The Hypothesis of the Stolen Painting
| The Hypothesis of the Stolen Painting | |
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| Directed by | Raúl Ruiz |
| Written by | Raúl Ruiz Pierre Klossowski |
| Starring | Jean Reno |
| Cinematography | Sacha Vierny |
| Edited by | Patrice Royer |
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Release date
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Running time
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66 minutes |
| Country | France |
| Language | French |
The Hypothesis of the Stolen Painting (French: L'Hypothèse du tableau volé) is a 1978 French mystery film directed by Raúl Ruiz.
Through a large 19th century house and its grounds, the camera follows an art collector and an unseen interviewer. The collector has six of seven canvasses by a 19th-century painter called Fredéric Tonnerre, but nobody knows what was in the fourth of the sequence because it was stolen. His quest is to recreate the missing painting and so to read the meaning of the whole series. To achieve this, he has hired models, acquired props and rigged up lighting in order to re-enact each of the six surviving scenes as a tableau vivant. Able to walk around each tableau and to adjust the light, he ponders the inner significance of the scene, speculating why the artist chose to portray it in exactly that way and what message he was signalling to the alert viewer..Tableaux we see include Diana surprised by Actaeon, Templars playing chess, a scandal among Parisian nobility, and an occult ceremony involving a sacrifice similar to that of St Sebastian. In each case the collector discerns strong sexual currents flowing between the characters, both heterosexual and homosexual. More significant, he thinks traces of an esoteric cult of Baphomet are to be seen in the pictures. But, without the missing painting, any overall answer eludes him.
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