Art & Film: Da Vinci/Buñuel, et al.

From the canvas to the cinema.

David Liu | 31 July 2011

The Last Supper (Leonardo Da Vinci, 1495-98; tempera on gesso, pitch and mastic)

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Viridiana (Luis Buñuel, 1961)

A group of beggars break into Viridiana’s premises after she departs. Unable to resist the fortunes before their eyes, they transform the premises into a drunken party estate with the help of Handel’s “Messiah” — Buñuel’s attempt to rile both the Roman Catholic Church and the Fascist regime of Francisco Franco.

MASH (Robert Altman, 1970)

Depressed by his inability to get it up, “Painless Pole” Waldowski swallows a sleeping pill, believing it to be the suicide-inducing “black capsule.” Lying in a coffin, he falls asleep to the strains of “Suicide is Painless” as the rest of the crew watches.

Watchmen (Zack Snyder, 2009)

1947 — the Silk Spectre hangs up her costume. In the film’s phenomenal opening sequence, the Minutemen gather around to celebrate Sally Jupiter’s retirement party, as Bob Dylan’s “The Times They Are a-Changin’” underscores the final public assembly of 1940s America’s most treasured crime fighters.