Photos: Classiq Journal
“I also learned by watching and experiencing everything through the life of the street and the storytellers on the street. They were wonderful – the ones on the street corner, the tough guys telling stories, always with a great sense of humour about themselves. My mother was a wonderful storyteller and so was my father, and so were my aunts and uncles. I learned and absorbed all of that and the only way I thought I could express this was through moving images, motion pictures. That’s how I grew up: seeing moving images on a screen and looking at the art in the church: statues paintings, crucifixes, stained glass renderings, stations of the cross – which were like a sequence in a movie. So, this question of exploring Jesus had to find its way to cinema for me.”
Martin Scorsese, Scorsese on Filmmaking and Faith
Right: Photo of the book “Pamela Hanson: The 90s”. Christy Turlington photographed by Pamela Hanson for Jane magazine, 1998
Viewing
Et Dieu…créa la femme, 1956
Roger Vadim
If she hadn’t ended up on the cover of Elle magazine, she might have continued to study music and ballet at the Conservatoire in Paris. But she became an actress and, with the film Et Dieu… créa la femme (And God Created Woman, 1956), the BB phenomenon took off. “It was post-war France: quiet, sleepy and conformist. She shook it all up”, said writer Henry-Jean Servat about his friend, Brigitte Bardot. She had already stirred up something in the French society when she appeared on the Elle cover: she was barely 16 and “she represented something that had never had its place before in society or in fashion: that of the jeune fille“, remembers French fashion historian Nicole Parrot.
Brigitte Bardot looked like a goddess and had such a physical presence, the magnificent posture of a dancer. She was no studio-manufactured star, she lived the way she pleased, throwing conventions away, and she invented a fashion all of her own: it was this freedom that made her so provocative. Much like Brigitte in real life, Juliette, her character in And God Created Woman, directed by her husband at the time, Roger Vadim, is an uninhibited young woman, exuding spontaneity and insouciant sensuality, who loves freedom and independence and who scandalizes the small fishing village of Saint Tropez with her unconscious exhibitionism – “the child-woman, or more precisely, the infant-woman”, François Truffaut would name Bardot’s character. I wrote about how, in many ways, Bardot was playing herself, in this article.
Stranger Things
For some reason, I hadn’t been caught up in this series until this past December when I started to watch it and I was immediately drawn in by that wonderful blend of science fiction, supernatural, a parallel universe (the upside down), childhood innocence, 1980s nostalgia (Stand by Me, The Goonies, Alien, ET, all the good stuff) and an amazing soundtrack that references the decade and also brings something new and fresh.
Falling Down,1993
Joel Schumacher
I have rewatched Falling Down recently, and a few other Michael Douglas films from the 1990s, and it is shocking how little freedom there is in filmmaking anymore. I love a flawed character and Michael Douglas’ is a hell of a flawed character, but he is human, after all, and you stick with him. Sadness and madness derived from sadness are not traits that make a character eligible to be disliked. A nameless, Everyday USA, in his short-sleeved white shirt and tie, black trousers and crew cut, who is losing it in a traffic jam, crosses the city by foot and wreaks havoc along the way.
Then there is the camaraderie between police officers Sandra (Rachel Ticotin) and Prendergast, played by Robert Duvall (an actor with capital A, who is in character and in the moment and who carries his talent so lightly yet commanding our eye and presence whenever he is on screen, and we see references of him in Michael Douglas’ character – there is no hero and antihero here) that is just beautiful. Yes, just as Sandra advices him, Prendergast should stay in his job and not give in to his nagging wife’s pressures. Now that’s a character to dislike. And you can say it out loud. I always remember Camille Paglia’s writing on Hitchcock’s The Birds and her disheartened comments on Veronica Cartwright’s role: “Cathy Brenner, on the other hand, has the annoying stridency of those ever-chipper Girl Scouts and cheerleaders of 50s America; she’s exactly what a nice little girl should be. I want to slap her! Cathy completely lacks the devilish moxie of Dinah, for example, Tracy Lord’s haydenish kid sister (Virginia Weidler) in The Philadelphia Story.” Dinah is indeed terrific in The Philadelphia Story, you just have to mention her along with Katharine Hepburn and Cary Grant and James Stewart.
Another thing I notice every time I watch films that are from the 1990s and earlier on is how much more authentic the costumes were, seamlessly shaping the characters, whereas today, even the most casual contemporary film costume somehow feels too intentional and too much thought-about. Rachel Ticotin’s character, for example, Sandra, who is a police detective and therefore wears civilian clothes, is the personification of the 1990s, in her white blouse, washed up jeans and crossbody bag, the unembellished, timeless simplicity of street style fashion on the streets of Los Angeles, a real moment in time. And I love that she is more Louanne Johnson (Michelle Pfeiffer) in Dangerous Minds than Clarice Starling (Jodie Foster) in Silence of the Lambs or MJ Monahan (Holly Hunter) in Copycat.
The Mastermind, 2025
Kelly Reichardt
Of all the American filmmakers working today, Kelly Reichardt has the ability to show us an America different than what we see in any other films. Her films truly take you on a trip and are what breaths life into the cinema of today. The Mastermind, a crime caper movie set in the 1970s and loosely modeled on a 1972 art robbery in Massachusetts that, thanks to the director’s natural impulses and subversion of genres, goes against the clichés of every Hollywood heist movie.
Train Dreams, 2025
Clint Bentley
This is a beautiful film. There is no other word that could better describe this journey through life, featuring Joel Edgerton and Felicity Jones. The way it contains both the unbearable beauty and unspeakable tragedy of life, the silence and the light that express more than words ever could, and the family life that we partake in, the decency of that happy, normal, quiet life, so different than everything society today is obsessed about – the rich and powerful – has the power to stay with you, especially on Nick Cave’s ending theme song “Train Dreams”, and reflect on what life truly is about. There is something about that song drifting into the end credits that so beautifully completes the film, like a thread holding together this life-affirming story.
Reading
The Magic Mountain, by Thomas Mann. Al Pacino’s Sonny Boy (the paperback edition).
A few more on my list this year: Marina Hyde’s What a Time to be Alive!: Scenes from a Strange Age, because I do appreciate Marina Hyde’s satirical commentary on everything. Joy Division + New Order. Travelling: On the Path of Joni Mitchell, by Ann Powers (new paperback edition – always the best).
Listening
The podcast: Bella Freud’s Fashion Neurosis is one of my creatively nourishing regulars, but the limited New York City series has just launched and it’s worth another mention. I also love the campaign teaser, which makes me dig up all the 1990s fashion campaigns shot at golden hour in the Big Apple.
The Rest Is Entertainment, with Marina Hyde and Richard Osmond.
The soundtrack: “Train Dreams” and “Stranger Things” (season 1)
The album: This Is the Sea, The Waterboys
Making
Terra Aeterna: mixing nature with creativity, earth with soul, each object carefully shaped and sculpted by hand. Organic, timeless, one of a kind, and a gentle reminder that meaning is found not in perfection, but in presence, attention and the quiet truth of what is real. They also have workshops for whoever wants to create by hand.
Exploring
January is always rolling in with two of the most beautiful events worldwide: The Australian Open and Sundance Film Festival, and Andrea Petkovic is keeping us up to date with everything tennis happening Down Under, while the Sundance Film Festival Beyond Film conversations will brings together actors, filmmakers, industry insiders and the public. The Inaugural Robert Redford Luminary Award will be presented to Ed Harris and Gyula Gazdag.
On an end note
For decades, Jeff Bridges has used his Widelux panoramic camera to capture moments between shots in the world of filmmaking. Tamsen Gallery, in Santa Barbara, is hosting the exhibition Jeff Bridges – Pictures of his highly personal, candid images full of cinematic surprises, opening January 18th and running through April 30th.
As it has been well documented in my interviews with film set photographers (with Merie Weismiller Wallace, Laura Wilson, JoJo Whilden, and with Christopher Willoughby whom I talked to about his father Bob Willoughby’s old Hollywood photography), I have a keen fascination with film still photography. Getting close while remaining unseen, being ever-present yet invisible, incredibly quiet and gentle, yet forceful and determined. Recording not only the situation that is presented to the photographer and document the film as it’s being made, but also capture the moment. That moment of intensity, of an actor immersed into a role, or that moment of earnestness and contemplation between takes that makes the viewer forget that a film is being made and seems depicted from life itself, not a still-frame of what’s seen on screen but something much more real and authentic, before the editing and special effects come into play. It’s not just about the image, but about the feeling. I am hoping for a book inspired by the Jeff Bridges – Pictues exhibition.
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.
Right: Photo of the book “I Love the Seaside”. Melchior can Nigtevecht, originally in colour
“I felt my reach opening up to other realms through the prism of acting. Through this discovery – and it was a discovery – it’s a little bit deeper than I can explain, frankly. I’m trying to get as close to it as I can, because it changed my life. That’s how profound it was. I had this epiphany. It didn’t mean that I was a great actor or anything. I just thought that this is what will keep me alive.”
Al Pacino, Sonny Boy
