THE PLOT – Italy 1600s. A brilliant artist, Michelangelo Merisi rebelled against the rules of the Council of Trent, which set the exact coordinates for the display of sacred art. After learning that Caravaggio was using prostitutes, thieves, and vagabonds in his sacred paintings, Pope Paul V decides to commission a real investigation from a Vatican secret agent to decide whether to grant the pardon to replace those of the Painter after the conviction has asked death for killing a lover’s rival in a duel. So the shadow, as the investigator is called, begins his investigative and espionage activities to identify the painter who fascinates, disturbs and infiltrates with his life and his art. A shadow who will hold in his hands absolute power, life or death, over the fate of a genius.
THE OCCUPATION – “L’Ombra di Caravaggio” explores the complicated and adventurous existence of Michelangelo Merisi, alias Caravaggio, who was already a pop star in his day, told in its deep contradictions and in the darkness of its impenetrable torment. Next to Riccardo Scamarcio sits an international cast together Louis Garrel, Isabelle Huppert, Micaela Ramazzotti, Tedua, Vinicio Marchioni and Lolita Chammah.
CARAVAGGIO AFTER MICHELE PLACIDO – Michele Placido narrates the making of the film: “The idea was not to do the biography of Caravaggio but to look for something else. This film has an ancestral maturation that I gave birth 53 years ago in the shadow of the statue of Giordano Bruno , when I was a boy in 68 and took part in the big pro-Vietnam demonstrations”, recalls the director. “Through some friends I discovered Caravaggio and imagined a dialogue between him and Giordano Bruno”.
THE SHADOW – And he adds: “What interested me was not a film about Caravaggio’s aesthetics, but to understand who these people were that he represented, these prostitutes who lived in the great Roman churches, for which Pasolini reminded me of the characters of the Roman suburbs. But we needed an idea. And the idea lay in the shadows.” And Placido’s film, which signed his fourteenth film as director on this occasion (an Italian-French co-production), develops precisely through the exploration of the complicated and adventurous existence of Michelangelo Merisi through his dialogue with a shadow, interpreted by Louis Garrel.