Seventeenth-century painter Rembrandt van Rijn (Charles Laughton) suffers the loss of his wife. After an affair with the housekeeper, he finds lasting companionship with his housemaid (Elsa Lanchester), causing widespread scandal. Rembrandt’s unwillingness to shill his paintings for commercial gain leads to financial difficulty. He navigates between the world of kings and queens and that of lowly beggars, finding his place as an artist. The death of his second wife devastates the painter. Part of the Criterion Collection.
Charles Laughton once again teams up with Korda for this moving, elegantly shot quasi biopic about the Dutch painter. Beginning when Rembrandt’s reputation was at its height, the film then tracks his quiet descent into loneliness and isolated self-expression, following the death of his wife to the unveiling of Night Watch to the ecclesiastical excommunication of his late-in-life lover and maid, Hendrickje Stoffels (played by Laughton’s wife, Elsa Lanchester). Though black and white, Rembrandt is shot by cinematographer Georges Périnal (Le million, The Fallen Idol) with an attention to light that’s particularly Rembrandtesque.
Between the two of them, Charles Laughton and Alexander Korda have produced a great, and rich, and glowing motion picture in Rembrandt…we can only recommend his latest vehicle, in the strongest terms. – New York Times
In black and white.
Starring Charles Laughton, Gertrude Lawrence, Elsa Lanchester, Edward Chapman, Walter Hudd.
Note: This is from one of the most important producer-directors in 1930s British cinema, Hungarian émigré Alexander Korda who made a series of historical dramas delving into the private lives of great historical figures, including [The Private Life of Henry VIII (1933](http://amzn.to/1YB8KNL)) and [Rise of Catherine the Great (1934)](http://amzn.to/1YB9aDN).