Review: The Draughtsman’s Contract

In many ways, the film suggests a puzzle book for intellectual aesthetes.

The Draughtsman's Contract
Photo: United Artists Classics

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.

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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.

Score: 
 Cast: Anthony Higgins, Janet Suzman, Anne-Louise Lambert, Hugh Fraser, Neil Cunningham  Director: Peter Greenaway  Screenwriter: Peter Greenaway  Distributor: United Artists Classics  Running Time: 108 min  Rating: R  Year: 1982  Buy: Video

Jeremiah Kipp

Jeremiah Kipp is a New York City based writer, producer and director with over ten years experience creating narrative and commercial films.

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