the kiss and shutter island

    Adaptation of some famous paintings to movie scenes, video clips have become common in the contemporary era. Gustav Klimt's The Kiss painting and Martin Scorsese's Shutter Island movie hugging scene is the painting - mise-en-scène adaptation I will mention about. The reason why I chose this dual is, Gustav Klimt's painting gives the senses of intensity, abstract sparkle occurring inside human emotion, attachment, and passion in a very effective way. The denotation of the scene from Shutter Island is highly relative to the painting and I could not imagine any other artwork can be replaced with the scene. 

     Gustav Klimt is an Austrian symbolist painter and one of the most well-known members of the Vienna Secession movement. Klimt's primary subject in his paintings is the female body, and his works are marked by a frank eroticism. Among the artists of the Vienna Secession, Klimt was the most affected by Japanese art and its forms. Klimt had a period called the "Golden Phase." Most of his paintings from this period contained gold leaves. His worldwide known, most famous artworks belong to his "Golden Phase" period. The Kiss, Portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer I, Judith and the Head of Holofernes, The Tree of Life, Stoclet Frieze are some of his works belonging to that era. Once again the fact that Martin Scorsese influenced the Golden Phase period and chose the scene he wanted to emphasize on Shutter Island belongs to that period explains the extraordinary impact of Klimt's paintings. 

     In terms of mise-en-scène, Scorsese used light extremely efficiently. The most impressive element in this scene, both for the audience to make a connection and hint at the similarity between painting-scene and, for establishing a relationship between them was the usage of light. Although it is understood that there are two people in the painting, the integration of these two people is depicted as two heads and one body. And it symbolizes the wholeness, unity of two-person as one. In the painting, symbolically solid yellow light surrounds the two lovers and makes them seen as a whole rather than separated. In the scene, Teddy and Rachel look very integrated just like in painting undermost the light surrounding them putting in one single form. Rachel's dress pattern and its color give the sense of visual similarity, also the color palette in the scene is very alike to the original painting's color palette. While the Japanese fan hanging on the wall in the movie is not an element of The Kiss, I think Scorsese is referring to Gustav Klimt's admiration, inspiration, and the breeze for Japanese art.

    Scorsese adapted The Kiss made in 1909 to a specific scene into his movie  Shutter Island released in 2010. Although there are almost a hundred years between the painting and the scene, seeing cult artworks in a different medium and on a different platform (in cinema) is an interesting experience and kind of like a familiarity shook for us as the audience. With these kinds of adaptations, the versatility and freedom of art and how each branch is affected by one another are reminded once again.

Gustav Klimt, The Kiss, 1909

Martin Scorsese, Shutter Island, 2010