Brilliant writer and great guy Les Phillips turned me on to Bill Cunningham New York, a film I otherwise wouldn't have seen, with this review. I loved it, and I think you deserve a chance to have him talk you into seeing, it too. With Les's permission, here's his review.
BILL CUNNINGHAM NEW YORK (2011, directed by Richard Press). The legendary photographer and dancer Editta Sherman, well into her nineties but quite frisky and saucy, looks straight at the camera: "You want me to say something about Bill?" There are many things to say about Bill, who is one of the most celebrated fashion photographers in the world. Bill Cunningham goes to all the New York fashion shows and takes pictures; he goes to all the most important charity events in New York and takes pictures; but, very especially, he takes pictures of random women on the street. I should not say "random" women; Bill prowls Manhattan looking for well dressed women, fashionable women in all modes of fashion, sometimes leaping off his bicycle and into a broken run, through Fifth Avenue traffic, to capture that perfect woman in her perfect clothes.
Bill Cunningham is 82 years old, and his photographs have appeared in THE NEW YORK TIMES forever and ever. He is trim and energetic, and he has the face of a slightly mischievous 12-year-old -- full of joy verging on ecstasy, pure delight at his work, which he does all day and all evening. all the time. For years he has traveled to Paris to photograph the new collections. He says that he goes to Paris "to re-educate the eye." Bill is a Chevalier de l'ordre des Arts et des Lettres! He was the only member of the working press invited to Brooke Astor's 100th birthday party. We see Anna Wintour, the real one, describing him as one of the most important people in the entire fashion industry. Certainly he must be the least pretentious person in the fashion industry. Until recently, he lived in a one-room studio over Carnegie Hall, no kitchen, no room to turn around, bathroom in the hallway. ("What would I do with a bathroom or a kitchen? I've never eaten in in my whole life! More rooms to clean!"). His residence is crammed with filing cabinets and more filing cabinets; they contain the negatives of every photograph he has ever taken. Cunningham has no wardrobe of his own to speak of, and no time for restaurant meals, in New York or Paris either; that would be time not spent working. He loves stylish and beautiful people because they are stylish and beautiful, but is entirely unimpressed with celebrity itself; he passed up opportunities to photograph Marilyn Monroe and Joan Crawford because "they were not stylish." He loves the philanthropist Mercedes Bass because he thinks she's kind, and because "in that dress, she looks like a John Singer Sargent portrait." So Bill photographs her, and, indeed, when he's done, she sure does look like a John Singer Sargent portrait.
Back to Editta Sherman, who lived down the hall from Cunningham for 40 years, in her own Carnegie Hall studio. "Some people say I'm a legend," says Sherman. "Other people say I'm a fixture. I'm both!" She talks about Warhol and Leonard Bernstein and the many other famous people she's photographed and worked with. She worries about Bill. What does she know about Bill Cunningham's personal life? "Nothing!" Bill himself reveals only that he's had no romantic relationships because he's been busy working, and casually brushes away questions about his sexuality. When asked about his religious beliefs, he becomes uncommonly silent and closed, looks at the table, and mutters something about how Catholicism has always been of deep importance. Bill Cunningham goes to Mass every Sunday morning.
Bill Cunningham's bicycle is a Schwinn Classic. It's his 29th Schwinn Classic bicycle; the other 28 were stolen. He dropped out of Harvard. He used to design shoes. He runs through city traffic like a war photographer. Bill may have met more fabulously rich people than anyone living; he says that "money is the cheapest thing, the least important thing; freedom is what's expensive." Go see this marvelous film.
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