Sampling of The Refused

 

Episode One of The Refused ultimately centers around the life of Edouard Manet, the de facto godfather of the impressionist movement.  The series opens with a series of vignettes which immediately clue our viewers into the crux of what this show is about.  Are you and your work refused or accepted? Are you a success or failure? Do you eat today or go hungry?

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Next, the viewer is then take to an inauguration ceremony of a new boulevard built during the Great Work under the auspices of Baron Haussmann and Emperor Louis Napoleon. The scene acclimates the viewer to our place and time and introduces the viewer to Edouard Manet, Charles Baudelaire, Sisley and Renoir among others.  Additionally, this story line articulates the actual physical metamorphosis that Paris was experiencing and the affect it had on Impressionism.

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In The Refused time line, it is the morning after the boulevard inauguration as we begin an elongated breakfast scene which introduces the Manet family; Madame Eugenie Manet, sons Edouard, Eugene, Gustave, Uncle Edmond (Eugenie’s brother) and their maid Nadette.  The patriarch, Auguste Manet, is on his death bed, days before his passing from the era’s most devastating killer, syphilis.  The Refused uses this breakfast scene as a springboard to other major story lines as well as serving as a vehicle to get Edouard Manet’s back story told.

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The style is conversational, just real people managing their lives.  My point is to make the men and their lives of record the focus and not upstage them with phony story lines or gratuitous characterizations.

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