The cinema imitates life, and also pictorial art: these movie images were inspired by famous paintings, and here we collect them side by side to see how much they share the same spirit. Filmmakers like Akira Kurosawa, Sofia Coppola, Vincente Minnelli, Lars von Trier, George Lucas, Bigas Luna, Paul Thomas Anderson, Pedro Almodóvar and more have looked to some iconic paintings to create images that have marked the history of cinema. And it is that among this list we will find from the best comedies in the history of cinema to the best love movies, going through the best horror movies and the best science fiction movies. Any genre is valid for filmmakers to let their most pictorial inspirations fly.
For example, we will find several representations of ‘The Last Supper’, the well-known painting by Leonardo Da Vinci about the last supper of Jesus Christ, in films ranging from ‘Viridiana’ by Luis Buñuel to ‘Pure vice’ by Paul Thomas Anderson. Without a doubt, it is one of the paintings that have infiltrated the most in other spaces of popular culture. There will also be national representations on both sides of the scale: Bigas Luna paid tribute in his 1992 film ‘Jamón, Jamón’, one of the best Spanish films in history and starring Javier Bardem and Penélope Cruz, to one of Francisco de Goya’s best-known paintings: ‘Duel with sticks’. The difference? The clubs are exchanged here for legs of ham, honoring the title of the film and one of the symbols of Spanish gastronomy.
Surprising examples will also appear in this list, such as the one that takes us to the ‘Star Wars’ saga: in the third installment of the prequels, ‘Star Wars: Revenge of the Sith’, a shot of Anakin Skywalker reminds us of Alexander Cabanel’s powerful painting ‘The Fallen Angel’, in which we see the angel Lucifer full of anger, possibly directed at his father, before being banished to hell. This George Lucas visual inspiration for the film is doubly masterful, as Anakin is about to fall into those hells as well and become Darth Vader.
Of course, the pictorial tradition has inspired cinema for a long time. In this gallery we will find other films from all periods that have used paintings (famous as those already mentioned or perhaps more unknown) to compose their own cinematographic shots, and thus create interesting connections between both artistic disciplines. From ‘Barry Lyndon’ to ‘Moonlight’, don’t miss these comparisons that show us that there are films that are, without a doubt, a work of art.
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Artwork (right): ‘The Fallen Angel’ (1847) by Alexandre Cabanel.
film (left): ‘Star Wars: Episode III: Revenge of the Sith’ (2005) by George Lucas.
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Artwork (bottom): ‘Wheat Field With Crows’ (1890) de Vincent Van Gogh.
movie (top): ‘The Dreams of Akira Kurosawa’ (1990) by Akira Kurosawa.
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Artwork (right): ‘Lamentation over the Dead Christ’ (1475 – 1478) by Andrea Mantegna.
film (left): ‘The Return’ (2003) by Andrey Zvyagintsev.
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Artwork (bottom): ‘The Nightmare’ (1781) by Johann Heinrich Füssli.
movie (top): ‘Gothic’ (1986) by Ken Russell.
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Artwork (right): ‘The Cafe at Night’ (1888) by Vincent Van Gogh.
film (left): ‘The madman with red hair’ (1956) by Vincente Minnelli.
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Artwork (right): ‘The Dying Artist’ (1901) de Zygmunt Andrychiewicz.
film (left): ‘Nymphomaniac’ (2013) by Lars von Trier.
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Artwork (right): ‘The Broken Column’ (1944) by Frida Kahlo.
film (left): ‘The Fifth Element’ (1997) by Luc Besson.
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Artwork (right): ‘The Wanderer Above the Sea of Clouds’ (1818), by Caspar David Friedrich.
film (left): ‘Dunkirk’ (2017), by Christopher Nolan.
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Artwork (bottom): ‘Jutta’ (1973), de John Kacere.
movie (top): ‘Lost in Translation’ (2003), de Sofia Coppola.
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Artwork (bottom): ‘Malvern Hall, Warwickshire’ (1809), de John Constable.
movie (top): ‘Barry Lyndon’ (1975), de Stanley Kubrick.
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Artwork (right): ‘Portrait of the Journalist Sylvia von Harden’ (1926), by Otto Dix.
film (left): ‘Cabaret’ (1972), about Bob Fosse.
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Artwork (right): ‘Pacific’ (1967), de Alex Colville.
film (left): ‘Heat’ (1995), Michael Mann.
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Artwork (bottom): ‘Duel with sticks’ (1819), by Francisco de Goya.
movie (top): ‘Ham, ham’ (1992), by Bigas Luna.
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Artwork (bottom): ‘The Last Supper’ (1495), by Leonardo Da Vinci.
movie (top): ‘Pure vice’ (2014), by Paul Thomas Anderson.
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Artwork (bottom): ‘Morning sun’ (1952), de Edward Hopper.
movie (top): ‘Shirley: Visions of a Reality’ (2013), by Gustav Deutsch.
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Artwork (right): ‘Napoleon crossing the Alps’ (1801), by Jacques-Louis David.
film (left): ‘Marie Antoinette’ (2006), by Sofia Coppola.
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Artwork (bottom): ‘Venus recreating herself in music’ (1550), by Titian.
movie (top): ‘The skin I live in’ (2011), by Pedro Almodóvar.
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Artwork (right): ‘The Evening Dress’ (1955), by René Magritte.
film (left): ‘Moonlight’ (2016), Barry Jenkins.
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Artwork (left): ‘The Artist’s Mother, Black and White Arrangement’ (1871), by James Whistler.
film (right): ‘The President’ (1919), by Carl Theodor Dreyer.
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Artwork (bottom): ‘The Nightmare’ (1781), by Johann Heinrich Füssli.
movie (top): ‘La Marquesa de O’ (1976), by Éric Rohmer.
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Artwork (right): ‘Napoleon Bonaparte’ (1830), de Benjamin Robert Haydon.
film (left): ‘The Duelists’ (1977), by Ridley Scott.
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Artwork (bottom): ‘The Last Supper’ (1495), by Leonardo Da Vinci.
movie (top): ‘Viridana’ (1961), by Luis Buñuel.
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Artwork (right): ‘The young blue man’ (1770), by Thomas Gainsborough.
film (left): ‘Django Unchained’ (2012), by Quentin Tarantino.
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Artwork (right): ‘The Death of Marat’ (1793), by Jacques-Louis David.
film (left): ‘About Schmidt’ (2002), by Alexander Payne.
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Artwork (bottom): ‘The Orgy’ (1735), by William Hogarth.
movie (top): ‘Barry Lyndon’ (1975), de Stanley Kubrick.
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Artwork (bottom): Illustration by Roger Dean.
movie (top): ‘Avatar’ (2009), by James Cameron.
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Artwork (right): ‘Descent from Christ’ (1521), by Rosso Fiorentino.
film (left): ‘La ricota’ (1962), by Pier Paolo Pasolini.
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Artwork (bottom): ‘Relativity’ (1953), MC Escher.
movie (top): ‘Into the Labyrinth’ (1986), by Jim Henson.
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Artwork (right): ‘Architecture by moonlight’ (1956), by René Magritte.
film (left): ‘The Truman Show’ (1998), by Peter Weir.
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Artwork (right): ‘The Tower of Babel’ (1563), by Pieter Brueghel.
film (left): ‘Metropolis’ (1927), by Fritz Lang.
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Artwork (right): ‘House by the railroad’ (1925), de Edward Hopper.
film (left): ‘Psychosis’ (1960), by Alfred Hitchcock.
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Artwork (bottom): ‘The Calling of Saint Matthew’ (1601), by Caravaggio.
movie (top): ‘Malas calles’ (1973), by Martin Scorsese.
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Artwork (bottom): ‘Ophelia’ (1851), by John Everett Millais.
movie (top): ‘Melancholy’ (2011), by Lars von Trier.
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Artwork (bottom): ‘Young Corn’ (1931), de Grant Wood.
movie (top): ‘The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus’ (2009), by Terry Gilliam.
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Artwork (bottom): ‘The Birth of Venus’ (1484), by Sandro Botticelli.
movie (top): ‘The Adventures of Baron Münchausen’ (1988), by Terry Gilliam.
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Artwork (right): ‘The hunters in the snow’ (1565), by Pieter Brueghel.
film (left): ‘The mirror’ (1975), by Andrei Tarkovsky.
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Artwork (right): ‘Chocolat dancing in the Irish and American Bar’ (1896), de Toulouse-Lautrec.
film (left): ‘An American in Paris’ (1951), by Vicente Minelli.
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Artwork (right): ‘Young naked man seated by the sea’ (1836), by Hippolyte Flandrin.
film (left): ‘Wells of ambition’ (2007), by Paul Thomas Anderson.
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