Peter Greenaway’s Nightwatching Promo-Reel

Posted by Kurt Halfyard at 10:11am.

Posted in Film News .

A wee bit of inspired casting is at work for Peter Greenaway’s new film on Rembrandt - Martin Freeman of BBCs The Office and Hitchhikers Guide to The Galaxy (and cameoing recently in Hot Fuzz). The quite meaty (and spoilerific) material on display here is lush (as it ought to be considering the director and the subject matter) and playful, both modern feeling and period piece. Nightwatching seems to be a change of pace for Greenaway after the somewhat baffling Tulse Luper multimedia project.

The film centers around the creation of one of Rembrandt’s most famous paintings, The Militia Company of Captain Frans Banning Cocq (The Nightwatch), but also involves conspiracy theories and political plays of the powerful:

“At the insistence of his pregnant wife Saskia, Rembrandt has reluctantly agreed to paint the Amsterdam Musketeer Militia in a group portrait that will later become to be known as The Nightwatch. He soon discovers that there is a conspiracy afoot with the Amsterdam merchants playing at soldiers maneuvering for financial advantage and personal power in, that time, the richest city in the Western World. Rembrandt stumbles on a foul murder. Confident in the birth of a longed-for son and heir, Rembrandt is determined to expose the conspiring murderers and builds his accusation meticulously in the form of the commissioned painting, uncovering the seamy and hypocritical side to Dutch Society in the Golden Age.”

Nightwatching is currently in post production with a 2007 (Hmmm, TIFF premiere perhaps?) release date expected.

Trailer (Promo-Reel) (Embedded Quicktime, Viewer Discretion is Advised)

Source: [Kasander’s Production site via AICN]

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Reader Comments

Applecart 05/01/2007 @ 10:49am

Awesome! I can’t wait.
Ardvark 05/01/2007 @ 11:12am

Amazingly, Martin Freeman has just about the perfect face for this!

Inspired casting to say the least.
glenn 05/01/2007 @ 1:31pm

looks great. perfect director for this subject.
philip 05/01/2007 @ 2:23pm

Saw Greenaway speak at the cinematheque in Vancouver last week (he’s in town for the post-production on NIGHTWATCHING) and he subjected us to I don’t know how much of THE TULSE LUPER SUITCASES and boy was it painful.

It actually probably wasn’t very long at all, maybe 15 minutes, but boy was it painful