The first film Andrei Tarkovsky shot outside the Soviet Union was Nostalghia - spelled that way because 'nostalgia' is too weak an equivalent for the Russian word, the Russian emotion. Made in Italy in 1982-83, it begins with a visit to the Tuscan church where Piero della Francesca painted his fresco of the pregnant Virgin Mary, the Madonna del Parto. But the scene wasn't shot there. James Macgillivray, in his contribution to a new volume of essays edited by Nathan Dunne, tells us that Tarkovsky had a reproduction of Piero's painting installed in the crypt of another Romanesque church about 75 miles away. And though he always insisted that film be grounded in material fact - the church is real even if the fresco is not - he took other liberties with reality in his treatment of space and time.

LRB 26 February 2009 | PDF Download