Francis Bacon: Paintings 1944-62

The film opens with images that recur in Francis Bacon's paintings - Muybridge photographs of animals in motion, stills from Eisenstein's The Battleship Potemkin, a Rembrandt self-portrait, and Pope Innocent X by Velázquez. The remainder of the film presents Bacon's interpretation of such images during the period 1944-62. There is no commentary, but through a combination of music, camera movement and editing, the film accentuates the violence and menace of the paintings, and gives an impression of their emotional power.