“The best fashion show is
definitely on the street. It’s always the hope that you’ll see some marvelous
exotic bird of paradise, meaning a very elegant, stunning woman or someone
wearing something terrific!” An eighty-something, slightly stooped, bicycle
riding, smock wearing (the blue smocks worn by Paris street sweepers) eternally
young street photographer stars this week in the best fashion flick and living
ad for New York City as still the greatest place on earth.
In arguably Alfred Hitchcock’s most
intimate, personally revealing and yet impeccably tasteful suspense/romance,
Rear Window, a manly photographer, Jeff (James Stewart), is lobbied by a
gorgeous blonde model, Lisa (Grace Kelly), to join her world of beautiful people.
Stewart’s character – recovering from a leg broken in the line of duty – spends
large chunks of the movie discretely watching his neighbors from his cubbyhole
apartment.
In Richard Press’ intimate and
spectacularly entertaining bout of people watching, Bill Cunningham New
York, the filmmaker gives us a privileged view of a contemporary Gotham
character who combines the best qualities of Jeff and Lisa. Like Jeff Cunningham
takes death defying chances to get his photos – watch him cut off a Yellow cab
on his Schwinn bike – like Lisa Cunningham is an old fashioned patrician who
sees nothing undemocratic about an individual defining herself in eye-catching
costumes.
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Just as Hitch’s screen stories
consumed months of off-screen labor, it took Press longer to gain the
confidence of his non-assuming star than to actually film him biking
uptown/downtown to grab candid shots of daringly attired New Yorkers for his
two weekly New York Times’ columns: On the Street and Evening Hours. We
observe how Cunningham’s shrewd eye for life on the street spied trends in the
making from Woody Allen and Diane Keeton happening upon the “Annie Hall” look
in the mid-70’s to a potty mouthed hip-hop generation’s dropping their
underwear for an almost X-rated shot of their beat sampling butts.
Cunningham’s world runs the gamut
from a retired Nepal ambassador’s dramatically undiplomatic nighttime costumes
to his ninety-six-year-old photographer neighbor’s gallery of a long vanished Hollywood
glamour. This lady, incidentally, guarding her still money making shot of Andy
Warhol from Press’ camera, is the Bill Cunningham doc’s Thelma Ritter.
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Just as Hitchcock made Peeping Toms
of us all without ever revealing all there was to say about either himself or
his dodgy characters, Bill Cunningham allows Press and us a seeming 24/7
all-access pass to his world – from his cramped file cabinet stuffed nook of a
studio apartment at Carnegie Hall, to rubbing shoulders with billionaires and
fashion divas, to receiving France’s top artistic honor, to just hanging with
his “kids,” a bevy of aspiring fashion hungry trendsetters like the sassy Kenny
Kenny – but in the end as one society matron after another admits we never
quite penetrate the innermost workings of a sensibility, honed in a distinctly
different time. Towards the end of a delicious 84 minutes, the filmmaker
finally asks his immensely private subject – whose countenance and enigmatic
smile resemble that of the British character actor Wilfred Hyde-White – the “S”
question.
“Have you ever had a romantic
relationship in your entire life?”
“Do you want to know if I’m gay?”
“Yes.”
“Isn’t that a riot. Well, that’s
probably why the family wanted to keep me out of the fashion world. They
wouldn’t speak of such a thing. No, I haven’t…It never occurred to me. I guess
I just was interested in the clothes, that’s the obsession. It’s probably a
little peculiar…I am human, you do have body urges but you control it as best
as you can.”
Press then asks an even more
intimate question about Cunningham’s weekly church attendance.
“I find it very important – as a
kid I went to church and all I did was look at women’s hats, but later when you
mature for different reasons.”