Edouard Manet, the uncanny

This film accompanies the exhibition Manet The Man Who Invented Modern Art shown at the Musée d'Orsay from 5 April to 3 July 2011.

Paris 1880. 47-year-old Edouard Manet is as famous as he is misunderstood: a man with a nefarious reputation, who produced scandalous work of art and enjoyed the support of the finest writers such as Baudelaire, Zola and Mallarmé.

Between two stays in a clinic to treat his syphilis, he devotes all his remaining energy to an exhibition thas is meant to return him to the heart of the contemporary painting scene. The GalErie de la Vie Moderne has now disappeared from the the boulevard des Italiens in Paris.

This film looks back at the hanging of these masterpieces by a painter who only had three more years to live. Exciting analysis by Stephan Guégan, Nancy Locke and Alain Corbin combines with the shimmering writing of Manet and his friends. By disentangling the real from the fictional in his paintings, and private life from its representation, we too will thrill at Manet's uncanny... wich proved so unsetting to his contemporaries