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| Love is the Devil: Study for a Portrait of Francis Bacon | 
 enlarge | Director: John Maybury
Actors: Derek Jacobi, Daniel Craig, Tilda Swinton, Anne Lambton, Adrian Scarborough
Studio: Strand Releasing
Category: DVD
List Price: $29.99
Buy New: $13.50
You Save: $16.49 (55%)
Buy New/Used from $13.50
Avg. Customer Rating:  (24 reviews)
Sales Rank: 8301
Format: Color, Dvd-video, Ntsc
Language: English (Original Language)
Rating: Unrated
Media: DVD
Running Time: 88 minutes
Number Of Items: 1
Aspect Ratio: 1.33:1
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.2
Dimensions (in): 7.5 x 5.1 x 0.6
MPN: 9834
ISBN: 6305847045
UPC: 712267983421
EAN: 9786305847045
ASIN: 6305847045
Release Date: April 4, 2000
Theatrical Release Date: October 7, 1998
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
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| Customer Reviews: Read 19 more reviews...
 I Almost Missed This Gem! October 21, 2008
Last week I was going through my very old copies of Tatler, Harper's & Queen, and Vogue magazines (British issues) and found one with a review of this film. My old issues go back 15 years some of them. I read the review and saw the list of the actors names and said, "I've got to get this." After looking at it today, I am so glad I came across the review, because I would never have seen it otherwise.
I am not a Francis Bacon fan. His work, like Freud, leaves me uninspired. Jean Michel Basquiat, on the other hand, fires me up emotionally. After seeing the film I do want to see his retrospective next summer here in NYC at The Met. Perhaps then I WILL be inspired.
The film is just incredible. The writing, the photography, the editing, the music, the acting, absolutely wonderful. Faces who are now familiar to me would not have been when this film was made in the 90s. Craig, Swinton. Of course I knew and adored Derek Jacobi. He WAS Bacon. His looks, mannerisms, everything. The 'sex' scenes are tastefully done if that is the right word, and a lot is left to your imagination. The British really are the best actors and actresses in the world. There is no denying that.
The story is sad, disturbing and true. Like PRICK UP YOUR EARS, we get a fly-on-the-wall view of a forbidden London in the 60s. The gay scene that we would not have stumbled across had we not known the bars and clubs were there. The actors, all of them, were really excellent. I am just so glad I happened upon the review and was smart enough to get this film. It is money well spent. Now I must read more about Mr. Bacon.
A Strange Love Affair October 8, 2008
0 out of 4 found this review helpful
"Love is the Devil: Study for a Portrait of Francis Bacon"
A Strange Love Affair
Amos Lassen
When Daniel Craig was cast as the new James Bond there was a lot of interest in the 1998 film, "Love is the Devil" (Strand Releasing) because of his frontal nude scene in the film. The film, itself, is a somewhat short look at the very strange love affair between Francis Bacon (Derek Jacobi), an artist and his model/lover George Dyer (Daniel Craig). Dyer was the model for some of Bacon's most famous works and the film gives us an impressionist look at the relationship between the two men. Jacobi gives quite the performance embodying some of the artists real quirks including interaction with some very strange friends, brushing his teeth with ammonia, his masochistic bend and his sheer audacity. Visually and through characterization the movie is quite brilliant in its abstractions, darkness and cruelty.
Bacon is presented to us as a man who is disturbed and uncaring but he is also a genius who is not completely in control of himself. He used people, including Dyer, in order to succeed in the art world. However, his life plays second fiddle to the art scene at the time.
Craig as Dyer is also excellent and he falls victim to Bacon's strange ways as he becomes the artist's muse. As Dyer falls into alcohol and drugs as well as an abusive relationship, we become aware that he is heading toward the final fall--suicide.
Aside from the stars and the appearance of Jarman's muse Tilda Swinton, it is the photography of the film that is outstanding even though the film does appear pretentious at times. Obviously, this film was made for a more intellectual group than the man on the street but all in all, I found it completely interesting.
As for Craig's nude scene, let me just say that he measures up.
GRITTY, SAD BUT THE BEST. June 19, 2008
I KNEW NOTHING ABOUT FRANCIS BACON. SO THE MOVIE WAS EDUCATIONAL. SOMETIMES MORE THAN I REALLY WANTED. D. CRAIG WAS MAGNIFICENT. A MUST FOR ALL THOSE WHO MIGHT BE INTERESTED IN ART AND ARTIST'S HISTORY AND A DICKENISH ENGLAND.
 Don't waste your time... June 12, 2008
0 out of 1 found this review helpful
This is a ridulous and manic amalgam of nonsense that fails to satisfy either a lust for Daniel Craig (the hook that made me purchase it) or an interest in Francis Bacon. You will not learn about the artist and you won't see much of Daniel Craig (yes, he's naked in the tub, but is that alone worth the purchase price?). What's more, you won't likely be engaged as there is nothing closely resembling a story arc. Perhaps the film-makers forgot to take there ritalin during production?! Too frenetic, too disjointed, and just...too much of nothing to connect with.
The devil you know or the devil you don't December 9, 2007
2 out of 2 found this review helpful
John Maybury's study of the love affair between the great Irish painter Francis Bacon (Derek Jacobi) and George Dyer (Daniel Craig), the handsome their twenty years Bacon's younger, is more of the kind of film you can really admire than enjoy: it's a dark and very sour study of their sadistic-masochistic relationship between the years 1964, when Dyer tumbled through Bacon's skylight seeking to burgle his house, and 1971 when Dyer committed suicide in France from an overdose of pills. Maybury achieves some lovely effects by framing their relationships entirely with the seediest filthiest milieux imaginable and often using interesting distorting camera tricks (such as shooting characters through curved glass whiskey bottles or wineglasses, or using angled mirrors) to reproduce the famous ugly distorting effects of Bacon's paintings. Maybury was forbidden from using any of Bacon's actual work for the film, so if you didn't know what the finished works looked like you'd be very confused; still, it's hard to imagine anyone seeing this who doesn't have some familiarity with Bacon's work. Even so, some of the more cheaper shots (like those of Craig as Dyer threatening to jump off the ledge of a high New York City hotel) were so clearly done on the cheap they mar the overall effect of the film.
In their sexual encounters Bacon, a lifelong masochist, made Dyer the physically dominant and punishing figure (the film does not shy away from suggesting the more disturbing elements of their sexplay, which includes Dyer extinguishing cigarettes on Bacon's body at Bacon's request). But out of the bed the sour, cynical, and often intentionally cruel Bacon dominated the fastidious and unhappy Dyer, who despite his beauty felt he was a nothing, even when he was the famous model and partner of arguably the most famous living painter in the English-speaking world. Both actors really show their range with their roles, and Jacobi looks so much like the actual Francis Bacon, and adapts so beautifully to his poisonous nasty remarks that it's almost uncanny. It's fascinating to compare his performance with Craig's equally fine one: whereas Jacobi's long stage training shows in his more theatrical flourishes, Craig, who is predominantly a stage actor, goes for subtler effects, suggesting Dyer's misery, self-hatred, and complete lack of confidence. Maybury's fascination with the men's shared misery together prevents him from showing anything of Bacon's lingering years of agonizing guilt after Dyer's suicide that prompted him to create his masterwork, a triptych reproducing Craig's suicide. As a result, you feel only relief when Dyer dies and feel both men are better off without one another since Dyer seems only to be holding Bacon back and Bacon takes such relish in verbally tormenting his partner. So the whole film leaves you with the mistaken impression that Dyer didn't mean all that much to Bacon.
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