A Son's Deathbed, by Matthew Sorrento

Ivan the Terrible and His Son Ivan on 16 November 1581, by Ilya Repin (Russia) 1883-85

A Son's Deathbed

also after Damage, directed by Louis Malle (1992)

Holding the flesh that was his boy, Ivan's own pumps about the cradle. Blood peaks in his eyes, the river deathbed not coming soon enough.  
 
A filmmaker wanted a man more broken than he’d ever filmed, his son too innocent to know his Old Man. Once he does, the boy springs back too far, over a banister, to his death. For this, director Louis Malle went to Repin’s father, trapped in a prison-parlor. 

His endless creation.

Matthew Sorrento

Matthew Sorrento is Editor-in-chief of Retreats from Oblivion: The Journal of NoirCon and Co-editor of Film International. A critic and poet with publications in RFO and The Five-Two, he teaches film and media studies at Rutgers University in Camden, NJ. His latest book is David Fincher’s Zodiac: Cinema of Investigation and (Mis)Interpretation (co-edited with David Ryan, FDU Press, December 2021).