Night Watch Jean Genet Analysis

Can Watching A Film Help You Appreciate The Night Watch?

- Jean Genet: a French novelist, playwright, poet, essayist and political activist.

One of the most influential and innovative artists of all time, Rembrandt (1606 – 1669), a 17th century Dutch painter and etcher, was one of the prime movers of the Dutch Golden Age of Art, and was arguably unrivalled in his portraits, biblical themed illustrations as well as the usage of lights and shadows. His artistry was popular since his early years but he was also much sought after as a teacher and took in about 50 students over his lifetime, some of whom went on to achieve considerable repute.

Though he is renowned for many of his works, including superlative ones like 'The Storm on the Sea of Galilee', 'Danaë' and 'The Return of the

One of the screen earliest depictions of the painting is in the 1936 biopic “Rembrandt”, while Jean-Luc Godard made use of it in his film “Passion” (1982), where the painting is enacted by actors in one of the scenes. In the movie Godard asks the viewers to focus on the faces of the actors and not the composition, similar to what they would have done with a painting of Rembrandt. It was a visual delight, winning the Technical Grand Prize for cinematography at Cannes.
“Night Watch” (1995) is a made for television film by David Jackson that stars Pierce Brosnan and Alexandra Paul, who play UN agents sent to investigate the theft of the artwork which leads them to a series of art forgeries.
As a digression: Rembrandt's paintings were extensively forged, including by his own students as practise and otherwise, leading to art historian and curator, Wilhelm von Bode, to state, “Rembrandt painted 700 pictures. Of these, 3,000 are still in