November newsletter: Aftermath, Circus Mirandus and Fashion Neurosis with Bella Freud

 
 

Photos: Classiq Journal

 
 

“I remember that winter because it had brought
the heaviest snow I had ever seen. Snow had fallen
steadily all night long and in the morning I woke in
a room filled with light and silence, the whole world seemed
to be held in a dream-like stillness. It was a magical day…
and it was on that day I made The Snowman.”

Raymond Briggs

 
 

Left: Window art by Ars Ana

 

Viewing

The Double Life of Véronique, 1991
Krzysztof Kieślowski

Here is a film that doesn’t want to give answers but take us on a journey, leaving us make our own sense of its meaning. Irène Jacob’s double role as two women, complete strangers, whose lives are mysteriously linked and connected through music, is a very tactile performance and fascinating to watch. Kieślowski leaves space for echoing our own personal interpretation, doubts and wonders and irrational feelings, he leaves space for something that is beyond the visual, he leaves space for the music. He finds he right balance between the obvious and the mysterious.

 

In Her Majesty’s Secret Service, 1969
Peter R. Hunt

Yes, Sean Connery was the first, and many argue, the ultimate James Bond, but it was also argued that from Dr. No through to You Only Live Twice, Bond had evolved into caricature while the films “were dominated by hardware, empty spectacle, and comedic gadgets.” And now, after 25 Bond films, we know we’ve come to love a Bond film that is so much more than pure entertainment. For that, I personally believe we have to thank Daniel Craig, Timothy Dalton, and even George Lazenby, because In Her Majesty’s Secret Service is one of the best Bond films. In my interview with Matt Needle, who a few years back carried out the daunting yet impeccably pulled off personal task of creating the posters for all 25 Bond films, when I asked him about his favourite Bond films, the illustrator said: “It’s either Goldfinger, On Her Majesty’s Secret Service or Goldeneye though. I love all three for different reasons. As mentioned, Goldfinger was the first Bond I saw, and Goldeneye was the first I saw at a cinema. And On Her Majesty’s Secret Service just feels so different but integral to the series to creatively move the franchise forward.”

 

From Russia with Love, Goldfinger, Thunderball

But we do love each Bond film for different reasons (as Matt Needle mentioned above), don’t we? And who says we need a reason for another Sean Connery Bond marathon? After all, as Terrence Young (From Russia with Love, Thunderball) said, “The trouble with Bond films now is that people are trying to analyze them and explain them and their success. There is nothing to explain. They are just entertainment and their timing is right.”

 

The Snowman, 1982

Based on the timeless book without words by Raymond Briggs from 1978, the short film, also without words, is tender and telling in the most beautiful way. It’s about the wonder and innocence of childhood, and about true friendship. The power of childhood is about believing and imagination, not about seeing.

 

Ace in the Hole, 1951
Billy Wilder

Of all the great roles of Kirk Douglas, the antihero he played in Ace in the Hole – a down on his luck journalist, with a past, and a reputation that doesn’t help him much in securing a new job, and whose lust to develop a sensational story stops at nothing – must be my favourite. The film itself is a different kind of noir, a landmark for the genre, as Billy Wilder addresses the usual subjects of noir in an unusual manner. An in depth study of human deception, avarice and social position, and Wilder chooses to focus on the frail state of humans to depict a portrait of a society that is selling everything it can, no matter what the real cost is in terms of life preservation. The role of mass media is being analyzed bare naked – in this regard, the Spanish translation of the title, El gran carnaval, says it all.

 

Left: Quote by Haruki Murakami, from The T-shirts I Love

 

Reading

Circus Mirandus is like a day dream, because it keeps the wonder alive, the way a night dream hardly can because when you wake up you know it was just a dream. As soon as my son and I read it, it became a new classic.

 

Originally published in Japan in 1965, Take Ivy, with photographs by Teruyoshi Hayashida, set off an explosion of American-influenced “Ivy Style” fashion among students in the trendy Ginza shopping district of Tokyo. Capturing the unique academic fashion of the campuses of America’s elite, Ivy League universities, Take Ivy is considered a definitive document of this particular style. For a long time, it was only available in Japanese and hard to find. A small-run reprint came out in Japan in 2006 and sold out almost immediately. In 2010, it was finally published in English and it’s taken me more than a decade to purchase it. But that’s ok, because the style, with its timeless and transcendent appeal, has survived the decades and it always will. It truly is the American style that I love the most and one only has to watch Robert Redford in Three Days of the Condor or All the President’s Men to understand why. Nobody has done the preppy look on screen quite like Robert Redford.

 

I do love an understudied topic within cinema, and poster design certainly is one – film costume also used to be one (but, thankfully, not that much anymore), which is why I have long been a fervent proponent of costume design as one of cinema’s most far-reaching influences. My many interviews with film poster designers and illustrators are proof of my affinity for the topic, so it’s only fair that the new book Film by Design: The Art of the Movie Poster came under my radar.

 

Listening

The soundtrack: The Double Life of Véronique

 

The podcast: Fashion Neurosis with Bella Freud. The latest episode with Kristin Scott Thomas is brilliant! An actor and a fashion designer talk clothes identity. Bella Freud’s Sunday Stories are also wonderful to explore.

 

The album: Aftermath, The Rolling Stones

 

Making

“Imagine the world in a far away future, what will history tell about us? And what is the legacy we are leaving behind?” I feel that one of the things that draws Ana Gurduza, of Ars Ana, to create is our own human kind, in all its complexity, uniqueness and ephemerality, all beautifully interwoven by the imaginary. Ana is a maker. In ink lines, watercolour, illustration, ceramic objects and metal engraving. But she is more than a maker, because there is poetry in each and every one’s of Ana’s creations.

 

Exploring

The school of film that is Institut Lumière. “The institute is a public house that welcomes great, timeless films, wonderful forgotten films, lost amazing films, and historical films from all over the world. It is a house where our memory is kept alive, shared, and cared for. It is also a house of restoration and transmission. It is a cinema adventure and, thus, a human adventure.” – Irène Jacob (The Double Life of Véronique), president of Institut Lumière

 

On an end note…

People who don’t read are unable to have an opinion of their own on anything.

 

The regulars: The interviews, newsletters and podcasts I turn to every week and/or every month because they are that good. Craig Mod’s newsletters: Roden and Ridgeline. Soundtracking, with Edith Bowman. Alicia Kennedy’s newsletter. Racquet’s Rennae Stubbs tennis podcast. Gone to Timbuktu with Sophy Roberts. Wachstumsversuche, with Sarah Schill. Sirene Journal, Racquet, and Waves & Woods in print.

 

“For me, a certain sign of quality or class in art is that when I read,
see or listen to something, I suddenly get an acute, clear feeling
that somebody’s formulated something which I’ve experienced or
thought; exactly the same thing but with the help of a better
sentence or better visual arrangement or better composition
of sounds than I could have imagined.”

Krzysztof Kieślowski

 

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