The Hypothesis of the Stolen Painting

Plot

The film begins with a static shot of a street that initially appears to be a still image. The rest of the story follows an art collector in a mockumentary format, interviewed by a disembodied voice the audience never sees. The camera tracks the collector through a large 19th-century baroque-style house and its grounds as he guides the interviewer. The collector possesses six of seven canvases by a fictional 19th-century painter named Fredéric Tonnerre, referencing a Klossowski short story.

The fourth painting in the sequence was stolen, and its content is unknown. The collector aims to recreate the missing painting by finding connections among the other six, hoping to discover the meaning of the entire series. To do this, he hires models, acquires props, and arranges lighting to bring each surviving scene to life as tableaux vivants. This medium allows him to experience aspects of the paintings that only three-dimensional space can reveal; he walks around each tableau, adjusts lighting, moves actors, and builds intertextual narratives between them.

He also recites the complicated plot of the novel in which the paintings were conceived, believing traces of an esoteric Baphomet cult are hidden in secret codes within the pictures. As he explains the many threads connecting each painting, the narrator questions his pedantic conclusions, but the collector continues his investigation. Without the missing painting, any overall answer eludes him, leaving him with more questions than when he began. He travels back through the gallery toward the exit, walking past the tableaux vivants, which are now entangled and sprawled throughout the space.

The actors struggle to keep still; some blink, others lose their balance. The collector exits through the back door, and the film ends with the camera remaining in the gallery.

Interpretation

The opening shot sets up themes explored later in the film. According to Michael Goddard, the movie investigates cinema's ability to create "simulacral repetition," where repeated images build on each other. David Heinemann adds that it reveals how visual signs both draw from and produce other signs. Through its many forms of reproduction, Hypothesis demonstrates this cinematic power.

Reception

The film was an international film festival favorite, featured in a London Film Festival review as the best new film at the festival. One reviewer regarded it as playing outside the maps of 70s theory, linking raw fragments of human existence with severe or expansive experiments with form. In a 1984 Monthly Film Bulletin piece, Thomas Elsaesser compared it to work by Peter Greenaway, Eric Rohmer, and Jacques Rivette, calling it a very literary meditation on parallel worlds, messages disguising as accidents, and coincidences revealing fate. It was ranked #13 Best Black and White Films Since 1970 by Film Comment.