Search - Jackson Pollock (Artists of the 20th Century) on DVD

Beautiful but muddled documentary

askascott | Denver, CO United States | 05/12/2004

(2 out of 5 stars)

"It's rather ironic that such a great painter is covered by such an amateurish film. The narration sounds like it's being read from a textbook. More often than not, it does not even seem to correlate with the painting being shown. It does not help that there is no on-screen text identifying the paintings, let alone dates or medium. The music seems haphazard, ending abruptly, mid-phrase, at the end of the film.The only positive of this film -- the reason I would not give this film a 1-star rating -- is that the images of the paintings are very rich. In fact, all you see are the paintings.Not knowing anything about the filmmaker, my impression is that this is a film made by an art historian so deep into the subject matter that he does not know when he's being rather obscure in his references. My (unfair) hunch is that he made this himself on his desktop computer.Overall, the film left me confused and amused. Next time I watch it, I will put on the radio or a CD, play some nice music, and just watch the DVD without sound."