Bill Cunningham New York

 

Story:

Living simply and using a bicycle to get around New York, 80-year-old photographer Bill Cunningham tirelessly records what people are wearing in the city -- both out on the sidewalk and in the salons of the wealthy. (NetFlix)

Review:

Several months ago, while surrounded by a haze of smoke pluming off a nearby blunt one fall evening in San Francisco, a fire red-haired cabaret singer named Cara Vida leaned over and in her deep, throaty voice, said, “You must see Bill Cunningham New York. What a man. What a movie.”  A recommendation from the gills of this stoned cabaret singer, was all the recommendation I needed. 

Director Richard Press’s first feature, Bill Cunningham New York (2010) portrays the lifestyle and life’s work of under-noted fashion photographer Bill Cunningham, a landmark in the New York City and Parisian fashion scenes.

Everyone who knows Bill Cunningham loves him. At a youthful 80+, Cunningham’s charm is immediately endearing. He approaches each day with an unparalleled gusto, has rubbed elbows with greats like Andy Warhol, queens, celebrities; he finds beauty in the quiet and mundane, takes stands for freedom, and doesn’t care about money or luxuries.  Mastermind behind the New York Times’ fashion column “On the Street,” hermit, social butterfly, last-standing resident at New York’s Carnegie Hall Apartments: Bill Cunningham is a New York City fixture, and his list of captivating traits is long. But does anyone really know Bill Cunningham?

That’s the question Press seeks to answer in this tender and heartfelt portrait of a private and revered man, loved by many, known by none. Rather than a biopic listing his accomplishments, Press styles Cunningham a strong narrative with a lovable protagonist. It tells the story of a documentarian, who happens to have changed the world of fashion as we know it – an aging man burrowed in a world of ornate and mundane, happy by all external appearances, but harboring some deep, impenetrable hurt that prevents him from getting close to people, hurt that surfaces during a climactic and heart-wrenching interview scene with Cunningham.

Filled with an eccentric cast of characters, commenting on Cunningham’s role and spirit (from Vogue Editor Anna Wintour to wigged and elaborate 96-year-old Carnegie Hall photographer Ettina Shermann), Cunningham offers plenty spectacle to dazzle the eyes. But as Cunningham puts it when named “Officer of the National Order of Arts and Letters” by the French Ministry: “It’s the clothes – not the celebrity. Not the spectacle. It’s the clothes…And it’s as true today as ever. He who seeks beauty…will find it.” Press takes Cunningham’s advice, allowing Cunningham – the fabric of the film – to guide the narrative. He notes and captures the spectacle that surrounds the subdued photographer, but lets Cunningham’s character provide the heart, the guts, and the beauty of Bill Cunningham New York.

 “You’ve got to stay on the street and let the street tell you what it is. There’s no short cuts, believe me,” Cunningham says when discussing his column. Press embraces this quiet approach in his own storytelling, adopting a fly-on-the-wall perspective as he joins Cunningham’s life like wallpaper in a bedroom, painting an intimate portrayal that only such camouflage will do.

He uses small handheld cameras, a skeleton crew of Cunningham’s trusted comrades from the New York Times, and keeps out of shot, entering conversation only when invited. But as the filmmakers gradually learn about Cunningham, and are invited deeper into the dialogue of his life, so is the audience, making the film read like a conversation among friends.

It’s that intimacy that births the film’s most magical and humanizing moments, quiet moments sandwiched between elite parties and extravagant peers -- Cunningham eating his daily $3 egg sandwich at a corner store (“They make the best sandwich!”); Cunningham taking the heart pills he stores in a folded New York Times envelope in his pocket; Cunningham at the corner Laundromat, weaving through traffic on his bicycle, wearing the same blue work shirt and tweed hat; Cunningham taping his plastic black poncho because it’s torn and “I don’t believe in single use.” These seemingly benign behaviors carry such impact when performed by a man who seems at many times, extra-terrestrial. He doesn’t care for food or booze, despite having the finest offered nightly; he seems to work round the clock with pleasure; he sleeps in a hovel of filing cabinets, shares a communal bathroom, has no kitchen, has no lovers, and as we learn in the emotional climactic scene, has never had one.

The people in Cunningham’s life are forced to love him from a distance, left before a lens he won’t grant access behind. And inevitably, at the end of the film, the audience too is kept at an arm’s length. We feel as if we know Bill, care for him, have journeyed with him, but at the same time, we’re still limited to what he and the director choose to share. 

Beyond the relationship struggles featured in Cunningham, a subtext of the changing industry of photojournalism overlays, as a man from a past era rallies to stay afloat in the present. The film nears its end with a shot of Cunningham on a busy street corner, standing still, film camera in hand, quietly searching for beauty while people and cars rush past him all around – and surely, that’s how Cunningham himself will remain in the world, today, tomorrow, until the end – a fixture, with the world changing and spinning past him at an ever-increasing rate, but frankly, unconcerned. He's just a man on the street, photographing other men on the street, living out his purpose.

High five, Cara Vida.

Reviewed by Rachel Barth for Documentary Film Online on January 12, 2012

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