the slaughterhouse; the artist’s ancient, embattled face emerges from a gutted carcass as if to emphasise his fascination with the honest physicality of flesh and draw a direct line to the work of modern artists like Francis Bacon. Goya may share the lyrical fantasies of Bosch or Brueghel, but he also employs the hard, realistic line of Rembrandt, Velasquez, and Hogarth to bring the intimacy and immediacy of cartoon or sketch to portraiture.

Goya begins his career as an ambitious arriviste who elbows his way into the circles of court patronage. Commissions and acclaim are plentiful despite the honesty of his sometimes-unflattering portraits. As he is drawn into the ferocious intrigues of court life, we witness the uncomfortable compromises forced by his reliance on financial patronage as he follows his ambition. At the height of his success he is almost destroyed by the illness that leaves him deaf and he turns increasingly towards his imagination for artistic inspiration. Goya’s prolonged bouts of sickness and sense of isolation manifest in the monstrous imagery of ‘Los Disparates’ (1815-1823) etched with frenzied intensity onto the walls of his house the ‘Quinta del Sordo’ (House of the Deaf Man). In Saura’s film we see the artist surrounded by the distorted faces of his creations who seem to crave resolution that he cannot give.

The tension between imagination and rationality drives Goya’s work. The sleep of reason may provide a wealth of imagery but the monsters that emerge threaten the sanity. To avoid complete emotional collapse, the imagination must be constrained by the rigorous discipline of artistic technique. Saura likens Goya’s technique to Spanish dance (like flamenco) where emotional energy is tensed like a coiled spring, poised between holding tight and letting go. Roque Baños’ fine score uses Boccherini’s music, particularly his ‘Fandango’ to signal this tension; it accompanies the compelling presence of Goya’s unsettling muse Cayetana as she leads him back into the past and ultimately onwards towards eternity. During these sequences Saura’s film almost becomes a ballet performed to the rhythms of guitar and castanet.

Created in the crucible of revolution and counter-revolution Goya’s work documents the fallout as Spain’s isolated strain of mystic Catholicism collides with the secular rationalism of Voltaire and Rousseau. Disillusioned by the perversion of French Revolutionary zeal into the imperial ambitions of Napoleon Goya’s outspoken politics lead to exile from his beloved Spain.

José Coronado brings an elegant poise to the younger Goya and Francisco Rabal returns to the role of Goya that he created in the 1980s for Spanish television. He resembles a battered toreador with a face like freshly kneaded dough, or crumpled linen. The commanding presence of the Thirteenth Duchess of Alba, (known to intimates as Cayetana) dominates Goya’s imagination. Saura assumes that Goya and his aristocratic model were lovers, though this is rumour rather than documented fact.  Cayetana is a dark, ambivalent muse and Maribel Verdu invests her with haughty and wilful independence; her iconic profile overshadows Goya throughout, even on his deathbed. The distant figure of his first wife, an arranged marriage to further his career barely registers but at the end of his life Goya finds warm, nurturing relationships with his housekeeper Leocadia (Eulàlia Ramon) and her daughter Rosarito (Dafne Fernández) which counterbalance the disturbing ghost of Cayetana.

Saura creates a sensual and moving portrait of Goya which uses colour, music and innovative design to explore the themes and political context of his work. The stagy theatricality may alienate some viewers, but this is a balanced portrait which emphasises the artist’s role in the evolution of our visual culture.

Quote

“The imagination without reason brings forth impossible monsters. But joined to it, is the mother of the arts and the source of marvels” Francisco Goya (Francisco Rabal)

Connections

Film

‘Naked Maja’ directed by Henry Koster (1958)

‘Los Desestras De La Guerra’ directed by Mario Kamus (1983)

‘Immortal Beloved’ directed by Bernard Rose (1994)

‘Volavérunt’ directed by Bigas Luna (1999)

‘Goya’s Ghosts; directed by Milos Forman (2004)

‘Nightwatching’ directed by Peter Greenaway (2011)

Television

‘Goya’, written by Philip Broadley, Gabriel Castro and others, directed by José Ramón Larraz, , Televisión Española and others, 1985

Reading

Francisco Goya, Los Caprichos, Dover, 1970

Julia Blackburn, Old Man Goya, Vintage, 2003

Robert Hughes, Goya, Alfred A. Knopf, 2003

G. Rosenthal, Paula Rego: The Complete Graphic Work, Thames and Hudson, 2005

Music

Luigi Boccherini, ‘Quintet Number 4 in D Major for Strings’