Summary
A canvas of pine-smoke and candle-nub, Die schwarze Pantherin follows Kornej, a self-taught primitivist who daubs mythic beasts on barn boards while the 1919 revolution rattles the panes of his Carpathian village. When urbane art agent von Rauchwitz sweeps in like a fox among chickens and acquires the entire oeuvre for a pittance, the paintings migrate to Berlin’s cigarette-tinged salons where hawk-eyed critic Moulin pronounces them ‘a cave-fire for the asphalt age’. Fame arrives as a brass band in winter: garish, freezing, impossible to ignore. Kornej weds his ink-stained childhood confidante Rita beneath a canopy of paper lanterns, but the honeymoon train clatters straight into a hall of mirrors—patrons want the savage naïf, not the man who now dreams of Renaissance perspective. Contracts thicken, easels shrink, and the black panther—once a private sigil scratched into every frame—begins to prowl the margins of his nightmares, licking at the gilded bars of success. When Rita’s body is discovered curled like a Modigliani inside the studio cupboard, brush still wet with scarlet, the film tilts into expressionist chiaroscuro: courtrooms, cafés, carnival wagons, all dissolving into a single, smeared canvas. Did the painter slaughter his muse, or did the canvas demand a blood sacrifice to keep its colours singing? The final reel refuses confession; instead it presents a triptych of alternate endings—execution, exile, erasure—leaving the viewer holding the brush.
Synopsis
Kornej is a young painter of primitivism. An art agent discover the works of Kornej and buy the whole collection. The art critic Moulin is very excited about Kornejs paintings and style. Kornej marries his childhood sweetheart Rita.
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