How The Draughtsman’s Contract set the blueprint… | Little White Lies

In Praise Of

How The Draughtsman’s Con­tract set the blue­print for the mod­ern peri­od piece

12 Nov 2022

Words by Finlay Spencer

A person wearing a white robe and hat, standing outdoors amongst trees.
A person wearing a white robe and hat, standing outdoors amongst trees.
With its acer­bic script and anachro­nis­tic flour­ish­es, Peter Greenaway’s 1982 film is as fresh and fun­ny as ever.

From The Favourite to Dick­in­son, anachro­nism has become a pop­u­lar trope of the post-mil­len­ni­um peri­od piece, where 18th-cen­tu­ry Queen’s par­ties are sound­tracked by New Order and wigged Whigs break­dance. Few films have had as pro­found an influ­ence on this trend as Peter Greenaway’s The Draughtsman’s Con­tract, bring­ing an abun­dance of absur­di­ty into this once prim and stuffy genre.

Mr Neville (Antho­ny Hig­gins), a con­ceit­ed, dark­ly hand­some artist, is hired to pro­duce 12 land­scape draw­ings for Mrs Herbert’s (Janet Suz­man) dis­tant hus­band – an offer the oppor­tunis­tic Mr Neville only accepts in return for sex. He pro­duces a dif­fer­ent pen­cil sketch of the exte­ri­or each day, demand­ing an unim­paired view of the house. But Mr Neville’s lack of cathe­dral think­ing ulti­mate­ly leads to his downfall.

The idea for The Draughtsman’s Con­tract was born out of a hol­i­day to Hay-on-Wye in which the direc­tor spent his time draw­ing the local archi­tec­ture. Mr Neville is a man with clear but out­landish demands, and it is not hard to see him as a sur­ro­gate for Green­away. Through­out his film­mak­ing career, Green­away has always ques­tioned the role of the artist, and the hands in Mr Neville’s draw­ing are in fact the director’s own.

Twen­ty-four years before Sofia Cop­po­la brought Con­verse into the 18th cen­tu­ry, Green­away envi­sioned a film engorged with anachro­nisms. An ini­tial three-hour cut fea­tured a cord­less tele­phone and the director’s own approx­i­ma­tions of Roy Liecht­en­stein paint­ings on the walls. Unlike the draw­ings in the film, Green­way inter­po­lates, and nev­er imi­tates. He presents his­to­ry through a dis­tort­ed cir­cus mir­ror, Man­ner­ism warped with a 20th-cen­tu­ry atti­tude. A his­to­ry where draughts­men throw apples at stat­ues and every­one speaks in a sur­re­al panto-timbre.

In recent years, Green­away has been vocal about the need for an image-based cin­e­ma’. Yet in this cut­ting com­e­dy of man­ners he allows his grasp of the Eng­lish lan­guage to shine, with deli­cious­ly acer­bic lines such as Carp live too long, they remind him of Catholics” and Why is this Dutch­man wag­ging his arms about, is he home­sick for wind­mills?” It might be a stretch to sug­gest that the film acts as a kind of pro­to-Twit­ter, where fun­ny quips and one-upman­ship are used in lieu of lev­el-head­ed dis­cus­sion, but a barb aimed at Mr Neville, I will can­cel your eyes,” has an unin­tend­ed per­ti­nence today. Had it been released today, one can eas­i­ly imag­ine the film being end­less­ly quot­ed and memed online.

Two women in 1930s-style dresses reclining on a patterned sofa, one woman sitting up while the other lies back.

Green­away adopts a less-is-more visu­al approach, the elon­gat­ed, wide-angle shots spot­light­ing the mil­i­tary-grade quips and pala­tial set­ting. The once aspir­ing painter made the switch to film after stum­bling across Last Year at Marien­bad and Breath­less. Here he has his cake and eats it, ref­er­enc­ing 17th-cen­tu­ry paint­ing and 60s Euro cin­e­ma. The oper­at­ic tableaus on dis­play here could have been pulled straight out of the Renais­sance era. The long track­ing shots over din­ner feel like the French New Wave esti­ma­tion of a Rem­brandt, a sub­ject Green­away would return to 26 years later.

The Draughtsman’s Con­tract is a film of old clothes and new atti­tudes. Of ver­bose lan­guage and Bar­ry Lyn­don-esque visu­al sym­me­try. Black-and-white sketch­es back­dropped by painter­ly cin­e­matog­ra­phy. And then there’s the score by Micheal Nyman, a com­pos­er who found his voice play­ing Mozart like Jer­ry Lee Lewis, which recalls dance music with its sub­tly var­ied rep­e­ti­tion (although the harp­si­chord trans­ports you straight to 17th cen­tu­ry Eng­land). Nyman’s work reflects the brava­do and rou­tined excess­es of the char­ac­ters, employ­ing a range of his­tor­i­cal­ly inac­cu­rate instru­ments. It’s no sur­prise that the piece Chas­ing Sheep is Best Left to Shep­herds’ was sam­pled by the Pet Shop Boys on 2013’s Elec­tric’.

In many ways, The Draughtsman’s Con­tract feels like an hors‑d’œuvre for Greenaway’s 1989 Thatch­er-satire The Cook, The Thief, His Wife and Her Lover, which dials up the grotesque­ness of his char­ac­ters to 11 and fea­tures an even loud­er, longer Nyman score. I do not dis­guise or dis­as­sem­ble” says Mr Neville at one point in the film, but Green­away dis­man­tles the past and dis­guis­es it with his own image. How­ev­er, the impend­ing (and his­tor­i­cal­ly accu­rate) Mar­ried Women’s Prop­er­ty Act hangs over the male characters.

This is where the influ­ence of Greenaway’s film can be felt most keen­ly today. Just as Mr Neville is final­ly out­ma­noeu­vred by Mrs Her­bert and Mrs Tal­mann – his life­less body dis­card­ed in the moat – so the women of mod­ern peri­od pieces like Hulu’s The Great take con­trol from their fool­ish and impo­tent male counterparts.

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