DVD Review: Peter Greenaway’s The Draughtsman’s Contract on Zeitgeist Video

Peter Greenaway’s 1982 Restoration comedy drama The Draughtsman’s Contract is a murder mystery set in a world wherein haughty aristocrats jockey for power within the narrow confines of carefully arranged social circles. Fittingly, then, the film’s construction makes it seem like a puzzle book for intellectual aesthetes.

A monstrously arrogant landscape artist, Mr. Neville (Anthony Higgins), is instructed to create a series of drawings, from every conceivable angle, of the estate of the strangely absent Mr. Herbert, and as part of his arrangement he ensures that Mrs. Herbert (Janet Suzman) agrees to comply with his every sexual request. With each passing day, Mr. Neville grows increasingly brazen in his amorous encounters and also draws in the Herbert daughter (Anne-Louise Lambert) as a casual lover. Eventually, our anti-hero realizes he may be part of an elaborate trick, when his drawings eventually begin to reveal that Mr. Herbert has been murdered and that the specific arranged objects within the pictures (where a carefully placed stepladder and some discarded clothing transform into Agatha Christie-style clues) seem to implicate the artist.

The Draughtsman’s Contract is told less through traditional cinematic storytelling than through obsessive long-take tableaus. If it feels like you’ve dived right into a painting, that’s because Greenaway was an art student before he was a filmmaker. In this first conventional feature from this unashamedly art-minded director (following 1980’s feature-length mockumentary The Falls), he had not yet begun his collaboration with maestro director of photography Sacha Vierny. Draughtsman’s Contract lacks the distinctive color palette of Greenaway’s later work, where the lighting is reminiscent of his favorite painters, Vermeer and Rembrandt.

Devotees of Greenaway’s body of work shouldn’t expect the sumptuous visual style of his later films (starting with his next picture, A Zed & Two Noughts). Newcomers, on the other hand, should ponder whether to go for this more humble offering or to dive into the deep end with Greenaway’s more esoteric, more stylized, and, in this critic’s estimation, more fascinating later work. The Draughtsman’s Contract is a fledgling attempt at what he later perfected, but that modesty could be seen as a virtue, since there is indeed some form of narrative here instead of the nonlinear, compulsive list-making and categorization that drives some people crazy about his other films. There’s a story and a mystery here that prevents Greenaway from indulging in his sometimes alienating proclivities. But what seems like a game is actually a trap, as the story marches forward like a death march and is resolved with merciless efficiency.

Image/Sound

The restored anamorphic transfer looks quite good and vivid despite the occasional scratch and some pale skin tones. The audio is even and clear.

Extras

With a cheerfully wry tone, Peter Greenaway walks through all of his intentions and references. He never feels like a stuffy professor, especially when he admits he based the character of Mr. Neville on himself, but for better or for worse, he never exchanged his work for sexual favors. The numerous special features include behind-the-scenes footage and interviews with Greenaway and actors Anthony Higgins and Janet Suzman (who describe the fastidious Greenaway as being, surprisingly, unusually collaborative and open to ideas). An interview with Greenaway’s regular composer Michael Nyman is tongue-in-cheek and self-effacing but also illuminates his many influences and touches on his sense of irony. The deleted scenes are negligible.

Overall

Peter Greenaway creates his thesis over the decaying corpses of animals, which doesn’t inspire a middle-of-the-road kind of viewer response.