Art imitates life, life imitates art, and film imitates everything in between. For ages, filmmakers, screenwriters, and set designers have drawn inspiration from other mediums, visiting museums and spending hours looking through books to seek the perfect aesthetic to draw upon.
Periods from the early Renaissance to realism, Fauvism, post-impressionism, and more, have ignited ideas for a film (or a specific scene), and this new video from Vugar Efendi documents just that. Beginning with Ridley Scott’s “The Duelists,” Efendi gives examples of scenes from some of the greatest films of the past hundred years, juxtaposing the painting they were inspired by.
Botticelli’s "Birth of Venus" sits side-by-side with a stunning young Uma Thurman in Terry Gilliam’s often-underrated “The Adventures of Baron Munchausen,” and Quentin Tarantino’s Academy Award-winning “Django Unchained” sees Jamie Foxx recalling his innermost "Blue Boy," based on the stunning Rococo work of Thomas Gainsborough.
Paul Thomas Anderson’s “Inherent Vice” pulls from not only Thomas Pynchon, but the brilliance of Leonardo da Vinci’s "Last Supper" in a scene featuring Owen Wilson as the drug-addled undercover Coy Harlingen, and Terence Malick’s sublime festival of the magic hour, “Days of Heaven,” recalls Andrew Wyeth’s 20th-century masterpiece, "Christina’s World."
For any art and film lover alike, this short film will bring some forgotten scenes to light. What’s your favorite scene based on a painting? Let us know in the comments below.