With his lonely characters trapped in empty and motionless settings, his scenes of disturbing clarity, and his dramatic contrasts of light and shadow, the American realist painter Edward Hopper (1882 - 1967) inspired the greatest filmmakers. At the Fondation Beyeler, in Switzerland, an exhibition brings together sixty-five of his paintings, watercolors, and drawings of landscapes. Overview of seven masterpieces and a film! Suspense at the crossroads
Painting is inspired by a sketch made from the window of his car at an intersection located in Orleans, Massachusetts. From the immaculate road to the facades of the houses, everything is so bare that it feels like a movie set. The light is green: which route are we going to take? What will happen? Too calm not to hide an imminent danger, the scene seems to have come out of a film noir.
We think of the empty decorations prized by the filmmaker Alfred Hitchcock who was very inspired by Hopper. For example, his spinning scenes, from Vertigo (1958) to The Man Who Knew Too Much (1956) via the deserted road from La Mort aux Trousses (1959), where Cary Grant ends up being attacked by a killer plane.
Beaux-Arts
