Product Description

The house where artist Rene Magritte lived and worked was left untouched by his widow after his death in 1967, and it tells much about the man who found inspiration in everyday surroundings. Childhood experiences and the suicide of Magritte's mother are recalled by the artist himself in archive footage and he explains how this tragic event later inspired themes in his paintings. The film focuses on the recurring influences of certain objects and places in Magritte's art, his experimentation with futurism and his attraction to the work of de Chirico before discovering his own unique surrealist style.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #121267 in DVD
• Released on: 2001-09-18
• Rating: NR (Not Rated)
• Aspect ratio: 1.33:1
• Formats: Color, DVD, Full Screen, NTSC
• Original language: English
• Number of discs: 1
• Running time: 15 minutes

Amazon.com
Magritte puts the "real" in surreal by enabling the viewer to see the world as the Belgian artist painted it. The filmmakers combine footage of places the artist lived (and was inspired by) with a black-and-white archival interview with Magritte and scenes from home-movie "films" the artist made for his own enjoyment. The production strikes a nice balance between well-chosen biographical details and silence, at which time the dreamlike art is definitely allowed to speak for itself to the accompaniment of a fine soundtrack. "I want to breathe new light into ordinary things around us," Magritte says. While showing how the artist's life influenced his work, the makers of Magritte shed new light on the extraordinary. --Valerie J. Nelson

Customer Reviews

So you wish to learn about Rene Magritte?
Go elsewhere. The product information on amazon.com tells us that this documentary is from the year 2000, but it's actually from the late 1970s. Only the DVD release is from the year 2000. The documentary itself is like a time capsule from the late 1970s; it's boring, filled with people with bad haircuts, and it doesn't teach you a heck of a lot about Rene Magritte.

In a documentary about an artist you'd probably expect to see plenty of said artist's work. To be fair, many of Magritte's paintings are displayed here, but they're presented in such an incapable manner that you can't view them properly. For instance, a technique used repeatedly throughout this documentary is to make two paintings transparent and then have them glide through each other. Now I'm sure this seemed fresh and funky back in the 1970s, but today most of us who watch art documentaries want to see the actual ART. Another problem with the film is that most of Magritte's work goes uncommented. It's certainly difficult to analyse surrealist art, but some effort should've been made to link this artist to the main surrealist movement. I for one was curious to see how Andre Breton had viewed Magritte's art, and I'm still guessing.

In a documentary that lasts for about an hour you'd probably also expect to learn a bit about the artist and what made him tick. According to this documentary, Rene Magritte was a private man; so much so that most of the footage on the DVD doesn't concern him at all. For example, the narrator tells us that Magritte was fascinated by the race track, and so for the next few minutes we watch a race track from the 1970s. The scene doesn't provide any information on the artist -- it's just three or four minutes in silence watching horses run around. When the narrator tells us that Rene Magritte went to art school, the following minutes are spent in silence watching people from the late 1970s doing sketches. My estimate is that if you cut out all the footage that isn't relevant to Rene Magritte, you'd have about 20 or 25 minutes left on the original hour.

All in all, this isn't a terribly interesting film. You can find out more about the man himself from reading a short article on the web. In fact, you'd probably learn more, and you wouldn't be as bored. The two stars are for the music the director chose, which fits in beautifully with the little we see of Magritte's paintings. It's also fun that they've chosen to animate some of his pictures. However, it's not enough to elevate the rest of the documentary.

I wish someone had warned me before I went and bought it.

A genius with Dreams of voluntary nature
This Dvd starts with the prologue: "These dreams are of voluntary nature very different from those
we have when we are sleeping... escaping into a sleep".
Magritte has the simple means of a genius and he achieves a very powerful impact on our imagination
with ideas that appear so simple.
He says that the painting itself is not important but what matters is the effect it makes on our mind.
Magritte asks questions through his painting . We can take nothing as obvious.
Every thing is subject for questioning.