Edvard Munch (1974)

Essential Viewing

Norway/Sweden

Television Mini-Series

Writer/Director/Narrator: Peter Watkins

Cinematographer: Odd Geir Sæther

Cast: Geir Westby, Gro Fraas, Johan Halsborg, Ladislaw Reznicek, Alf Kare Strindberg

Watkins’s Norwegian mini-series – the British auteur’s magnum opus and, quite possibly, the small (or big, for that matter) screen’s greatest biopic – provides a sensual, beautiful, and extremely moving yet thoroughly informative examination of the early life of renowned expressionist painter Edvard Munch, utilising documentary techniques to introduce all of the key figures in his development as both an artist and as a man. Iain.Stott