Classiq - An online journal that celebrates cinema, culture, style and storytelling.

7 November 2025

“Dark Passage”, Bogie and Bacall’s poetic dreamscape where everything becomes possible

Bogie is on the run, having just escaped prison after he was framed for the murder of his wife, and Bacall comes to his rescue, her belief in his innocence rooted in her own family history. But for the first third of the film we can hear Bogart’s voice, but we can’t see his face. These early scenes are shot with subjective camerawork, as though through his eyes. We see what he would see. After a plastic surgery, in order to avoid being recognised by the police, his familiar face finally emerges from underneath the bandages. And the chemistry between Bogart and Bacall when they look into each other’s eyes is obvious. We’ve seen it before. But whereas in the first two films they did together, To Have and Have Not and The Big Sleep, the electricity between them was palpable on screen, marked by erotic tension and the game of seduction, here it is gentleness and tenderness that prevail, as Bertrand Tavernier notes in his magnificent book Amis Américains. “The next few years were the happiest of my life – I was really on a cloud,” is how Lauren Bacall recounted that period of her life (they had just married when they filmed Dark Passage).

It is the tender relationship between Bogie (as Vincent Parry) and Bacall (as landscape painter Irene Jansen) that carries the film, and we believe it. “Few films give the viewer such a strong impression of moving within a waking dream,” Tavernier writes. “Instead of a sham of verisimilitude, Daves prefers a plunge into the uncanny, into a poetic dreamscape where everything becomes possible, and the most improbable encounters and coincidences seem perfectly natural — even a happy ending (invented by Daves and a serious departure from genre conventions) that borders on a fairy tale. This magnificent ending was celebrated by the Surrealists, who saw it as a perfect illustration of the triumph of L’Amour fou. Far from dwelling on darkness, despair, and pessimism, as is typical of the genre, Daves compensates for each of his hero’s misfortunes with a stroke of fabulous luck (he has no neutral encounters; each one is either catastrophic or providential).”

The city of San Francisco, the hometown of Delmer Daves, offers the perfect setting not for the action, but especially for the characters and their state of mind. You can see and feel how the steely hills, steep staircases and shaded passages of the city tighten in on Vincent, a maze he can not escape, and how even Irene’s apartment (his hideout), although elegantly spacious and flooded with natural light, becomes claustrophobic. He has to get out, even if it means going away from Irene as well. But Delmer Daves is a romantic, “one of the most romantic American filmmakers”, Tavernier insisted, and Vincent manages to prevail and come out on top after his assorted setbacks. He gets Irene, too, and that’s the fairy tale element, the most unconventional one for film noir, that Daves plays with.

This was Bogart and Bacall’s third film together and if you watch these three movies in chronological order, it’s like you watch their relationship evolve and grow and deepen on screen. By any means, I don’t want to take anything away from the individuality of each film, its characters and narrative authenticity, but Bogie and Bacall’s power of seduction for the audiences was so huge that screenwriters, directors and especially producers all took that into consideration when they paired them together on screen. All except Howard Hawks on their debut feature, To Have and Have Not, which was also Lauren Bacall’s first role. And what a memorable role it was! She turned out to be the perfect partner for Humphrey Bogart. At the tender age of 19, she could crack wise with Bogie, measure up to his personality and was even “a little more insolent than he was”, as Howard Hawks remarked, who changed the heroine’s name in the film from Marie to Slim, after his wife. “The contagious thrill sparked by Bogart and Bacall’s romance defined the prevailing mood of the shoot,” Hawks concluded.

Two years later, Bacall and Bogie would reunite for The Big Sleep, one of the classics of film noir, heavy on great dialogue, style, wit and verve and an intricate and fast-paced plot, and where the time of day is appropriately night. As Vivian, Lauren Bacall is not a femme fatale, she is a cool, elegant charmer, with her reserved poise, angular beauty and immaculate finger waves, and dressed in Leah Rhodes’ costumes, one of which is the houndstooth wool suit, a reinterpretation of the one Bacall had worn in To Have and Have Not. That one had been inspired by a similar one Howard Hawks’ wife, Slim, liked to wear. Nancy “Slim” Hawks was in fact the one who had seen Lauren on the cover of Harper’s Bazaar and told her husband that she was a star in the making, which made the director cast her in her debut film. The houndstooth wool suit with peplum jacket and pencil skirt is tailored to perfection and emphasises Bacall’s lean, willowy figure, just as all the other costumes do. It’s a timeless suit that’s never gone out of fashion. Lauren wears it with a matching bag and a black beret in her hands.

In The Big Sleep, she is wearing a beret again with the suit, but, this time, the jacket is not fitted to the body, but has a straight cut and it’s paired with a black sweater and a box purse. The gingham pattern comes up again in Dark Passage (Bernard Newman was the costume designer), this time in the form of a lounge gown, a much more subtle and restrained look, incredibly well descriptive of Irene. But it’s another checkered print that catches the eye. It’s the waist-long jacket with a more masculine cut, worn with a plain-coloured, loosely fit, under-the-knee skirt. Irene wears it at the beginning of the film, when she rescues Vincent from the highway. It’s a much more tomboyish, self-confident, mature and modern look, not just as a stand-alone piece, but also in relation with Lauren Bacall’s similar looks in the previous two films. And one can not help looking beyond the big screen, comparing Bacall’s characters throughout these films, no reason to deny the fascination the real, great movie stars continue to hold over us – especially those of us who, looking back at a different time, appreciate how everyone, including Hollywood’s biggest idols valued privacy more than anything else, and a new movie, a magazine or a newspaper was the only way the public would catch a glimpse of their favourite actors. Along these lines, I want to end with this paragraph from the book Bogie: A Celebration of the Life and Films of Humphrey Bogart: “They accepted each other as they were. He did not attempt to remake her according to some womanly ideal of his own – always a temptation when a man is a quarter of a century older than his wife. She did not object when he had to howl at the moon with his pals. But more and more they were quietly at home together, often in the company of other couples.”

The Holdovers: In conversation with production designer Ryan Warren Smith

“I like to think with pencil in hand”: In conversation with graphic designer F Ron Miller

Posted by classiq in Film, Film costume | | Comments Off

20 October 2025

Read instead…in print #39: Lubitsch Can’t Wait

They don’t make comedies like they used to. A cliché? Maybe. But it also just happens to be the plain truth. And they have never made comedies like Ernst Lubitsch did. His comedies make us laugh by not showing, by not telling the story directly, by working out the plot along with him as we watch the film. But everything we don’t see behind the closed doors while the camera remains outside is essential. The laughs keep coming not because of physical, comical situations, but because of the wit and lightness of touch of a well crafted situation. What appears to be is of more relevance than what it is. That’s the brilliance of it all. “There is no Lubitsch plot on paper, nor does the movie make any sense after we’ve seen it. Everything happens while we are looking at the film,” said François Truffaut. His comedies don’t stay with you long after you’ve watched them. His comedies require constant reviewing, just like Hitchcock’s films. They are a reminder that movies must be experienced, not just looked at and then put aside.

But, even more importantly, Lubitsch’s comedies reinforce my own conviction which I have expressed time and again about how underrated comedy, and especially his comedy, is in the world of film and how underrated its effect is on the world. There is that famous line in Preston Sturges’ Sullivan’s Travels (1941) which I regularly talk about, when Joel McCrea’s character, after he has been mistaken for a tramp, arrested and put to work on a chain gang and he finds himself watching a comedy with the other convicts, every one of them laughing harder than the other, as if they have no worries in the world, says: “There’s a lot to be said for making people laugh. Did you know that that’s all some people have? It isn’t much, but it’s better than nothing in this cockeyed caravan.”

Ernst Lubitsch would take that further in 1942 with To Be or Not to Be, and Mladen Dolar makes the best argument not only for the importance of comedy in general, but about the greatness and uniqueness of this film in his essay “To Be or Not to Be? No, Thank You” from the book Lubitsch Can’t Wait. He writes about how Lubitsch made a comedy about fascism “blatantly disregarding all political correctness, and, what is more, a comedy about fascism made at the time of its steep and sinister rise, confronting its disastrous historical and political reality at the time, as it happened, rather than from the distanced privilege of hindsight.” In the bleakest moment of Europe’s history, December 1941 (also the time of Lubitsch’s shooting the film), the director gave the world the best comedy. Because he knew that “comedy is the best answer to the hour of greatest despair, the bleakest moment, the biggest catastrophe humanity has ever faced.” What other film (yes, film, because Mladen Dolar regards To Be or Not to Be as the best film ever made) has the same “stance and courage”, that “immediate engagement”, devoid of any outside pressure, political correctness and support of an entire movement of anti-Nazi propaganda movies that started to be made only after the war and not during its darkest hour? “A masterpiece of plotting where everything fits, where all elements are repeated and reused later to produce even new effects, all elements mirrored, echoed, turned upside down, twisted and double-twisted eventually creating a snowball effect.”

If all the arguments in the paragraph above don’t make you want to watch or rewatch To Be or Not to Be, a comedy that has not been and will never be equaled, and Lubitsch’s films, then I don’t know what will. Lubitsch Can’t Wait, the aforementioned book, gathers nine more essays on the films of Ernst Lubitsch by renowned authors and scholars, from Slavoj Žižek, Mladen Dolar and Robert Pfaller, and not only does it firmly establish Lubitsch as one of the most important auteurs in the history of cinema and identify the style of a Lubitsch film with the film itself, but these witty, subversive and thought-provoking writings highlight Lubitsch’s comic invention and singular understanding of love, sex, comedy, politics, and life. Because just like for Lubitsch “it’s not that love is just a game, but rather that love can and ought to be playfully erotic, and becomes a mere shadow if it loses touch with seduction and uncertainty,” tragedy and comedy are both equally part of life, but we couldn’t go through life without the laughs.

Ernst Lubitsch’s comedies should require viewing today, in this sad state of spirit of our times.

“I was tired of the two established, recognized recipes,
drama with comedy relief, and comedy with dramatic relief.
I made up my mind to make a picture with no attempt
to relieve anybody from anything, at any time…”
Ernst Lubitsch about To Be or Not to Be

Lubitsch Can’t Wait, edited by Ivana Novak, Jela Krečič and Mladen Dolar,
is published by Columbia University Press

MORE STORIES

“Observation is everything to me”: In conversation with artist Lauren Tamaki

Read instead…in print #36: North by Northwest: The Man Who Had Too Much

Diane Keaton: The Real Look Behind Annie Hall

Posted by classiq in Books, Film, Read instead...in print | | Comments Off

12 October 2025

October Newsletter: River of Hills, Bread of Angels, and Desperate Literature

Photos: Classiq Journal

”I watched a teenager at the bookstore counter ask if they still sold a novel that had been banned at her school.

The clerk nodded. “We keep a few in the back.”

She disappeared for a moment, then returned with a copy wrapped in brown paper. “No barcode. Just take it.”

Some people fear what stories can do.

Bookstores remember why we need them.”

Matt Lillywhite

Viewing

Jane, 2017
Brett Morgen

“People need to realise that every single day, they make some difference in the world.”

But to do it with kindness and curiosity, as Jane Goodall did, that is extraordinary.

Jane Goodall’s discoveries were revolutionary, her passion for her work was monumental, and her study of the chimps is the longest continuous study of a wild animal in history. But, for me, the beauty of the documentary Jane, directed by Brett Morgen, is more than scientific facts, it’s about Jane’s love of the wild life, of nature, of discovery. This is the first thing I wanted to take away from this wondrous and inspirational portrait of Jane Goodall.

One Battle After Another, 2025
Paul Thomas Anderson

I was surprised of how outspokenly political Paul Thomas Anderson’s latest film is. It somehow landed differently than his other films. On the other hand, it somehow made me think of Ernst Lubitsch’s To Be or Not to Be, which, as Mladen Dolar beautifully wrote in the book Lubitsch Can’t Wait, blatantly disregarded all political correctness, and described it as “a comedy about fascism made at the time of its steep and sinister rise, confronting its disastrous historical and political reality at the time, as it happened, rather than from the distanced privilege of hindsight.” One Battle After Another does have something of that “stance and courage” and “immediate engagement”. Having said that, if only for one scene, and I would watch One Battle After Another over and over and over again. It occurs towards the end of the film and it’s the absolute best, most thrilling car chase I have seen in movies. Paul Thomas Anderson breaks the form of every classic car chase and saves the most edgy, energetic and beautiful scene for last. Four cars (and four characters, Leonardo Di Caprio, Sean Penn, Chase Infiniti and John Hoogenaker), at first unbeknownst of one another, seemingly riding randomly on a road chiseled into one after another undulating phantasmagoric hill. When you arrive at that scene, and the music starts, you feel you have arrived somewhere, and the film suddenly feels complete, without any moment of predictability in between, because it’s where the story has naturally taken you. And it all happens on the sound of Jonny Greenwood’s River of Hills. The entire soundtrack, both the music composed by Greenwood for the film and the needle drops, is not only threaded into the story, it tells the story. There is something of Bernard Hermann’s Hitchcock music in it, and that scene suddenly reminded me of Hitchcock and Spielberg’s Duel, but it is where Paul Thomas Andersen shows us what cinema is really about: a film should belong to cinema and cinema alone.

Holiday,1938
George Cukor

When it comes to the films that Cary Grant and Katharine Hepburn made together, Holiday (I’m leaving Sylvia Scarlett out, their first film together, made a little earlier, in 1935) is the least talked about and I always wonder why. Sure, it doesn’t have the sparking fuse and the breakneck pace until the very end as Howard Hawks’ Bringing Up Baby, nor can it be attributed the title of the uncontested classic of all sophisticated slapstick comedies as The Philadelphia Story (in no other film is Katharine more luminous and apt in balancing comic timing and vulnerability), but we have Katharine Hepburn as a high-class nonconformist, the black sheep of the family fall for her sister’s fiancé, another unconventional idealist, Cary Grant’s Johnny Case, whom we see “perform slapstick while retaining a stylish romantic presence, no easy feat, and something no actor had achieved before and no actor has rivaled since,” as Richard Torregrossa wrote in his book Cary Grant: A Celebration of Style. “He lifts Katharine onto his shoulders and they launch blithely into a forward circus roll”, performs a back flip-flop, too, and he does it in a Savile Row three-piece suit. There is an electric chemistry between them. And we meet another wonderful couple, the Potters (played by Jean Dixon and Edward Everett Horton), Johnny’s best friends, so authentic, and awkward, and funny, and sincere, and loyal. I want them to be my friends too.

And we have one of the best speeches, delivered by Cary. Today, it rings truer than it did almost nine decades ago: “I don’t call what I’ve been doing living… I’ve been working since I was ten. I want to find out why I’ve been working. The answer can’t be just to pay bills and to pile up more money and even if you do the government is going to take most of it… I don’t know what the answer is but I intend to find out; the world’s changing out there. There are a lot of new exciting ideas running around. Some of them might be right and some might be cockeyed but they’re affecting all our lives. I want to know how I stand, where I fit into the picture, what it’s all going to mean to me. I can’t find that out sitting behind some desk in an office, so as soon as I get enough money together I’m going to knock off for a while… quit… I want to save some of my life for myself.”

Dead of Winter, 2025
Brian Kirk

I often feel there is so much noise in today’s films, and by that I mean a constant urge to quickly tick certain cultural boxes, without much sense of a storyline, let alone atmosphere. We’ve got plenty of atmosphere, and dry humour, too, in the thriller Dead of Winter, set in snowy Minnesota, and featuring Emma Thompson in a unique role, a widow still grieving her husband, but also a surviver in deep connection to the natural surroundings where she has spent her entire life. Heroism is right there in the everyday life, under layers of normalcy.

The Bachelor and the Bobby-Soxer, 1947
Irving Reis

It’s wonderful to see Cary Grant with another grand of comedy, Myrna Loy. Grant is an artist and lady’s man, Shirley Temple is the teenage girl who has a crush on him and Myrna Loy is Shirley’s sister and a judge who, through a comical occurrence of events, sentences Richard to date the girl until her schoolgirl crush wanes. Only Cary Grant could have pulled it off with that very personal combination of insouciance and charm.

Arsenic and Old Lace, 1944
Frank Capra

Another comedy. Because this one truly is one of the quintessential screwball comedies that only gets funnier as it gets more diabolical. “All I did was cross the bridge and I was in Brooklyn. Amazing.” It is Frank Capra’s only black comedy and his most frenetic, just as Cary Grant’s character with the funniest name, Mortimer Brewster, and it also features a sleuth of character actors, from Peter Lorre to James Gleason to one of my favourites, Edward Everett Horton.

Reading

Bread of Angels is Patti Smith’s new memoir, announced to be released in less than a month, on November 4th. Her storied life has already been captured in text in two previous wonderful memoir books, Just Kids, from 2010, and M Train, released five years later, and her writing we’ve been lucky enough to celebrate in other powerful books, such as Woolgathering, Year of the Monkey, Devotion, The Coral Sea, but this new memoir will be the most complete. Much inspired by her parents, as Patti Smith reveals, it is a “bright and dark dance of life”.

Just Kids is a heartbreakingly beautiful book. I liked the strong, true, unaffected writing style and I liked the way it was able to capture the innocence of youth and of life before stardom. Writing a memoir can’t be easy. Writing it with that sense of childlike search for beauty and magic must be even more difficult.

There were times when I felt Just Kids had elements of a fairy tale, as if it was written right then when it all happened, and before everything happened. It is a story of two friends, Patti Smith and photographer Robert Mapplethorpe, their dreams and their helping each other to achieve them. They were young, free, completely unknown, free to dream. In the early autumn of 1967, a touristy couple spied them in Washington Square Park and argued about whether they were worth a snapshot. The woman thought they looked like artists. The man disagreed, saying dismissively: “They’re just kids.”

For the better part of the book, Patti Smith was not yet famous, not yet a great punk rock singer and composer (although already writing poems and drawing), but frequented various artistic circles and lived at Chelsea hotel for a while, which gave her the chance to connect with some of the most important artists and musicians of the time. I guess it is always interesting to learn about other artists from an insider’s point of view, but what I was completely taken by was rather Patti’s innate, infectious passion for books, films, music and art, and the faith in her own artistic mission. This all seemed to have always been part of herself and her life – a world she had already made her own before meeting everyone and without anyone’s help. It is her whole life, fame or no fame, that is inspiring.

Today, Patti Smith remains one of the very few artists who honors the legacy of others every single day, and she does it on a platform, Instagram, that is preposterously dedicated to self-promotion and nothing else much. The ones who have inspired her in life and along her artistic path, from writers, to musicians to artists and beyond, “beloved heroes, mavericks and saints”, are given credit. By rendering others visible and valued, we respect them and dignify ourselves. Patti Smith even made a book, A Book of Days, with the snapshots from her daily life, as posted on Instagram: a photo of Sam Shepard reading Beckett, a photo of Three Novellas book by Samuel Beckett, a photo of poet Arseny Tarkovsky and his son, her CD player and a few favourite CDs, Ornette Coleman, Philip Grass, Marvin Gaye and REM, and so on, throughout a whole calendar year. “An inspirational map of a life devoted to art.”

I loved Just Kids, but I loved M Train even more. Patti Smith is such a wonderful writer. With that beautiful, natural flow of the narration, floating between present and past, she takes us places, many times to Greenwich Village, for many cups of coffee at Café ‘Ino, but also to Berlin, Reykjavík, Tangier, Mexico City or Tokyo – the leitmotif of the café is recurring everywhere. She talks about a favourite book (like Haruki Murakami’s The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle), and then another (like Peter Bowles’ The Sheltering Sky), and another, and another, and about writers and artists, so we are treated to a beautiful literary incursion. We even discover how she met Katharine Hepburn when working as a clerk at Scribner’s Bookstore, where she used to gather books for Katharine. “She wore the late Spencer Tracy’s leather cap, held in place by a green silk headscarf. I stood back and watched as she turned the pages, pondering aloud whether Spencer would have liked it.” We watch one too many detective series. She praises Akira Kurosawa and, about Ran (his adaptation after King Lear), she says that it is an epic that might have caused Shakespeare to shudder (I agree). And we feel her grief, still, so many years after losing her husband. She’s nostalgic, but has a “natural optimism” in her as well, as she herself writes.

She somehow reminds me of the characters in Yasujirō Ozu’s films. There is something so nobly quiet about her. It seems that hardly anything is allowed to interfere with her interior life and art … and coffee, and this lack of artifice, her pared-down way of being is what draws you into her story, into understanding the soothing nature of life, despite whatever may come its way.

I can not wait to see where Bread of Angels will take us.

In Writing Wednesdays, Matt Lillywhite writes about reading, writing and why stories still matter. The fastest way to lift your spirits is reading Matt’s little stories. I promise you, they can change attitudes and people, just as books and bookstores and libraries do.

At an historical moment when the clichés of art history have turned into spectacular immersive experiences featuring digital versions of artists’ greatest hits, and when, at the same time, age-old establishment assumptions are being seriously questioned by scholars, it seems timely to revisit The Hollywood History of Art. A new book by Christopher Frayling, who has authored, among others, Sergio Leone by Himself, French New Wave: A Revolution in Design and Once Upon a Time in the West: Shooting a Masterpiece, the definitive work of shooting the masterpiece that Once Upon a Time is – this is how all books about the making of a film should look like.

Robert Redford rides the Outlaw Trail. In 1976, National Geographic asked Robert Redford to follow in the footsteps of the Wild West’s greatest outlaws. And he wrote an incredible article in the magazine about what he saw.

An excellent interview by Wendy Laird with Roscoe Tanner, at one time everyone’s favourite bad boy, for Racquet. 80s tennis, what the game has lost now that so few players serve and volley, those short shorts, and camaraderie on tour as it once was. All the good stuff. If you love tennis, you know.

Listening

The album: Soul Asylum Unplugged

The soundtrack: One Battle After Another

Making

All made in a small factory on the edge of the English Lake District, Oubas was founded by Kate Stalker, who spent her entire childhood growing up in the area and developed a deep appreciation and respect for the area and its heritage. Their purpose is simple: They want to empower people in their everyday lives, to enable the wearer to connect to their truest self, through pieces that have been considered in every aspect, that are of benefit to the wearer, the maker, and the environment. It’s more than timeless knitwear made with sound and care. It’s an entire community they are beautifully and slowly building around the brand and around the local voices.

Exploring

HOME, at Robin Rice Gallery, Hudson, NY. A deeply personal, immersive exhibition that explores the meaning of home through the diverse but interconnected practices of John Dolan, fine art photography, Michele O’Hana, interior designer, textiles, ceramics, and weaving, and Jack Dolan, blacksmith, hand-forged knives. The show brings together three artists—two parents and a son—in a celebration of craft, memory, and place. The exhibitions runs through November 7.

The David Bowie Center, a new permanent home for David Bowie’s archive, open daily at the V&A.

On an end note

Starting December 10, Australia is introducing a ban on social media platforms for under-16s. Norway will enforce a strict minimum age limit of 15 on social media and Denmark plans a social media ban for under-15s. “We have unleashed a monster,” Danish prime minister Mette Frederiksen said. “Mobile phones and social media are stealing our children’s childhood,” she added.

What better timing to get back to books and bookstores? It’s the connection Matt Lillywhite is talking about. It’s also the connection Jorge Domingo, who works as a bookseller, while studying film and theater, at Desperate Literature (so timely and appropriately called, given the context above) international bookstore, in Madrid, is talking about here, too. The children’s books section is the where he always stops when he first enters a bookshop. Mine too.

The regulars: The interviews, newsletters and podcasts I turn to every week and/or every month because they are that good. Soundtracking, with Edith Bowman. Ruthie’s Table 4 with Ruth Rogers. Fashion Neurosis, with Bella Freud. My New Roots monthly newsletter. Craig Mod’s newsletters: Roden and Ridgeline. Racquet’s Rennae Stubbs tennis podcast. Gone to Timbuktu with Sophy Roberts. Sirene Journal, Racquet, and Waves & Woods in print.

“I believe in movement. I believe in that lighthearted balloon, the world. I believe in midnight and the hour of noon. But what else do I believe in? Sometimes everything. Sometimes nothing. It fluctuates like light flitting over a pond. I believe in life, which one day each of us shall lose. When we are young we think we won’t, that we are different.”

Patti Smith, M Train

Bread of Angels / Holiday, directed by George Cukor / The Hollywood History of Art

Posted by classiq in Books, Culture, Film, Newsletter | | Comments Off

30 September 2025

“Observation is everything to me”: In conversation with artist Lauren Tamaki

Illustrations by Lauren Tamaki

Seen and Unseen, by Elizabeth Partridge, explores a grave moment in world history, the Japanese American incarceration as captured by three photographers, Dorothea Lange, Toyo Miyatake, and Ansel Adams, beautifully balancing their photography with Lauren Tamaki’s illustration, reinforcing the visual power of the accounts and giving it incredible depth. It is the visual that weighs more and tells more, especially in illustration, and goes beyond what meets the eye. It introduces the humans and souls behind the headlines and the big picture.

Every Peach is a Story, a compelling journey of discovery through all of life’s seasons, and A Pond, a Poet and Three Pests, a funny new fable about artistic creation and chasing fame, imagined by author Caroline Adderson, and inspired by one of Japan’s most famous haikus, The Old Pond, are yet another wonderful attestation to Lauren Tamaki’s art of storytelling and illustration, of her sense of setting, character and emotion. The illustrator is an explorer, leading the readers gracefully into the story. The illustrator is also a weaver of that world that exists between the idea that the words convey and the image that the drawings express. The worlds are pensive yet vibrant, but the most beautiful part is that they feel within reach, a bridge to the imagination but also to a better understanding of ourselves, others and the world around us.

Lauren Tamaki draws from life. She is an illustrator, and an observer at her core. This direct experience, a connection with all the senses, is the path to the essence of the story she is telling. And from there… a world of possibilities. Lauren’s unique lines and compositions can easily take you anywhere, and the way she merges different techniques adds that element of abstraction that encourages the reader to be creative as well. Her diverse range of work includes artist portraits, animation, fashion illustration, film and vinyl cover art, and advertisements, as well as features for magazines and newspapers – a medium that enables her to capture a situation with gently characterful drawings that contain just enough detail and elements of surprise, humour, social commentary or glamour: it’s an astute documentation of the dynamics of our modern day world.

In our interview, Lauren Tamaki and I talk about her wondrous and fascinating path to drawing, her college instructor’s advice that she took to heart and still rings true, the books and magazines she read when she was way to young for them, why plastering her walls with movie posters will never feel dated to her and the wonderful, bookish tradition that makes Toronto great to live in.

Lauren, what is your earliest drawing memory?

I don’t remember a time without drawing. I was obsessed with everything from Archie comics
to the Mona Lisa and would try to imitate Dan DeCarlo and Da Vinci with my 2B pencil.

I’ve always drawn for other people; I loved drawing faces, which turned into a portraits- on-demand business in elementary school. Somehow I always knew I would be a commercial artist instead of fine art-teest.

What makes and keeps you curious as an illustrator and designer?

Ceramics light me up these days – I’m always sniffing out sculpture sections in museums
and galleries. I look outside of my discipline to stay curious and inspired.

Observing on a long city walk will yield a lot of good stuff for the old brain: people, the things they do, artful trash, etc! Also flowers, flowers, flowers. And movies, of course.

“I look outside of my discipline
to stay curious and inspired.”

Can you tell me a little about the path that led you to making art, and whether, along this journey, there was someone or something that opened up a new world for you as an artist?

My first love is drawing, and there was never enough of it in my previous jobs; I’ve worked as a fashion designer, a stitcher at a ballet company, a graphic designer and a photography art director before becoming a full-time illustrator 10 years ago. My career path has been circuitous but fabulous: I had a sparkling satellite of mentors who guided me.

Your work is very versatile. Does the style of illustration communicate as much as the idea does?

I love this question. A college instructor of mine once said, “If you have a style, you’re dead in the water”; she was commenting on students locking into a style too early (and not exploring). I took it to heart and it rings true almost 15 years later!

Medium and how it’s applied is a huge part of visual problem solving. Does pencil work better here? Thick ink lines? Does a graphic application of colour harken to a certain time period? How can the quality of the line communicate how someone feels? What is a tender line versus an energetic one? It’s part of the fun, I think!

I’ve recently redone my website, taking an inventory of what I’ve done over the past decade. There is definitely a through-line to the work I’ve made, even if it seems wildly different. I know I’ll never stray far from my beloved line.

“A college instructor of mine once said,
“If you have a style, you’re dead in the water!”
I took it to heart and it rings true almost 15 years later.”

On the same subject of illustration versatility, I would like to mention the Cole Haan campaign where you interpreted imaginary autobiographies of various personalities. Can you tell me a few words about how you approached the project?

A great advertising project helmed by fabulous designers Marian Shelley and Kate Evans and the incredible creative director Andy Gray!

First (as per usual), there was research. The subjects were varied — writers, ballerinas, rock climbers — and I wanted to understand how their professions influenced their perspective on life. I had more freedom than traditional book covers, which often have to be approved by many, many people. This was also a chance to be expressive with the type – to let that be a big part of the storytelling.

Cole Haan also provided a questionnaire completed by each subject. Margo Jeffersons’s answers were so evocative: she speaks of ‘loving the sound of words, sung or spoken’ and writing being about ‘sounds and rhythms’. Her answers and the faux-autobiography title, Thought Music, sparked an exploration of sheet music and ecstatic music note forms that were trembling and imperfect. Of note: Jefferson released an autobiography, Negroland: A Memoir, less than year after this campaign.

You have illustrated the book Every Peach is a Story, written by David Mas Masumoto and Nikiko Masumoto, and collaborated with Caroline Adderson on the picture book A Pond, A Poet, and Three Pests. What is the biggest challenge in illustrating a book written by someone else?

Seen and Unseen: What Dorothea Lange, Toyo Miyatake, and Ansel Adams’s Photographs Reveal about the Japanese American Incarceration, by Elizabeth Partridge, was my first picture book, which broke me open in many ways. It was difficult. Researching the incarceration of Japanese Americans during WWII broke my heart and I felt a huge responsibility to the author and the subjects of the book. Perhaps non-fiction will always feel like a bigger hurdle because of that.

Even with less weighty topics, I feel a massive responsibility to the author, to the editor, to the publisher, to the people who will eventually read the book…and to myself! Making a book takes so much time. If I’m spending a chunk of my life on something, I want it to be great.

Working with these authors and publishers… they’re trusting me with their words, their time and their legacy!

“If I’m spending a chunk of my life on something,
I want it to be great.”

”Seen and Unseen: What Dorothea Lange, Toyo Miyatake, and Ansel Adams’s Photographs Reveal about the Japanese American Incarceration”,
by Elizabeth Partridge, illustrated by Lauren Tamaki

“(As a child) I remember being hungry for words.
I would check out meaty volumes from the library
knowing full well I wouldn’t comprehend them.”

”Every Peach Is a Story”, by David Max Masumoto and Nikiko Masumoto, illustrated by Lauren Tamaki

As a child, were you drawn more to visuals or words?

I remember being hungry for words. I read “Mad” and “Cracked” magazines when I was way too small to understand them. I would check out meaty volumes from the library knowing full well I wouldn’t comprehend them. Even today I will plod around town laden with 10 library books I just checked out.

One of my favourite parts of living in Toronto is the annual University book sales: gigantic, beautiful books for cheap. These days I’m picking up a lot of art history, material culture and picture books.

How important remain books, do you think, in shaping up young children’s minds and imagination today?

I started making picture books a few years ago and I’ve been amazed by how a simple pleasures can hold a kid’s attention. Books are read over and over and OVER again. I think it’s just science – the stuff we learn when our little brains are forming really stays with us.

But I think books will always be important. I’m actually currently working on a non-fiction title with Chronicle and author Kristen W. Larson about how books came to be. Out 2028!

I have recently rewatched David Lean’s Summertime and one thing I had completely forgotten since the first time I saw the film was the engaging, completely painted, title sequence design. I don’t believe though that there’s a mention of the designer in the credits. But this leads me to your own take on the film. Can you tell me how you approached making the cover art for the Criterion edition? Where did you start and what was the design process like?

Oh, how I loved this one! For Criterion projects, I start with just basking in the movie. Summertime sweeps you away with the beauty of the locales, the tenuous romance and, of course, Katharine Hepburn. Her performance is all nerves, trembling and vulnerable.

The next phase is rewatching the movie and drawing, drawing, drawing with pencil. Criterion art director extraordinaire Eric Skillman allows me space to explore. I travelled up and down the canals in Venice, sat behind Hepburn in the piazza, trying to sketch like I was on location. I love highlighting fleeting moments: the heroine’s propensity to take off just one glove, shoes dancing as a prelude to a night of passione!

For the cover, we wanted to capture the romantic leads meeting for the first time. It felt right to have a 1950’s bent to the style, which can go wrong fast but we pulled it off. The almost fluorescent coral was Eric’s idea, a stroke of genius.

“I travelled up and down the canals in Venice,
sat behind Hepburn in the piazza,
trying to sketch like I was on location.”

I find it fascinating, the use of observational drawing for a movie poster or cover art. How important is actual observation for your work in general? And do you always carry a sketchbook with you?

Observation is everything for me. I’m not an imaginative doodler or a creator of fantastical landscapes; I base my drawings in observation, which can then lead to more abstract or interpretive work. I think observation helps these abstractions ring true.

Some of my favourite artists like Ben Shahn, Alice Neel and Elizabeth Catlett were highly observational and curious about their world.

I love an idiosyncrasy of a person, a tree, a pigeon (especially a pigeon). Instead of carrying around a sketchbook, these days I tend to just snap a million pictures so I have a cache to plunder later.

Illustration for the interior case of The Criterion Collection edition of “Summertime”

“Observation is everything for me.
I base my drawings in observation,
which can then lead to more abstract or interpretive work.”

What makes a good film poster?

I’ve always been drawn to the poster medium! Traditionally, a good poster must be readable from a distance, be graphic and inform. I agree with that criteria, but sometimes the best ones throw that out the window.

Polish movie posters, especially from 1960-1990, are my absolute favourites. They are soaring in the solar system while we toil in reality. Sometimes you wonder if the artist even saw the movie, then you realize they tapped a deeper vein into a wild hidden subtext.

One of my happy places is Posteritati, a shop in New York bursting with vintage movie posters. If they don’t have it, they’ll track it down for you. They’ve sourced a 1960’s Czech poster of Cleopatra (1963) and an original poster for The Rose (1979) for me. I’ve added Death Becomes Her (1992), The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (1985) to my collection from their archives. Other prized poster possessions include A3 Czech versions of Amadeus (1984) and Excalibur (1981) from a vendor at the Old Book and Paper Show in Toronto.

Is plastering your walls with movie posters little boy shit? Who cares?

You like to have posters on your walls (so do I), you have illustrated books and Blu-ray cover art. Your art exists in the real world. How important is it for you for your art to be tangible?

I’m 42, so my childhood that was only touched on the edges by computers. Now I’m chronically online, which is… bad. But there’s obviously tremendous value to the digital world: the ability to magically pull up research on every subject, for starters.

But I am, at heart, a cranky old luddite, a label I wear with pride. I never read on Kindles, even though the small type in books is getting harder to read. I disavow AI as a replacement for writing or drawing. When I saw Seen and Unseen in that plastic library jacket with a call number on it, I was moved! I just love the library so damn much. There is even a thrill seeing an illustration printed on newsprint, knowing it will fade, knowing how fleeting that moment is.

I’m a tactile person and will fondle a flower, and want to touch your shirt to see what the fabric feels like (with consent, of course).

“I am, at heart, a cranky old luddite,
a label I wear with pride. I never read on Kindles,
even though the small type in books is getting harder to read.
I disavow AI as a replacement for writing or drawing.”

What does the cinema mean to you and which would be one of your most memorable experiences from going to the movies?

Where do I even start? A day without a movie is a day wasted!

I always have movies on while I work, taking full advantage of the proliferation of streaming. One of the best things to happen to me in a while is Criterion 24/7— it’s a continuous stream of movies that you can just drop into (like olden times). I found one of my new favourite movies, The Swimmer (1969) there.

But obviously going to the cinema is a singular experience; it always feels special and luxurious, no matter the location.

I recently I saw Amadeus (1984) with a symphony orchestra in Montreal – a sublime experience! I used to listen to the soundtrack every night in my little Discman. That movie means a lot to me.

”A day without a movie is a day wasted!” I feel exactly the same. And I have to ask: What’s the best new film you’ve seen at the cinema lately?

The last movie I saw in theatres was Weapons (2025). Oh, the joy of shrieking in the dark with strangers! I love when comedy is wrapped in horror with some real emotions tossed in. I went home and made a music mix inspired by the movie — no tapes or CDs this time, just intangible music files. Not as satisfying, but it works.

“A day without a movie is a day wasted!”

Do you remember the first film poster that made you want to go to the cinema and watch a film?

Honestly, I don’t! I wanted to see anything and everything as a kid.

The movie posters in my suburban cinemas always enticed me; the promise of an experience outside my existence was intoxicating.

Lauren, in this time and age, what do you wish people appreciated more?

There is a appreciator for everything!

My impulse to answer this question is “I wish people watched traditional animation more! I wish people responded to simple line work more!” But then I think of the scores of people who really appreciate that stuff.

Website: laurentamaki.com | Instagram: @laurentamaki

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24 September 2025

Read instead…in print #38: Conversations at the AFI with the Great Moviemakers

Reading the series of talks compiled in Conversations at the American Film Institute with the Great Moviemakers, with directors, writers, actors, cameramen, composers, editors, feels like attending the seminars yourself. More than that, these conversations, preserved and presented here by George Stevens Jr, and revolving around how movies are made, are very visual, they take you to the very core of a scene, of a location, of a performance, of a character. They are felt, just as a film is not just watched, but felt and lived. “The next generation” in the subtitle refers to the time period beginning with the 1950s, when the studio system was collapsing and people could no longer depend on, or were bound by, the structure of studio life to make movies. Sydney Pollack talks about why he generally worked with Robert Redford much more directly than he did with other actors, and why directing is sometimes about not directing, Alan J. Pakula talks about why he aimed for and how they attained the claustrophobic world, that feeling of being trapped in space, of being caught, in Klute, Nora Ephron talks about how Sven Nykvist, “the world’s greatest cinematographer”, doesn’t care about putting a star actor in the dark, editor Anne Coates talks about the details in Lawrence of Arabia that you only see if you watch the film on the big screen (you can’t see them on a little screen). The magic of cinema is on the big screen. The magic of cinema is that it talks to you, and sings to you, and tells you a story visually.

Conversations with the Great Moviemakers is a fascinating revelation of the art of making pictures.

”One of the questions I’ve always asked myself
when reading a script or working with ideas for a film is,
why is this a movie? […]
The thing should not work for blind people.
Essentially it’s a false medium if it’s a medium that
works just fine when you’re not paying attention
with your eyes.
What really interests me is something that could only be
a film. This idea couldn’t be turned into a play or novel or
anything else. You want to concentrate on creating something
that is uniquely cinematic.”

James Mangold

Read instead… in print is about a good book about cinema or filmmakers. No discursive, pretentious analyses, no verbose scrutiny. Because the idea is to invite you to read the book, not read about it here. But instead of using social media, I use my journal. Back to basics. Take it as a wish to break free of over-reliance on social media (even if it’s just for posting a photo of a good book) for presenting my work, cultural finds and interests. These are things to be enjoyed as stand-alone pieces in a more substantial and meaningful way than showing them in the black hole of Instagram thronged with an audience with a short attention span. This is also a look through my voluminous collection of books about film that I use as research in my adamant decision to rely less and less on the online and more on more on print materials.

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