Nightwatching

"Nightwatching" is the screenplay for the new film written and directed by Peter Greenaway (forthcoming 2006). With this film, Greenaway proposes, for the 400th anniversary of the birth of Rembrandt, a re-reading of this most celebrated painting, "The Nightwatch", created in 1642, in Amsterdam, at a time in his life when Rembrandt was rich and at the start of his world fame. However, he had reluctantly accepted the commission to paint the Amsterdam Militia, a work which marked the beginning of the end of his good fortune, for his life went into decline after this painting, when its 32 participants conspired to destroy him. In the manner of his film, "The Draughtsman's Contract", Peter Greenaway carries out an investigation through listening to the sound-track of the painting in order to let us discover the evidence of a murder at work. The photomontage assembled in the book is taken from the Rembrandt's "The Nightwatch", and is presented by Peter Greenaway in such a way as to name all the characters of the film.