Shades of Paradise: Romantic Film Noir

John Martin (1789-1854) - The Plains of Heaven
1851 - Oil on canvas - Tate Gallery, London
Source: Wikimedia Commons - Google Art Project

Arriving in Paradise Valley

After The Plains of Heaven, John Martin, Oil on canvas, ca. 1851

James Hart

Painting The Plains of Heaven, John Martin

imagined a purely Romantic setting, a feathery wave

of girls adorned in gowns of gossamer and gauze

drifting up God’s flower crowned slopes,

ghostly maidens adrift in radiant nature.

Stretching beyond them as far as his perspective

allows, a valley’s sapphire lake filled by falling heavenly

river, a distant mountain held in diaphanous clouds’

embrace.  Such settings suit his antique mind

once honed on biblical visions.  Martin claimed his

revelation beheld a new heaven and a new earth,

evidence the aim of art should immortalize

nature’s impossible immensities, capture one man’s

reverent heaven.  For my own thoughts today,

I’d just as soon see a fictional scene by Edward Hopper,

a touch of American realism in shades of film noir.

Supplicants and petitioners, all arrive by train

at the edge of heaven.  A brooding gray mansion

waits beyond ominous gates to receive them.  The dead

step down from luxurious Pullman Palace cars,

amble toward the station suffused in sunset red.

A sign overhead proclaims Paradise Valley, landscape

beyond the town fulfills desert promises prophets

saw centuries ago in Moses’ own wild west show.

Right about now, someone cues a soundtrack

for this scene: a man whistles on the evening wind,

Eastwood’s eyes survey the good, the bad, and the ugly,

each of them freed from darkness the living dream.

January 23, 2012

Edward Hopper (1882-1967) - The House by the Railroad
1925 - Oil on canvas - Museum of Modern Art, New York
Source: WikiPaintings - Visual Art Encyclopedia