Portland Public Library

The belly of an architect, Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer ; Film Four International and British Screen in association with Hemdale and SACIS present ; a British/Italian co-production, Mondial Ltd. (London) - Tangram Film SRL (Roma) ; a Colin Callender production ; produced by Colin Callender and Walter Donohue ; a film by Peter Greenaway

eng

videorecording

MPAA Rating: Rated R (pervasive sexuality); Canadian Home Video Rating: 14A

The belly of an architect

55757894

Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer ; Film Four International and British Screen in association with Hemdale and SACIS present ; a British/Italian co-production, Mondial Ltd. (London) - Tangram Film SRL (Roma) ; a Colin Callender production ; produced by Colin Callender and Walter Donohue ; a film by Peter Greenaway

119

Stourley Kracklite, a burly middle-aged American architect, is in Rome to organize a large-scale exhibition of the work of Etienne-Louis Boullee (1728-1799), a visionary French architect. His wife Louisa is along, and a little bored with his cerebral fixations. Surrounded by Roman art and architecture--whose perfect scaling and Classicist surfaces he has always admired--Kracklite is overcome by narcissistic jealousy. Amidst the graceful clean domes, virile statues, and sturdily parallel columns of Roman monuments, Kracklite suspects Louisa of trying to poison him as his prodigious gut begins giving him searing pains. Anxious and paranoid, he's undone by his fear that despite his internal inspirations, an architect is a speck of a thing compared to what he builds--huge, material spectacles that far outlive their progenitors

Main title/Celebration -- Applause -- Discovering Boullée -- Blowing up the past -- Form, shape, function -- History lesson -- Positive -- Assignation -- Nose job -- Studio portrait -- Homage -- Change of plans -- Pen pal -- Metabolism -- Crucified -- Alpha & omega/Credits

live action