Johnny Depp
Johnny Depp’s new film Modi – Three Days On The Wing Of Madness has just premiered at 2024’s San Sebastián Film Festival. Its next premier is set for the Rome Film Festival, which launches today! Read on to discover how the film's Production Designer Dave Warren helped Johnny to capture 72 hours in Modi's life.
A bohemian and struggling Expressionist artist in war-torn Paris, Amadeo Modigliani was on the precipice of ending his career in 1916. It’s this exact moment of anguish and self-revelation that actor, director and artist Johnny Depp explores in Modi. One moment, Modi (Riccardo Scamarcio) can be seen fleeing from the police and the next, he is seeking advice from fellow artists Maurice Utrillo (Bruno Gouery), Chaim Soutine (Ryan McParland), his muse Beatrice Hastings (Antona Desplat), and art dealer and friend, Leopold Zborowski (Stephen Graham).
The cast is rounded out by acclaimed Italian actress, Luisa Ranieri, and the legendary Al Pacino, who plays international art collector Maurice Gangnat. Throughout the film's construction, a talented creative team worked tirelessly behind-the-scenes to support its star-studded cast and director. One such creative was Dave Warren; an esteemed Production Designer who helped make Depp's vision for the film a reality.
Warren's former projects span from assisting Oscar-winning production designer Dante Ferretti on Interview With A Vampire (1994), to art directing the haunted realms of Tim Burton’s Sweeney Todd (2007) and Martin Scorsese’s Hugo (2011). He also contributed to the design of Terry Gilliam's fantastical The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus (2009); working closely with Gilliam to conceive environments in CGI, miniature and full-size sets. We spoke to Warren about his creative process, what it was like working with Depp, and transforming sets located in Budapest, Hungary, into 1920s war-torn Paris.
Modi’s Atelier Exterior set design by Dave Warren. Courtesy of Modi Production Design
What exactly does a film Production Designer do?
"You need to be an architect, interior designer, marine engineer, vehicle designer, a product designer, and a historian," answers Warren, quoting an interview he read two years ago with James Bond and Dr. Strangelove production designer Sir Kenneth Adam OBE. To summarise, Production Designers are Jacks of all trades and master strategists. They reconcile the director's vision with the film's budget, crew and cinematic expectations.
While this sounds complex, it's still a rather primitive simplification of what Warren does. With all film projects, hurdles arise almost every other day, and he constantly needs to think on his feet while mediating relations between the production team, crew, cast and outside world. A seemingly overwhelming task which he recalls fondly; appreciating that on-the-go strategising is a natural byproduct of the job.
Beyond the odious red tape and throng of shooting permits required for the film, the Production Designer also chose when to film on location versus on stage sets. "The challenges and possibilities are endless" says Warren. Fortunately, Modi's creative team took all this in their stride, and incorporated CGI and historically accurate objects, furniture and architecture. By the time Warren joined the Modi team, mounds of research had already been gathered, and several scenes were shot and in pre-production.
Monmartre Steps set design by Dave Warren. Courtesy of Modi Production Design
"The film industry is very random in the way it works," Warren explains. "In some feature films, you will be tapped by a director very early on but Modi was completely different. I was recommended and received a phone call. It was just one of these mad calls asking: Are you available? Can you be a plane on Friday?" Considering Warren's former work on Sweeney Todd (starring Depp as the lead), and his other previous film production accolades, this phone call seemed like kismet at its finest. The universe uniting experienced creative forces to resurrect Modi's artistry on the silver screen.
Naturally, once the Production Designer arrived on set, he wasted no time in understanding what had already been planned and improving on it. This is how a Production Designer is able to subtly imprint himself on the project. "As a designer or cameraman, you must ask yourself what your footprint is," explains Warren. "What are you going to do to bring your vision to the film?"
With these questions in mind, Warren, cinematographer Nicola Pecorini and executive producer Peter Kohn, took "the bones" of the team's earlier work and adapted it according to the director's vision. "Johnny was determined to portray the technicalities of who Modi was as an artist" says Warren. "He lent me books on Modi and considered every minute detail from how the artist moved his paint brush to the gallery labels and chalk marks on the backs of paintings."
Au Café by Jean-Louis Forain c.1920
The Art of Café Society
But first and foremost, Warren had to grapple with the historical nuances of Modi's world. A dab hand at diving into art history and movements such as Art Deco and Art Nouveau, the Production Designer wasted no time in doing his own research into Modi's nightly haunts and rustic abode in Montmartre's bohemian streets. "An awful lot of scenes happen in cafes and restaurants, and each space needed to tell a different story," he says.
From the Belle Époque to the interwar years (1920s and 1930s), Café Society thrived all around Modi. cafes, bookstores, and nightclubs turned Paris into an explosive arts and literary scene teeming with 'Bright Young Things' and intellectuals. Their revels in establishments such as Les Deux Magots, Café de Flore and La Closerie des Lilas, soon defined Paris' Années folles (crazy years).
Alongside luminaries like Ernest Hemingway, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Gertrude Stein, Langston Hughes, and Pablo Picasso, Modi and his friends converged on these spaces. The artist even exchanged his paintings for a drink or two when he was short on funds. Through Depp’s film, we can see how writers, artists and thinkers of the 'Lost Generation' left their indelible mark on the city of lights.
"I was sitting opposite Modigliani. Hashish and cognac. Totally unimpressed. No idea who he was. He looked frightfully ferocious and vulpine. Met him again at La Rotonde. He was clean-shaven and charming. He elegantly doffed his hat, went bright red and invited me to come and see his works’ — Beatrice Hastings overheard at a bar, Christie's
“There is never any ending to Paris and the memory of each person who has lived in it differs from that of any other… But this is how Paris was in the early days when we were very poor and very happy.” — Ernest Hemingway, A Moveable Feast, 1964
Cafe Maxim, Paris by Jean-Louis Forain (1852-1931)
Transforming Budapest into Paris
While he used paintings to inspire atmosphere, Warren also looked at photographs for architecture and set design. Autochrome photographs taken by Albert Kahn proved particularly useful. The French banker and philanthropist was fascinated with early colour photography; unveiled at the time by the pioneering Lumière brothers in the Salon Indien du Grand Café. "Autochrome gives you this very strange slightly off-reality colourising to the city which was already incredibly vivid," says Warren.
The film regularly uses poster art to reflect Paris' vibrancy. "Johnny was particularly fascinated with poster graphics and we would use them every time we saw a black wall," says the Production Designer. The intensity of Modi's surroundings was heightened by wartime, and military elements can be seen infiltrating the frame. Add to the equation the fact that Modi was filmed in Budapest and not Paris, and Warren's juggling act became a lot more complex.
"We needed to make a modern city look like Paris with a 1916 spine," says Warren who drew on his former research for Hugo (which was set in post-war Paris). "But Budapest offers a lot like monumental buildings in the mid-European Beaux Arts style, and cobbled streets and steep slopes similar to those in Montmartre." The rustic ageing of buildings and streets also lent itself to the time. Meanwhile, scenes set on a bridge overlooking Paris' River Seine or in a cemetery required CGI and a cavalcade of tombs and statues to "reinforce the period."
Chet Rosalie's set design by Dave Warren. Courtesy of Modi Production Design
Inside Modi’s Studio
One of the most intimate and detailed set designs is Modi's apartment-cum-studio in Montmartre. The few surviving photographs of Modi in his studio show the artist in a collar and tie; with only "a couple of unframed canvases on the walls and lying flat on a table." This "linear space" proved too simplistic for the impassioned artist Depp wanted to portray. Thus, the team was given the green light to wield their artistic licence. "We absorbed the simplicity of the photographs and moved on," says Warren. "The studio then became Johnny's world."
As an artist himself, Depp used his experiences in his own studio to influence the apartment's aesthetic. "Johnny explained that, when painting, you often rub your paintbrush out on nearby surfaces like the cuff or hem of your coat," says Warren. Flecks of paint travel organically from Modi's paintbrush to his clothing, apartment floor, walls and furniture. The dense impasto walls of Francis Bacon and Lucian Freud's studios also served as references, and Modi is seen using his walls as canvases to "do little dabs of brushwork or test colours."
Constructed on a stage, the apartment reads like an homage to the bohemian artist consumed by his work. The "sugar frosting" screams that an addict and painting lives here. "There were lots of empty bottles and glasses lying around to suggest various kinds of substance abuse."
Johnny Depp behind the scenes of Modi – Three Days On The Wing Of Madness.
Photograph by Leo Pinter. Courtesy of IN.2 Film
Modi’s Atelier set design by Dave Warren. Courtesy of Modi Production Design
"This film is not a documentary of Modigliani" reiterates Warren. In fact, much like his artwork, "it paints a slightly fantastic impressionistic view of the artist and Paris in 1916. If Modi could have seen the apartment we built, I'm sure he would have loved it."
