Modigliani | 
| Director: Mick Davis
Actors: Andy Garcia, Elsa Zylberstein, Omid Djalili, Hippolyte Girardot, Eva Herzigova
Studio: UMVD/Visual Entertainment
List Price: $26.99
Buy Used: $5.18
You Save: $21.81 (81%)
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Rating:  26 reviews
Sales Rank: 10757
Format: Color, Dvd-video, Widescreen, Ntsc
Language: English (Original Language)
Rating: R (Restricted)
Region: 1
Aspect Ratio: 1.78:1
Number Of Items: 1
Running Time: 127 Minutes
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.2
Dimensions (in): 7.1 x 5.4 x 0.6
MPN: FI4247DVD
UPC: 602498842478
EAN: 0602498842478
ASIN: B000AL72R8
Theatrical Release Date: 2004
Release Date: September 27, 2005
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
Shipping: International shipping available
Condition: few light scratches does not affect play satisfaction guaranteed international orders ship without jewel case
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Product Description
Andy Garcia brings to life artistic genius Amedeo Modigliani'sstory of tragic love rivalry and excess in the midst of arthistory's golden age when greats like Picasso Rivera Cocteauand Modigliani held court in the salons of post-WWI Paris.System Requirements: Running Time 127 MinFormat: DVD MOVIE Genre: DRAMA Rating: R UPC: 602498842478 Manufacturer No: FI4247DVD
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| Customer Reviews: Read 21 more reviews...
 Great Artist Deserved a Better Film January 13, 2006
Scott Rivers (Los Angeles, CA USA)
37 out of 50 found this review helpful
"Modigliani" (2004) is a self-indulgent, pretentious and largely fictional portrait of a tragic artist. Writer-director Mick Davis goes overboard on the symbolism while revealing precious little about the man and his work. Ironically, the viewer has a better understanding of Pablo Picasso than Amedeo Modigliani. Despite his boundless enthusiasm, Andy Garcia is simply too old for the title role. An irritating fiasco that deserved its straight-to-video fate.
 "That's How Everyone Sees Modigliani" ~ When Art And Biography Merge November 29, 2006
Brian E. Erland (Brea, CA - USA)
36 out of 38 found this review helpful
Those involved in the making of the film `Modigliani' should be exceedingly proud of this amazingly beautiful and poignant tribute to Modigliani the artist, for truly art and biography have never been so magically blended as accomplished here. I was spellbound from the opening scene of Jeanne Hebuterne's (Elsa Zylberstein) enchanting face staring into the camera to the ending with Amedeo Modigliani (Andy Garcia) dancing around the statue of Balzac on a snowy winters night. Like a poem, it ends and you are left filled with emotion and lost in profundity. `Modigliani' is truly a masterpiece in every sense of the word.
This is a film that belongs in any serious DVD collection. Purchase the CD too, the music is magnificent. My Highest Recommendation!
 Witnessing the Bohemian Life of Paris, 1919: Artists Awry October 6, 2005
Grady Harp (Los Angeles, CA United States)
25 out of 34 found this review helpful
MODIGLIANI is a difficult movie to review. It has some very strong features such as the cinematography that captures the artsy feeling of Paris 1919 and, despite excesses, manages to create some visuals of hallucinations and the wild madness of painters painting canvasses; a rather complex peak into the lives of several of the more revolutionary artists of the time; and a substantial feeling for the interchange between artist and model. The main problem with the film is a script that is banal, limited in historical validity, and concentrating on a single rather silly motif of a painters' competition.
Amedeo Modigliani (1884 - 1920) was a Sephardic Jew from Italy who moved to the mecca of Paris to create his brilliant portraits and sculptures of nudes and extended neck women and girls. His genius lay in his unifying the spiritual Eastern iconography (tribal art and Judaism) of his heritage with the Christian (read Catholic) traditions of the artists with whom he associated which resulted in his creations of the female nude from a feminist cultural perspective. What this film delivers is a rather annoying portrait of a young consumptive artist who drank and drugged himself to death at a moment in his career when renown was just beginning. The reasons for his place in art history are merely hinted all for the sake of the Hollywood biopic.
Andy Garcia plays Modigliani with a modicum of elan and a plethora of bad traits. The lovely model Jeanne Hebuterne (Elsa Zylberstein) who was the subject not only of his portraits but the mother of his illegitimate child and his live-in paramour is a bit long in the tooth on suffering, though despite the fact that Zylberstien is hampered by both a weak script and limited acting, she does have an uncanny resemblance to Jeanne. The artists with whom 'Modi' works include a strangely miscast Picasso (Omid Djalili), Chaim Soutine (Stevan Rimkus), Maurice Utrillo (Hippolyte Girardot), Diego Rivera (Dan Astileanu), Zborowski (Louis Hilyer), and the strangely non-effeminate Jean Cocteau (Peter Capaldi)! Dealer Max Jacob (Udo Kier) and Gertrude Stein (Miriam Margolyes!) are thrown in with the harlequins and 'Modi's' child spirit Dedo (Frederico Ambrosino) for atmosphere. The storyline is one that could have easily been told in the requisite time frame but MODIGLIANI taxes the viewers' attention for over two hours.
So aside from a visually exciting experience there is really very little to be learned from this liquor and opium soaked consumptive noisy melodrama that could have been about any one of the artists involved in the story. The genius of Modigliani is barely tapped. Grady Harp, October 05
Beautifully Shot Drama in Paris 1919, But Could Be Better with Less Material October 1, 2005
Tsuyoshi
18 out of 33 found this review helpful
The life of Amedeo Modiliani was once filmed in "Les Amants de Montparnasse" (1958) starring Gerard Philipe (directed by Jacques Becker). This newer picture is, unlike the previous one, more about the portraits of "Ecole de Paris," group of the artists living in Paris before and after the First World War. And in the center of the beautifully shot film, we see Andy Garcia playing the tragic hero Modigliani.
Many critics, perhaps too harshly, criticized the casting -- Cuban-born Andy Garcia playing Jewish Italian Modigliani -- and their complaint is understandable, if not totally fair. How many people (including me) did know real Modigliani's biographical background? Moreover, see the DVD cover (which shows his Modigliani sitting on a chair and holding a cigarette) which is based on the real artist's photo that exists. I have seen the latter, and, well, Andy Garcia is not that bad. These days his career has been ailing, even his fans must admit, but that does not mean he cannot act. Yes, he can.
[NEEDS A SIMPLE STORY] So why three stars? Two reasons. One, the film lacks the center. So many things are put into the film (especially in the first half) -- about his childhood, his love Jeanne (played by Elsa Zylberstein, quite good), his conflict with Jeanne's father who doesn't approve of his daughter's relationship, the rivalry with oafish Picasso, etc. If only director Mick Davis concentrated on telling the love story with Jeanne, or the love-hate (mostly hate) relations with Picasso, Modigliani of this film would have been more three-dimentional, more realistic figure. As it is, in "Modigliani," Andy Garcia's titular artist is shown as perpetually drunk guy who has nothing to do except making fun of the others. Though his behavior may be historically correct, it is hard to follow his self-destructive actions for more than two hours.
Besides, (here's my second quibble) the story tries to include too many characters -- Maurice Utrillo, Jean Cocteau, Diego Rivera, Moise Kisling, Gertrude Stein (played by Miriam Margolyes), and don't forget his meeting with Renoir. Even Modigliani's childhood image (alter ego?) appears to teach a thing or two to adult Modi, but that only makes the film run longer than it should (about 126 minutes). The cultural references are certainly informative, but the film is, and should be, about Modigliani as its title suggests.
Good things about the film are its beautiful photography, which often gives feelings as if we are looking at classic paints at museum. The images are breathtakingly beatiful, and so is the accompanied music.
The film gets better as it goes on, but has too many elements for any director to handle, and Mick Davis handles them often clumsily, sometimes with cliched storytelling. Perhaps it's not the actors that are real problem here; it's the director who could have made a better film with a simpler approach.
Portrait of an Artist as a Dying Man December 7, 2005
Robert M. Penna (Albany, NY)
17 out of 22 found this review helpful
"Modigliani," a 2004 offering starring Andy Garcia, is one of those historical/biographical films that so invests the viewer with a sympathy for and interest in the central character, that it is a sad disappointment to learn that most of what one sees on the screen is untrue.
True, a disclaimer in the beginning warns the viewer that this is a work of fiction, but as with so many Oliver Stone "docudramas," there are no clear indications where history ends and fiction begins. In real life, Amedeo Modigliani was a painter and a sculptor. He bounced between France and his native Italy as his ever deteriorating health dictated, the deterioration caused by a life long tubercular condition, fueled by booze, drugs and (if the film is to be believed) chain smoking. He had a very public affair with a well known bisexual writer, but later became smitten with a local Parisian girl, with whom he took up and lived out the remainder of his short life. Yes, Modigliani struggled for most of his life. Yes, he lived in the same post-WW I Paris as did Picaso. Yes, he died young, at 35. And yes, Jeanne, the love of his life, did take her own life, and that of their unborn second child, upon his death. But the Modigliani we meet in the film is not this man.
Perhaps the reason for this was screenwriter Mick Davis' need to collapse an entire life into a film lasting only 127 minutes. Perhaps Mr. Davis just used the historical highpoints as the inner structure for the story he wanted to tell. Or perhaps he just could not resist the familiar and by now trite tale of the doomed artist achieving his greatest triumph just as his wretched excesses finally overtake him.
The resulting film, in spite of the title character being masterfully played by Andy Garcia, is predictable even to those who have never heard of Modigliani or ever seen his work. Certain central characters -Jeanne's virulently anti-Semitic father, is a prime illustration- and the parts they play in the film could have easily been excluded in favor of greater exploration of the historical Modigliani. His development as an artist, by way of example, is completely ignored. The viewer, therefore, is never quite sure whether the sympathy the film builds for the title character is warranted or not. Until the end, the film begs the question of whether Modigliani was any good as an artist...or not.
These things said, the film does have much to recommend it. Beyond Garcia's performance, the decadent excess of post-WW I Europe has not been so well captured since "Cabaret." The score is both bold and enticing. The fevered scenes leading up to the film's final moments truly capture the creative frenzy that great artists experience as genius takes over from rote. And the film does succeed in making the viewer believe that he or she is actually seeing this pivotal point in Western art very much as it must have been.
Still, it is saddening to realize when the film ends and the lights come on that what one has viewed was more Hollywood than history. When Disney's "Pocahontas" was screened for a huge outdoor crowd in New York's Central Park, one reviewer wrote that she had to point out to a friend who was totally taken with the film, that the Disney version of the story was glaringly historically inaccurate. Faced with the fact that actually history was much different than what the film depicted, the friend made a choice. Referring to the film, she reportedly said, "Well, I like THIS version better." So it may be with Modigliani. It may not be accurate, but viewers may like the film much more than they would the actual facts of the man's life.
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