Photos: Classiq Journal
“I began taking photographs as a teenager
and have recorded my life ever since.
I moved to Paris in 1980 and started documenting my life,
shooting fashion for the magazines and for myself and my friends.
There was so much freedom and joy in our days.”
Pamela Hanson: The 90s
Ministry of Fear, 1945
Fritz Lang
Ray Milland, a quaint little country fair, multiple intrigues and betrays, a dark goddess, a war-torn world and a story mapped out by doors. Fritz Lang was a stylist as much as he was a filmmaker, and film noir is where he perfectly merged the two. A black-dark room, the silhouette of a man in a sudden rectangle of light when a door opens briefly, darkness again, a gunshot, a small dot of light through the closed door. No, it’s absolutely impossible to put that into words the effect that kind of scene has on the eye, you just have to watch it.
After the Hunt, 2025
Luca Guadagnino
After a short incursion into the daily schedule of college philosophy professor Alma Imhoff (Julia Roberts), we get comfortably acquainted with her at a dinner party at Alma and her husband Frederik Mandelssohn’s (Michael Stuhlbarg) house, an upper-class apartment where every richly-textured, warmly-lit, heritage-filled room opens into another, revealing a very much lived-in home that becomes in fact a treasure trove of who the people who live there are, why they are there, where they come from, what they do, what their secrets are, how their life is together, how they are seen by others. It quickly becomes clear that these kind of gatherings happen frequently at the Irmhoff-Mandelssohn’s. The layers built up in there go impossibly deep and that is the foundation upon which the story in Luca Guadagnino’s After the Hunt unfolds. In this interview, from earlier this week, I talked with production designer Stefano Baisi about the film.
Once Around, 1991
Lasse Hallström
The dynamics of this slightly dysfunctional family (Tony and Marilyn Bella, played by Danny Aiello and Fena Rowlands, and their three grown-up children) is wonderful to watch. There is a universal emotional chord that Lasse Hallström strikes here. And I think it’s the director’s European sensibility that lends the story a downright relatable realistic feel. It has humour in it, but it’s not a full-blown comedy, it has drama, but it’s not over the top, and it doesn’t have a good-for-all solution in the end. But it gives each character something to work on. And it has Gena Rowlands. Just as we watched her transfixed in A Woman Under the Influence shedding layers of normalcy and descending into madness, we watch her fascinated here how she keeps everyone grounded.
Showing Up, 2022
Kelly Reichardt
Quietly upholding making art while ensuring she’s there for her family. The character of Lizzy, so naturally inhabited by Michelle Williams, is one of the most fresh portrayals of artists on screen. I love that it has nothing of the glamorous drama that artists are usually enveloped in on screen, regardless of how successful or unsuccessful they are (and everyone seems to be in this day and time over night), and Kelly Reichardt’s film has none of that, yet it gently grands your attention and stays with you.
Dark Passage, 1947
Delmer Daves
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. Vincent (Humphrey Bogart) is on the run, having just escaped prison after he was framed for the murder of his wife, and Irene (Lauren Bacall) comes to his rescue, her belief in his innocence rooted in her own family history. 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”, Bertrand 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. It is the tender relationship between Bogie and Bacall that carries the film, and we believe it.
Die My Love, 2025
Lynne Ramsay
Wild, unruly and hallucinatory, that’s Lynne Ramsay’s Die My Live. And that’s Jennifer Lawrence in it. And there has hardly been a song that, in the right context, can steer your mind into two completely different directions in a fraction of a second, as In Spite of Ourselves, by John Prine and Iris DeMent, does towards the very end of the film. It’s a story that takes you by surprise to the very end.
Reading
“To give a book at Christmas is to offer a world wrapped in paper.” – Maiko Takama, Selvedge Magazine
Without further ado, here is a selection of worthwhile books to give yourself or others, from classics, to the latest releases in photography, film, fashion and travel.
John Cassavetes: Autoportraits (Cahiers du Cinéma). The most personal visual portrait to Cassavetes’ life and films.
Pamela Hanson: The 90s. This is a treasure trove, a time capsule not just of the fashion world, but of how joyful, fun, free, natural, authentic everything seemed to be – women, fashion, life – in the decade of 1990. It’s part of the visual education of my teenagehood.
Bread of Angels, by Patti Smith. Probably mentioned in Classiq Journal for the 10th time (I am a voracious reader of everything Patti Smith), finally published.
Fashion: A Manifesto, by Anouchka Grose
To Kill a Mocking Bird, by Harper Lee. Of note: the audio book (not something to gauge my interest, but tastes vary) is read by Sissy Spacek.
The Sartorialist: Milano. Regardless of time of year, every time a Scott Schumann photography book comes out, it feels like Christmas.
The Quiet American , Grahame Greene. “The novel that I love the most is The Quiet American.” – Ian McEwan
Rear Window: The Making of a Hitchcock Masterpiece in the Hollywood Golden Age, by Jennifer O’Callaghan
Artists’ Journeys That Shaped Our World, by Travis Elborough
Scorsese on Filmmaking and Faith. A conversation between Martin Scorsese and Antonio Spadaro. PS: I am yet to see Rebecca Milker’s 5-part documentary Mr. Scorsese.
Greyhound, by Joanna Pocock. “Based on two, interwoven cross-continent journeys by Greyhound bus, it fits (loosely) inside the genre of the classic American road trip. A visceral, deeply-felt anatomy of America told by Joanna Pocock.” – Sophy Roberts
Bonus: It’s published by Fitzcarraldo Editions – I love their distinctive book designs by Ray O’Meara.
Listening
The soundtrack: Die My Love, 2025
The podcast: Travel Secrets: Rosamund Pike
The album: Mermaid Avenue, Billy Bragg and Wilco
Making
“It’s not cool, it’s warm.” That’s the catch phrase of knit brand Myssyfarmi, from Pöytyä, Southwest Finland, which functions on a farm to wardrobe principle. They use local raw material from a local herd of Finnsheep, refine the wool in local mills, hand-dye the yarn and employ retired women, known as the Myssy grannies, to knit by hand the most beautiful accessories. “These cheerful ladies are the essence of our brand, knitting their own positive energy and wisdom into every stitch, even hand signing each Myssy piece they finish.” Cottage industry is a traditional Finnish production method where manufacturing activity is operated out of the home, thus guaranteeing the employees the freedom to determine when and how they work. Craftsmanship, community inclusion and beautiful design. “Trust us, we know what we are doing!” is the Myssy Grannies’ slogan. I believe them!
Exploring
Like a kid in a toy store… That was me stepping inside the film poster shop At the Movies, in Marylebone, London. I like tangible stuff. The layout of a paper magazine, the cover of a book, unwrapping a film poster and having it framed to hang on my walls. A viewer’s senses are used in a different way to connect with visual stories that are shared in a physical format. Movie production companies, media broadcasters, even artists, are more and more concerned about how to engage with audiences, especially young audiences, on different digital platforms. I find no greater joy than in rummaging through vintage – and also, hopefully, new – posters, or gazing at it outside a cinema or on my own wall. Being fed a pristine image that fits in the small screen of a phone is so boring. Movie posters are about more than thumbnail images that are supposedly aiming to market a film, and they are more than decoration on a wall. They can carry a charge of associations, sometimes greater than the movie itself. It’s about the memories it evokes, about what a movie means to you, about why you value culture, about what you yourself truly like, about the real stuff.
The shop’s collection of classic posters, rare international variations, lobby cards and timeless production still is absolutely fascinating. The incredible welcoming staff walked us through their collection and process of restoring and maintaining the quality of the original items, the difference between the American and British editions, the uniqueness of the Eastern-Europe (Polish, Czech and Romanian) poster artists and the Japanese take on marketing a film. That simply was a wonderful hour-long journey into movie history and the art of the film poster.
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.
