Alex Colville: The Splendour of Order(1984)

Alex Colville: The Splendour of Order is a documentary portrait of the celebrated Canadian painter's life and artistic vision. The film traces how Colville's experience as a war artist during World War II shaped his distinctive style, marked by precise composition and underlying tension. His partnership with his wife Rhoda emerges as central to both his personal life and creative practice. Through interviews with friends and critics, the documentary explores the construction and sense of menace that characterize his paintings—a quality Colville himself attributes to his preoccupation with order, goodness, and contingency. The result is an intimate examination of an artist whose meticulous, unsettling works reveal the complexities beneath surfaces of apparent calm.