About the Season

'Virtue and Vice' features eight hand-picked films to complement the exhibition 'Dutch Portraits: The Age of Rembrandt and Frans Hals' (27 June - 16 September 2007).

The season opens with 'La Kermesse héroïque' ('Carnival in Flanders'). Set in the early 17th century, Jacques Feyder's witty farce deals directly with the concerns facing the society depicted in 'Dutch Portraits'.

In 1579, the provinces of the Dutch Republic (the present-day Netherlands) had joined to declare their independence from Spanish Habsburg Catholic rule, and the 17th century proved a prosperous time for the new republic.

Portraiture flourished as a wealthy middle class celebrated its new status by commissioning images to be displayed in their homes and institutions.

It is perhaps not hard to picture some tension between the new advantages and pleasures of life and Protestant beliefs - between virtue and vice.

'La Kermesse héroïque' satirises this predicament with the story of a village faced with a visit from a Spanish duke stopping off to rest with his troops on their way to Holland. Feyder directly drew on the work of painters such as Rembrandt and Frans Hals in recreating the setting, and mirrored those artists' ease and honesty in depicting characters.

As art historian Andrew Graham-Dixon has said of Rembrandt, 'He was the most forbearing and least sentimental painter of people to have lived', and similarly Feyder's characters are three-dimensional, human in their shortfalls. The pompous mayor and his officials panic at the thought of Spanish atrocities and decide to play dead. Meanwhile, the mayor's cool-headed wife devises a plan in which the female population charm the 'invading' troops, and have some fun themselves at the same time.

Architecturally, the details in Feyder's film are precise, and in both 'La Kermesse héroïque' and Carl Dreyer's 'Day of Wrath', set in Denmark during the same period, the costumes are authentic. Costume historian Anne Hollander has described them as 'a preponderance of stiff black clothing with white neckwear set against dimly lit and austerely furnished interiors'.

Although more serious in tone than 'La Kermesse héroïque', 'Day of Wrath' explores similar conflicts. The effect of muted colours and clothing is to accentuate sunlight and the texture of young skin, and here the somber religious morals of the villagers are set against the bright sun of young love. As with the great Dutch painters, light becomes a character in these films. It gives the stories their meaning.

This use of light is reflected in all the films in the season. In Visconti's 'The Leopard', the prince's sunlit family home with its white, billowing curtains and open views is contrasted with the dark tavern interiors where the revolutionaries meet. In F. W. Murnau's 'Sunrise', the use of light signals the allure of city and country, wife and lover.

At the opening of Coppola's 'The Godfather', the dichotomy of the Corleone family's tough business dealings and their affection and loyalty is symbolised in the movement between Don Corleone's shadowy office and his daughter's bright garden wedding outside. Light and dark continually reinforce the elemental forces of these stories.

The theme of family which runs through 'Dutch Portraits' also runs through the films. 'A man that doesn't spend time with his family can never be a real man' is one of Don Corleone's maxims. In his world, a man's attitude towards his family is intimately connected with respect and honour.

Similar sentiments lie behind the commissioning of family portraits in 17th-century Dutch society. As exhibition co-curator Rudi Ekkart has noted: 'One's own portraits and those of one's family undoubtedly symbolised a sense of kinship among those who regarded themselves, because of their political and/or economic standing, as the elite of the Republic.'

Deceased family members might even be included to enhance a sense of a family's longevity. 'The Godfather', 'The Leopard', Yasujiro Ozu's 'Tokyo Story', and to some extent Bergman's 'The Seventh Seal' all explore ideas of family.

Like Rembrandt in 'Dutch Portraits', the films in this season not only employ light to illuminate the subtle character of a face or the elegant turn of a hand, but also to signify faith. As Anne Hollander has said of 'Day of Wrath': 'The theme of this grim tale is God's mysterious will, visually conveyed as his conquering way with light, whether cruel and lurid or tender and comforting. Its penetrating force is unrelieved by colour or pleasant surfaces... Fire and sun outwit the smallness of windows, the dimness of garments, and show up the blackness of souls.'

The films in the 'Virtue and Vice' season highlight the way in which our faith is tested in changing times: the pleasures and status of new wealth challenge our morality. New landscapes test our love and loyalty to our chosen path.

The films, like the portraits, capture the characters at a time when they are forced to decide what really matters. Ultimately, they must work out, as the knight does on his final journey in Bergman's 'The Seventh Seal', a way to face their mortality. And isn't that, in part, the purpose of any portrait?

'Virtue and Vice' Film Listings

Film at the National Gallery