I was lucky to witness a special London screening of the film, thanks to Fashion and Cinema’s Joana Granero, featuring her Q&A with costume designer Penny Rose. And found myself falling in love with an artist whose breaking of conventions has become the stuff of legends… But I’ll leave you guessing just who that is.
So why should Modi, Three Days on the Wing of Madness be on everyone’s must-watch list? Among the reasons is that Johnny Depp does a wondrous job of directing his second feature, while Riccardo Scamarcio channels the misunderstood genius of one of the greatest artists of the 20th century — Amedeo Modigliani. There, if that’s all you needed to hear, catch it in UK cinemas now. If you need a bit more info, read on.
It is hard for art lovers today to understand why Modigliani, “Modi” to his friends, never enjoyed fame and fortune while alive. It’s much in the same vein as what happened to Vincent Van Gogh and many other sublime artists who never got the success they deserved, while still alive. Artists, by sheer definition, are ground breakers, pioneers of their medium and in this age of AI and franchises repeating the same old stuff over and over again, with only slight nuances or changes, this is a concept that has escaped us. So perhaps, instead of wondering what happened to Modigliani, we should ask ourselves, where have we ended up as a human race? Right back, in the same place and atmosphere as Paris at the time of WWI, this film seems to point out. And that’s another reason to love it.
I’ve stopped reading reviews of Depp’s masterpiece since it first world premiered at this year’s San Sebastian Film Festival. I mean, even the ones that came out a couple of days ago, in time for the film’s UK release over the weekend, haven’t gotten much better, denigrating both Depp’s direction and the talent of Italian actor Riccardo Scamarcio channeling Modigliani. To say that Scamarcio is one of the greatest actors alive today may seem like a bit of a hyperbole, yet it’s quite true. I won’t even say “greatest Italian actor” as the Apulian native speaks English and French too, perfectly. He’s one of those gems that makes me proud of my Italian heritage. As is Modigliani, of course.
The Modigliani surname, to fellow Tuscan natives like me, immediately points to his Sephardic Jewish heritage — I grew up acquainted with a descendant of his in Florence and remember splashing around in another friend’s pool in the summer. I think we all even went with my friend’s family to Corsica together, on their sailboat. But I could be wrong…
Anyway, to get back to the artist, the Jewish angle in WWI France which was largely occupied by German forces, is also part of the reason Modi’s art might have been stonewalled while alive. Depp’s film begins with a waiter turning up his nose while describing the artist who sits in the Café du Dôme drawing a woman. “He’s a Jew,” he says, after mentioning his name and profession to an army official and his wife asking about him. Meanwhile, under the table, the customer getting painted is playing footsie with the handsome Modigliani, who was well known for being a ladies’ man. And perhaps, this last point explains the reason why male art critics, buyers and dealers always felt the need to put him down: jealousy. “Jew boy!” yells the older military official to get his attention. The result of their confrontational conversation captured in part as real-life mayhem, resulting in a broken stained glass window at Le Dôme, but also as a kind of Harold Lloyd-esque black and white sequence, accented by a faster pace and speedy music worthy of a silent film. In fact, Depp often switches to this genre when showing us the different moods of Modigliani, along with his fear of death, which looms over him since he was a child. But more on that later.
While reviews have called the film anything from “lavish” to extravagant, and the presence of the Red Sea Film Foundation in Jeddah as one of the film’s producers might point to a budget worthy of those words, Modi’s costume designer Penny Rose, speaking to a crowd of film lovers at the Regent Street Cinema this past weekend, confirmed that they all operated on a strict budget. For Modi’s lover and model, Beatrice Hastings, played by the stunning Antonia Desplat, the clothing had to appear to come from the wardrobe of a globetrotter, Rose told Joana Granero of Fashion & Cinema. “There was only one existing picture of Beatrice to go on,” so many of the costumes for this pivotal character, who also appeared as the subject in some of Modi’s most beloved paintings, had to be imagined from scratch. “I thought, as a well-known art critic Beatrice traveled a lot and collected fabrics everywhere she went,” Rose said. The result is a gloriously bohemian wardrobe that mixes Indian block printed fabric with Hungarian market finds for a series of looks that are lust-worthy and perfectly show the era — a mix of austerity and creativity, living in the shadows of war.
Penny Rose and Joana Granero at the London special screening of the film, with the costumes for Beatrice’s character on the screen behind them
Scamarcio’s metamorphosis into Modigliani was more immediate, as the actor walked into the wardrobe room accompanied by Rose and made a beeline for a vintage jacket that the costumer had sourced from a Rome costume rental shop. “The same thing happened twenty years before with Johnny Depp,” the BAFTA nominated costumer admitted to Granero, as the American actor went for a leather pirate hat which became part of the signature look Depp and Rose created for his Jack Sparrow character in the Pirates of the Caribbean series of films. While there were several other versions of a pirate’s hat on display for the actor to choose, each one the work of Rose and her wardrobe department, Depp ended up keeping that one. Or rather, future copies as “he keeps gifting them away!” Rose chimed in, with just a hint of stress in her tone.
Both the costuming and the art direction for this film are phenomenal. Paris at the end of its glorious Belle Epoque era, with the war looming over the city at every corner, was replicated in Budapest, Hungary, down to the building at the center of the story, a replica of the studio in La Ruche where Modigliani lived and worked, along with fellow Jewish artist Chaïm Soutine, played by Ryan McParland. The bullet holes on the walls as Modi leans out of a window in one scene are eery reminders that Europe has been through the hells of war, repeatedly and throughout.
While Modigliani didn’t enjoy fame or fortune for most of his lifetime and died at the young age of 35 in Paris, his artwork today is worth millions of dollars. His ‘Reclining Nude’ sold at Sotheby’s in NYC in 2015 for $170 millions and that’s just one painting.
Because of its classic yet ahead-of-their-time modern and simple lines, Modigliani’s artwork has often been replicated and forged, down to the 1984 incident in Livorno which saw the recovery of three sculpted heads attributed to the artist, during the year coinciding with the centennial celebration of his birth, later discovered to have been the work of art students.
Modi’s art was and remains utterly unique, his iconic portrait of women filled with a sadness that Modi carried with him, the result of a childhood spent at home due to various illnesses. He self medicated throughout his adult life by smoking hashish and drinking heavily and ultimately, tuberculosis claimed his life. We don’t see that ending in Depp’s film, which takes place over three days as the title implies and that was a pleasant surprise, since Modi, Three Days on the Wing of Madness doesn’t tie up all the loose ends, just as one should expect a brilliant film not to. Yet we do see Modigliani’s descent into the paranoia his lifestyle and illness brought upon the man.
Perhaps what also made me so emotional, and I’ll tell you, the film really hit a deep part of my heart making me teary-eyed by the end, is the idea of a great artist like Modigliani being put down by so many around him, simply because they could not rise up to his extraordinary level. It’s a leitmotif in today’s world too, this idea of the “crabs in the bucket” mentality, of pulling the ones at the top, those who might have a chance of getting away from it, back down to their level and seeing it described so beautifully, on the big screen, by another artist who has been to hell and back for exactly that reason, felt very triggering.
The cool and utterly recognizable faces in this ensemble cast include Modigliani’s agent Zebo, Léopold Zborowski played by Adolescence star Stephen Graham, along with Emily in Paris’ Bruno Gouery playing French landscape artist Maurice Utrillo, and rounding that out is Lucas Englander from season 2 of Nine Perfect Strangers in a small yet momentous cameo.
But the casting coup, the pièce de résistance of this all around grandiosely acted, shot and directed film is Al Pacino as art collector and industrialist Maurice Gangnat. Legend goes that it was Pacino who convinced Depp to direct the film and if so, kudos to him for having been part of this masterpiece, both behind and in front of the camera. As Pacino and Scamarcio sit across from each other in a restaurant, negotiating with one another using their power and wit, the scene turned into one of those unforgettable cinematic moments that should go down in history, along with the seduction scene from Mike Nichols’ The Graduate, the final goodbye in Vittorio De Sica’s Stazione Termini and the Trevi Fountain dip in Federico Fellini’s La Dolce Vita.
The film is inspired by Modigliani – A Play in Three Acts by American playwright Dennis McIntyre and takes place over three fictionalized days in 1916, four years before the artist passed away. The script for the film is the work of Jerzy and Mary Kromolowski, and the cinematography is by Dariusz Wolski and Nicola Pecorini, with David Warren serving as production designer. Music is by Sacha Puttnam and Steve McLaughlin and features songs like ‘Waltzing Matilda’ by Tom Waits and ‘Disfruto’ by Carla Morrison, among many other gems.
Modi, Three Days on the Wing of Madness is produced by Depp's IN.2 Film, Salome Productions, Barry Navidi Productions, and Proton Cinema and is a co-production between the United Kingdom, Hungary and Italy.
The film has yet to announce distribution in the US and is playing in UK cinemas now.
Top image used with permission.