Reviewed by Chris Cabin filmcritic.com
Late last year, while covering the inaugural edition of the DOC NYC festival, I came across Lost Bohemia, a small documentary about the last group of tenants living in the rent-controlled apartments and studios above New York City's Carnegie Hall, which have since become corporate offices. Nothing if not noble in its endeavors, Lost Bohemia nevertheless indulged in the romanticizing of New York eccentrics to the point of gluttony, becoming a blithely liberal and biased message piece on the hardships of modern artists and the elderly under an oversized and globalized capitalist economy. Ironically, the film became transfixed with the fiscal and paid only brief lip service to the day-to-day practices of the artists of whom it seemed so fond. The film's frustration and anger were understandable: Its director, Josef Astor, was one of the aforementioned final tenants.
One of Mr. Astor's neighbors at Carnegie Hall, the legendary photographer Bill Cunningham, appeared in that film and is the sole focus of Richard Press's Bill Cunningham New York, a sincere and fascinating new documentary that doubles as somewhat of a corrective to Lost Bohemia. Indeed, Astor appears as an interviewee, halfway through Press's film, praising and speaking lovingly about Cunningham and their other neighbor, the so-called "Duchess of Carnegie Hall," photographer Editta Sherman. Even the Carnegie Hall drama is revisited here, but it figures in as part of Cunningham's life rather than a cause for protest. The biggest beef Cunningham has over it is that he must now be relocated to a larger apartment with such extravagances as a working kitchen and a private bathroom with a shower.
This humble way of looking at life is a ubiquitous trait in Cunningham and crucial to his immense charm and to the film's successes. Hanging out at the offices of the New York Times, where he continues to write, photograph, and, in the age of digital media, narrate his "On the Streets" and "Evening Hours" sections at the age of 82, Cunningham can be seen repairing rips in his poncho with black tape rather than ordering replacements online. "The cheaper, the better" he says about his taste in coffee before he starts biking towards a gala event, and he seems to have an honest distaste for the entrapments of money, whether refusing a sizable check from Conde Nast or a nice plate of salmon from a marketing director at a swanky event. Referring to nearly everyone as "child," Cunningham is a warm presence with a sweet way about him that belies his steel-reinforced work ethic; he accepts nothing that might cast doubt on his reputation. But then he's hesitant to even acknowledge his reputation.
Forever seen pedaling his bike around 4th Avenue and 59th Street, only a stone's throw from Carnegie Hall, Cunningham remains the same particular and peculiar man he's always been. The unanimous praise given to him at first seems dubious, but Press balances it out with some riveting insight into the gears of the fashion world. Cunningham photographs everyone, from socialites to tourists to the indigent, but his tone remains that of a curious collector of visual artifacts, a man who seems to be building a fashion timeline through images. As many would document the rise and architecture of capitalist symbols and buildings in China and Saudi Arabia, Cunningham documents the ever-changing state of what he calls the armor that "protects you from the reality of life."
Press incorporates footage from a report done on Cunningham in the 1980s and makes bountiful use of old photographs and those odd moments where Cunningham's ego does rear its head. Arguing with his art director, it's fascinating to watch Cunningham construct visual narratives for his pieces, sometimes driving his collaborator to passive-aggressive sparring. Press doesn't form a fluid narrative out of Cunningham's story but rather wisely cherry-picks eras, choices, events, and people that most uniquely shed light on him. It comes as a bit of a surprise when Press probes Cunningham both about his sexuality and his religion towards the end of the film, as if there was a big reveal coming. But Cunningham goes about it in his own tender way, at once answering as truthfully as he comfortably could and creating a whole new line of questions that will likely never be answered.
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