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      When Women Filmmakers Get to Tell Their Origin Stories

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      Movies about men who make movies are common, but female auteurs don’t often get such chances. That’s just one reason two new releases are so surprising.The newly released “The Souvenir Part II” and “Bergman Island” are both films by modern masters that not only delve into the filmmaking process but also draw from the personal lives of the filmmakers themselves.Sound familiar? Self-reflexive movies like these practically double as auteurist rites of passage — think “8 ½,” Federico Fellini’s beguiling ode to creative block with Marcello Mastroianni playing a version of the filmmaker; “Day for Night,” François Truffaut’s chaotic comedy about artistic collaboration starring Truffaut himself in the on-camera director’s chair; and, more recently, “Pain and Glory,” Pedro Almodóvar’s melodrama about an aging filmmaker (Antonio Banderas) in crisis. The list goes on, but with the newest films, there’s a crucial distinction: the masters in question are women.Joanna Hogg’s “The Souvenir Part II” and Mia Hansen-Love’s “Bergman Island” revolve around two women filmmakers, avatars for the directors, navigating their desires, relationships and creative pursuits in ways that fully reinvigorate the self-referential genre. Spotlighting the intellectual doubts and processes of two very different types of women, these films also raise subtle questions about gender disparity in the movie business and the unique ways in which women artists come into their own. And refreshingly, these films never dabble in obvious, self-congratulatory screeds about sexism — theirs is a magic much more potent and revelatory.“The Souvenir Part II” is the follow-up to Hogg’s 2019 drama about a soft-spoken student filmmaker who falls into a fraught and ultimately tragic romance with an alluring heroin addict. The new movie again draws generously from Hogg’s early years attending the National Film and Television School in Beaconsfield, England. Still reeling from her lover’s death, Julie (Honor Swinton Byrne) must build herself back up. The demands of completing her thesis film — a relationship drama based on her memories, that is, the events of the first film — propel her to become a more self-assured individual, transformed by the cathartic powers of creative work. In the end, the presentation of Julie’s finished film doubles as a plunge into her subconscious, a Technicolor fantasia akin to the deliriously joyous endings of golden age movie musicals and a brilliant shorthand for the marriage of art and life.In the press notes, Hogg said that despite being “terribly introverted” in film school, she had “a very clear idea of where I wanted to go, so I was able to blank out the voices, usually of men, that said ‘you can’t do a film like that.’”Indeed, we see Julie contend with skepticism from her own cast and crew, sharing their doubts about her directorial style behind her back or directly to her face in one particularly blustery spat initiated by a boorish male colleague. In conversation with an academic advising committee, Julie must stand her ground in the face of dubious filmmaking veterans accustomed to certain rigid practices.Hogg’s methods are highly improvisatory — her scripts contain little dialogue and are instead filled with descriptions, references to particular memories and images that might encourage ad-libbing and a more organic kind of creation.Now 61, and decades into her career, Hogg has room to experiment. Though she’s not exactly working on expensive and elaborate studio films, she enjoys privileges and leeway not typically afforded to female directors.Vicky Krieps, left, and Tim Roth are a filmmaking couple in Mia Hansen-Love’s “Bergman Island.”IFC Films, via Associated PressTo this day the word “auteur” brings to mind a boy’s club. Consider how new films by male directors labeled visionaries like Christopher Nolan, Quentin Tarantino, or Wes Anderson are treated as events. The cult of male genius more pertinently extends to the kinds of money, time and space given for such so-called genius to flourish. Correcting the gender imbalance in the film industry isn’t just a matter of creating more opportunities for women — in effect meeting quotas — but believing in the unique visions of women artists and robustly investing in the cultivation of those visions.Hogg and Hansen-Love are hardly the only women filmmakers to get personal and explore the emotional twists and turns in getting a new movie off the ground. The work of the provocateur Catherine Breillat often has an autobiographical bent. Her “Abuse of Weakness” (2014) starred Isabelle Huppert as a filmmaker who experiences a stroke, as Breillat did, and in “Sex Is Comedy” (2004), the director restaged the behind-the-scenes drama leading up to the filming of one of her most infamous sex scenes. Cheryl Dunye’s “The Watermelon Woman” (1997) starred the director as a video store worker struggling to make a documentary about a forgotten actress from the 1930s. The recent restoration and release of “The Watermelon Woman” certainly helped pull Dunye’s ingenious autofiction out of obscurity. Nevertheless portraits of female filmmakers aren’t exactly well known or particularly numerous.The discrepancies between the way male and female filmmakers are treated are put under a magnifying glass in “Bergman Island.” Chris (Vicky Krieps) and Tony (Tim Roth), directors both, retreat to the island where Ingmar Bergman shot several of his films in order to focus independently on their new scripts. Mia Hansen-Love, who was in a 15-year relationship with the filmmaker Olivier Assayas (“Irma Vep,” “Personal Shopper”), shows Chris procrastinating and suffering from extreme writer’s block, while Tony diligently fills page after page of his notebook with sexually questionable material. Ah, to be an auteur! As Chris, riddled with self-doubt, wastes time exploring the island on her own terms, the more well-known Tony hosts public Q. and A.’s and fields compliments from devoted fans. And when Chris finally shares the details of her latest idea for a movie, Tony seems distracted.No matter, Hansen-Love seems to say. If not Tony, the audience will be fully captivated by Chris’s dream world. A film-within-a-film unfolds, a sweltering romance between a younger couple (Mia Wasikowska and Anders Danielsen Lie) that also takes place on Faro Island and seems to reconfigure Chris’s frustrations and anxieties into new and visceral form.Both “Bergman Island” and “The Souvenir Part II” show an intimate understanding of art’s liberating potential, the power that fiction and fantasy afford individuals still in search of themselves. These aren’t exclusively female ventures — anyone who understands what it means to be diminished and looked down upon will find solace in the possibility of an alternative, an outlet for self-expression that transforms trauma and fear and insecurity into a source of fulfillment and strength.Crucially, Julie and Chris aren’t shown reveling in the success of their films, getting revenge on their male skeptics, or landing multimillion-dollar deals. Their triumphs are private, premised as they are on the satisfaction of creating something true and beautiful in spite of their vulnerable creators — Chris falls asleep in Bergman’s study and awakens in the future as her own film shoot comes to a close, her husband’s approval and the towering cinematic figure so central to her artistic development a twinkle in the past. We’re in her territory now. More

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      Gucci Makes a Hollywood Entrance

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      LOS ANGELES — On election night in much of America, in the shadow of Grauman’s Chinese Theater and amid the panting anticipation for Ridley Scott’s “House of Gucci” film, the actual Gucci designer Alessandro Michele brought the “Gucci Love Parade,” his first in-person show since February 2020, to Hollywood Boulevard.Style and stardom collided in a conflagration of marabou, lace and lamé bathed in pink and purple marquee lights. It was hard to escape the feeling that the whole thing was a movie and everyone there just a character in it. That, after 18 months of living through screens, the boundaries between fashion and celluloid fantasy had finally collapsed, split down the seams.Gucci took over Hollywood Boulevard for their “Love Parade.”Elizabeth Weinberg for The New York TimesDirector’s chairs lined the street.Elizabeth Weinberg for The New York TimesGucci, spring 2022.Elizabeth Weinberg for The New York TimesA full city block had been cordoned off, each side of the Walk of Stars lined with hundreds of director’s chairs in signature Gucci canvas. Gwyneth Paltrow, in a new version of the red velvet Gucci suit she wore to the VMAs in 1996, schmoozed with Dakota Johnson (in bristling black paillettes), who happens to be dating her ex-husband. Nearby sat Salma Hayek Pinault, in a silver and blue sequined shirtdress, who stars in “House of Gucci” and is married to François-Henri Pinault, the chief executive of Kering, which owns real Gucci.Jared Leto, who is a Michele muse, and also in “House of Gucci,” walked the runway in white denim, aviators and a double-breasted blazer. So did Miranda July, in a faux fur-trimmed strawberry cardigan, big Gucci logo briefs and stockings. On the sidelines, Billie Eilish (in a crystal skullcap) and Miley Cyrus (in sapphire fringe and butter yellow feathers) applauded.“It’s a dream come true,” Mr. Michele said in a news conference after the show, of why he had decided to eschew Milan for Los Angeles. “There was no better place to restart.”Jared Leto walked in the show.Elizabeth Weinberg for The New York TimesGwyneth Paltrow.Jordan Strauss/Invision, via Associated PressDakota Johnson, left, and Billie Eilish.Jordan Strauss/Invision, via Associated PressIt was back in May 2020, after all, when much of the world was self-isolating and the fashion world itself was in crisis, that Mr. Michele had first declared a rethink of the industry system, stepping off the four-city collections track and abandoning old categories of fall and spring. Since then, and perhaps more than any other designer, he has resolutely hewed to a separate path: creating “Guccifest,” a mini film festival complete with a Gus Van Sant-directed Gucci mini-series; “hacking” into Balenciaga in April (and letting Balenciaga’s designer, Demna Gvasalia, hack him right back).Coming to Hollywood, which Mr. Michele called “the American Olympus,” to come back to the runway was a logical next step.Not just because of the stories his mother used to tell him about Hollywood that inspired him to want to create clothes. Or because, as Mr. Michele said, Gucci has deep roots in the jet set and the larger-than-life, or because the brand has been sponsoring the annual LACMA gala for many years.But because increasingly the traditional gravitational and social rules of what to wear when and where no longer apply, and a lot of that is thanks to Mr. Michele’s work at Gucci. He routinely ignores old ideas about day and night or fancy and sporty or men and women, hopscotches through historical reference, and ultimately builds his characters in a way that used to be available only in the movies — or acknowledged only in the movies.

      .css-5h54w2{display:grid;grid-template-columns:2.271fr 1fr;grid-template-rows:repeat(6,1fr);grid-gap:4px;}@media (min-width:740px){.css-5h54w2{grid-gap:8px;}}.css-5h54w2 > :nth-child(1){grid-column:1;grid-row:1 / 4;}.css-5h54w2 > :nth-child(2){grid-column:1;grid-row:4 / 7;-webkit-align-self:end;-ms-flex-item-align:end;align-self:end;}.css-5h54w2 > :nth-child(3){grid-column:2;grid-row:1 / 3;}.css-5h54w2 > :nth-child(4){grid-column:2;grid-row:3 / 5;}.css-5h54w2 > :nth-child(5){grid-column:2;grid-row:5 / 7;-webkit-align-self:end;-ms-flex-item-align:end;align-self:end;}.css-rrq38y{margin:1rem auto;max-width:945px;}.css-dbjnm3{margin-top:10px;color:#666;font-family:nyt-imperial,georgia,’times new roman’,times,Songti TC,simsun,serif;font-weight:400;font-size:0.875rem;line-height:1.125rem;}@media (min-width:740px){.css-dbjnm3{font-size:0.9375rem;line-height:1.25rem;}}Gucci, spring 2022.

      His clothes are unabashedly costume — they revel in the joy of playing dress-up, rather than pushing a silhouette forward or exploring construction. He designs at a pitch of maximalist emotion rather than modernism. (To say his collections look like the ultimate vintage store is a legitimate complaint.)So this time ’round there were Marilyn Monroe silver and gold goddess pleats and Rita Hayworth-worthy lacy nightgowns; souvenir palm tree-print shirts and just-off-the-bus cotton lawn and cowboy hats; Elizabeth Taylor Cleopatra gowns and Joan Crawford shoulders. There were the variables of the back lot and the era of Edith Head and Adrian, when costume designers were also celebrity designers because they understood that life, as much as the world, is a stage, and everyone is dressing for their entrance, darling.That’s why Mr. Michele put his show in the middle of Hollywood Boulevard: to underscore the fact that the sheer act of getting ready to go out and get some milk is a performance of self. Especially now that any moment could end up online and everybody is the director of their own social media series.And maybe then you want to throw on a big fake fur chubby over your corset. Sport a three-piece suit in mint green or shell-pink satin with big fake orchids on the lapel. Wear knit bike shorts under a yachting blazer with cowboy boots. Whatever! Add a sparkling cat mask. Or maybe a feather boa. It’s ridiculous (it is). It’s a blast (it is).Then strut out down the center of a city street as spotlights strafe the sky. And let everyone watching wonder what scene, exactly, this is. More

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      ‘The Harder They Fall’ Review: A New Look for the Old West

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      Jeymes Samuel’s film is a bloody horse opera with a charismatic cast.A note at the beginning of “The Harder They Fall” asserts that while the story is fictional, “These. People. Existed.” This isn’t about historical accuracy, or even realism; it’s about genre. The movie, directed by Jeymes Samuel (from a screenplay he wrote with Boaz Yakin), is a high-style pop Western, with geysers of blood, winks of nasty, knowing humor and an eclectic, joyfully anachronistic soundtrack featuring cuts from Jay-Z, Fela Kuti and Nina Simone alongside Samuel’s original score.The point is that the vivid assortment of gunslingers, chanteuses, saloonkeepers and train-robbers — all of them Black — who ride through picturesque mountain ranges and frontier towns have as authentic a claim on the mythology of the West as their white counterparts. They exist, in other words, as true archetypes in a primal story of revenge, greed, treachery and courage.Especially revenge. The story begins with a family’s Sunday dinner interrupted by slaughter. Some years later, the young boy whose parents were gunned down in front of him has grown up into an outlaw named Nat Love, played with abundant charm by Jonathan Majors. Nat’s gang — whose most valuable players are a sharpshooter (Edi Gathegi) and a quick-draw specialist (RJ Cyler) — specializes in stealing from other outlaw bands. But that’s just business. The personal concerns that propel Nate and the plot are his love for Stagecoach Mary (Zazie Beetz) and his vendetta against Rufus Buck (Idris Elba).Mary is a singer and entrepreneur with impressive fighting skills. Rufus resembles a villain out of fantasy or science fiction — a nearly superhuman avatar of evil with grandiose ambitions and a grudge against the universe. And also the charisma of Elba, unmatched at playing bad guys with a touch of sadness to them. Rufus’s crew is a mirror-image of Nate’s, though his empire is more extensive. His sharpshooter, Cherokee Bill (Lakieth Stanfield), is a philosophical sociopath, and his main lieutenant is a ruthless killer named Trudy Smith.Speaking of charisma: Regina King! From her first appearance — on horseback, in a blazing blue coat with gold buttons to match her stirrups — Trudy spikes the magnetometer, but King is in good company. Just look at the names in the preceding paragraphs. Add Delroy Lindo as a dour U.S. Marshall with complicated allegiances and Danielle Deadwyler as Mary’s pint-size bouncer, who joins up with Nate’s gang and steals a dozen scenes as well as $35,000 from a white-owned bank.Samuel makes the most of his formidable cast. If anything, he may be overgenerous. The narrative sometimes flags so that everyone can get in a few volleys of the salty, pungent dialogue on the way to the next round of gunplay or fisticuffs. There are imaginative and suspenseful set pieces — Trudy peeling an apple while she tells the captive Mary a story; a bank robbery in a town so white that even the dust on Main Street looks bleached — and plenty of more conventional episodes of shooting and punching.“The Harder They Fall,” nodding to the traditions of blaxploitation and spaghetti Westerns in the Netflix era, opts for sprawl and impact — the eye-popping cinematography is by Mihai Malaimare Jr. — over restraint and coherence. That’s not such a bad thing, though the story sometimes feels glib as well as messy. A late-breaking revelation that is meant to raise the dramatic and emotional stakes has the opposite effect, and the violence walks the line between stylization and sadism. The bodies pile up at the end, but there are enough people still existing to tease a sequel. No complaints here. That’s part of how the West was won.The Harder They FallRated R. Killing and cursing. Running time: 2 hours 10 minutes. Watch on Netflix. More

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      This Movie Season, It’s a Black-and-White Boom

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      “Passing,” “The Tragedy of Macbeth” and “Belfast” are just a few of the movies that forgo color for a more classical approach.Do not adjust that dial. Over the coming months, whether you’re watching new films on a streaming service or at the multiplex, more than a few of those movies are likely to be in black and white.Films as varied as “The French Dispatch” and “Being the Ricardos” employ several black-and-white sequences, while “Passing,” “Belfast” and “The Tragedy of Macbeth” are shot almost entirely without color. These are all period movies that use the old-fashioned format to evoke a bygone era, but even “C’mon C’mon,” which takes place in contemporary times and has Joaquin Phoenix as a radio journalist crisscrossing the country with his nephew, was filmed in monochrome.Is this all a coincidence, or a natural next step after recent black-and-white stunners like “Roma” and “Cold War”? To understand why everyone is going grayscale, we talked to the cinematographers behind three of the season’s most striking black-and-white features.‘The Tragedy of Macbeth’Denzel Washington and Frances McDormand set against the film’s austere atmosphere.A24For his new spin on Shakespeare’s “Macbeth,” the director Joel Coen wanted to strip the play down to its barest essence. The result is a fast and ruthless reimagining leached of all color, shot not in wide-screen but in a claustrophobic 4:3 aspect ratio rarely used since the 1950s.“It’s meant to bring theatricality, and to lose temporality,” the cinematographer Bruno Delbonnel said. “It’s not about the 1700s, and it’s not about Scotland, either. We’re giving an abstraction, but a very creative one.”For Delbonnel, the creative limitations of black-and-white proved intoxicating. “I pushed the envelope even more,” Delbonnel said. “I said we shouldn’t have any furniture, and we pushed this very far: There is only one bed and a couple of tables, and there is no practical light.”All that austerity makes a striking visual impression, but Delbonnel said it was simply in service of the play’s language. The same creative rules applied to the actors Denzel Washington and Frances McDormand, who could tackle their roles as Shakespeare’s most fearsome power couple in the most unadorned fashion.As Delbonnel put it, “You say, ‘Denzel, this is the room. There is no place to sit because there is no chair. There is no glass, so you can’t drink. There is nothing you can do, so it’s all about your body language and the way you deliver the lines.’”Still, don’t get the wrong impression: Though this “Macbeth” was made in the spirit of minimalism, Delbonnel often brought in the boldest lights he could muster.“The whole movie is lit with theater light, like you’d see at a Beyoncé concert, which has very, very hard shadows,” he said. “In color, it would be unbearable, but in black-and-white, it looks amazing.”‘Passing’Negga, left, and Tessa Thompson are framed in a boxy aspect ratio for “Passing.”NetflixWhile he shot Rebecca Hall’s “Passing,” the cinematographer Eduard Grau was so committed to the film’s monochrome aesthetic that he took all the color off his iPhone, too..css-1xzcza9{list-style-type:disc;padding-inline-start:1em;}.css-3btd0c{font-family:nyt-franklin,helvetica,arial,sans-serif;font-size:1rem;line-height:1.375rem;color:#333;margin-bottom:0.78125rem;}@media (min-width:740px){.css-3btd0c{font-size:1.0625rem;line-height:1.5rem;margin-bottom:0.9375rem;}}.css-3btd0c strong{font-weight:600;}.css-3btd0c em{font-style:italic;}.css-1kpebx{margin:0 auto;font-family:nyt-franklin,helvetica,arial,sans-serif;font-weight:700;font-size:1.125rem;line-height:1.3125rem;color:#121212;}#NYT_BELOW_MAIN_CONTENT_REGION .css-1kpebx{font-family:nyt-cheltenham,georgia,’times new roman’,times,serif;font-weight:700;font-size:1.375rem;line-height:1.625rem;}@media (min-width:740px){#NYT_BELOW_MAIN_CONTENT_REGION .css-1kpebx{font-size:1.6875rem;line-height:1.875rem;}}@media (min-width:740px){.css-1kpebx{font-size:1.25rem;line-height:1.4375rem;}}.css-1gtxqqv{margin-bottom:0;}.css-1g3vlj0{font-family:nyt-franklin,helvetica,arial,sans-serif;font-size:1rem;line-height:1.375rem;color:#333;margin-bottom:0.78125rem;}@media (min-width:740px){.css-1g3vlj0{font-size:1.0625rem;line-height:1.5rem;margin-bottom:0.9375rem;}}.css-1g3vlj0 strong{font-weight:600;}.css-1g3vlj0 em{font-style:italic;}.css-1g3vlj0{margin-bottom:0;margin-top:0.25rem;}.css-19zsuqr{display:block;margin-bottom:0.9375rem;}.css-m80ywj header{margin-bottom:5px;}.css-m80ywj header h4{font-family:nyt-cheltenham,georgia,’times new roman’,times,serif;font-weight:500;font-size:1.25rem;line-height:1.5625rem;margin-bottom:0;}@media (min-width:740px){.css-m80ywj header h4{font-size:1.5625rem;line-height:1.875rem;}}.css-12vbvwq{background-color:white;border:1px solid #e2e2e2;width:calc(100% – 40px);max-width:600px;margin:1.5rem auto 1.9rem;padding:15px;box-sizing:border-box;}@media (min-width:740px){.css-12vbvwq{padding:20px;width:100%;}}.css-12vbvwq:focus{outline:1px solid #e2e2e2;}#NYT_BELOW_MAIN_CONTENT_REGION .css-12vbvwq{border:none;padding:10px 0 0;border-top:2px solid #121212;}.css-12vbvwq[data-truncated] .css-rdoyk0{-webkit-transform:rotate(0deg);-ms-transform:rotate(0deg);transform:rotate(0deg);}.css-12vbvwq[data-truncated] .css-eb027h{max-height:300px;overflow:hidden;-webkit-transition:none;transition:none;}.css-12vbvwq[data-truncated] .css-5gimkt:after{content:’See more’;}.css-12vbvwq[data-truncated] .css-6mllg9{opacity:1;}.css-qjk116{margin:0 auto;overflow:hidden;}.css-qjk116 strong{font-weight:700;}.css-qjk116 em{font-style:italic;}.css-qjk116 a{color:#326891;-webkit-text-decoration:underline;text-decoration:underline;text-underline-offset:1px;-webkit-text-decoration-thickness:1px;text-decoration-thickness:1px;-webkit-text-decoration-color:#326891;text-decoration-color:#326891;}.css-qjk116 a:visited{color:#326891;-webkit-text-decoration-color:#326891;text-decoration-color:#326891;}.css-qjk116 a:hover{-webkit-text-decoration:none;text-decoration:none;}“Even when I was taking photos, they would be in black and white,” Grau said. “You do things like that to see the world without color, to train your brain to forget about that green or pink wall and only look at the level of brightness or darkness.”Based on the 1929 novel by Nella Larsen, “Passing” is about two light-skinned Black women: Irene (Tessa Thompson), a well-respected but restless doctor’s wife, and Clare (Ruth Negga), her childhood friend who has been passing for white. A chance meeting in a hotel tearoom reunites the two after years spent apart, and Grau chose to flood that initial encounter with a striking amount of white light.“This is the brightest I’ve ever done a scene in my life,” Grau said. “You don’t see that a lot, especially in dramas, to have such a bright scene without a lot of detail in the whites. It also came from the fact that we didn’t want to clearly show to the audience at first whether our characters were white or Black or mixed race. Everything is so bright that it’s difficult to tell.”Like “The Tragedy of Macbeth,” “Passing” is filmed not just in black and white but also in a boxy aspect ratio that recalls some of Hollywood’s earliest feature films. (It may also remind the viewer how limited those movies were when it came to race, a thorny topic that the color scheme of “Passing” serves as a meta comment on.)Grau couldn’t have foreseen similarities with other current films when he made “Passing,” but he said he welcomed this winter’s bounty of black-and-white stories.“I think it is a coincidence, but this is also about love of film, and they are all true filmmakers,” Grau said. “It’s a strong starting point when a director chooses that, a good indication. Strong, powerful visions from directors make for good movies.”‘Belfast’The new film “Belfast” is about Buddy, played by Jude Hill, a young Irish boy coming of age in the turbulent 1960s.Rob Youngson / Focus FeaturesOver 15 years of shooting movies with the director Kenneth Branagh, the cinematographer Haris Zambarloukos has come to see color as both a blessing and a curse.“Color is so brilliantly descriptive in film, and even the color of someone’s eyes gives you so much information,” Zambarloukos said. “But I often find that when I’m making films with Ken, we’re trying to remove information for the audience and present them with what we want them to see.”Their new film, “Belfast,” about a young Irish boy coming of age in the turbulent 1960s, doesn’t eschew color entirely: It’s bookended by two color montages of modern-day Belfast, and whenever our young protagonist, Buddy, goes to the movies, the films he watches come to life in vivid color.But for the most part, whether Buddy is wooing a girl at school or trying to make sense of the conflict that grips his parents (Jamie Dornan and Caitriona Balfe), “Belfast” is shot in shimmering silvers.“In this case, I think we’re using a strength of black and white, which is not to tell you how a person or place looks but how they feel,” Zambarloukos said. “It has a transcendental quality to be of the past and the present. It’s realistic, but it has a certain magical sense to it as well.”Zambarloukos cut his teeth on the format while shooting Branagh’s long-delayed “Death on the Nile” (due in February), which opens with a 10-minute sequence in black and white. But now, after having filmed all those “Belfast” close-ups without color, he admits it will be hard to go back to reds, yellows and blues.“If I saw the same portrait of a person in color and in black and white, most of the time, I would tell more about that person from black-and-white,” Zambarloukos said. “It doesn’t create anything that isn’t there, but whatever is there is so amplified!” More

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      Paul Newman Will Tell His Own Story, 14 Years After His Death

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      Knopf plans to publish a book next year based on hours of recordings the movie star left behind, as well as interviews with family, friends and associates.Decades ago, the actor and philanthropist Paul Newman, frustrated by all the unauthorized biographies and coverage of his life, recorded his own oral history, leaving behind transcripts that for years were forgotten in the basement laundry room of his house in Connecticut.Now his family has decided to turn those transcripts into a memoir, which will be published by Knopf next fall.“What he recorded, and in essence what he wrote, was so honest and revealing,” said Peter Gethers, an editor-at-large at Knopf who will edit the book, which does not yet have a title. “It showed this extraordinary arc, a guy who was very, very flawed at the beginning of his life and as a young man, but who, as he got older, turned into the Paul Newman we want him to be.”Newman — known for his blue eyes and 50-year acting career in movies such as “Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid,” “Hud” and “Cool Hand Luke” — died in 2008 at age 83.The book began more than 30 years ago as an oral history project put together by one of Newman’s closest friends, the screenwriter Stewart Stern. Stern, whose 1968 film “Rachel, Rachel,” was directed by Newman and starred his wife, Joanne Woodward, spent several years interviewing people from all corners of Newman’s life, including his children, his ex-wife Jacqueline Witte, close friends, and actors and directors who worked with him. This produced thousands of pages of transcripts and convinced Newman he should do his own version. Stern peppered him with questions, Gethers said, and they created recordings that are a mix of interview and Newman speaking without prompts..css-1xzcza9{list-style-type:disc;padding-inline-start:1em;}.css-3btd0c{font-family:nyt-franklin,helvetica,arial,sans-serif;font-size:1rem;line-height:1.375rem;color:#333;margin-bottom:0.78125rem;}@media (min-width:740px){.css-3btd0c{font-size:1.0625rem;line-height:1.5rem;margin-bottom:0.9375rem;}}.css-3btd0c strong{font-weight:600;}.css-3btd0c em{font-style:italic;}.css-1kpebx{margin:0 auto;font-family:nyt-franklin,helvetica,arial,sans-serif;font-weight:700;font-size:1.125rem;line-height:1.3125rem;color:#121212;}#NYT_BELOW_MAIN_CONTENT_REGION .css-1kpebx{font-family:nyt-cheltenham,georgia,’times new roman’,times,serif;font-weight:700;font-size:1.375rem;line-height:1.625rem;}@media (min-width:740px){#NYT_BELOW_MAIN_CONTENT_REGION .css-1kpebx{font-size:1.6875rem;line-height:1.875rem;}}@media (min-width:740px){.css-1kpebx{font-size:1.25rem;line-height:1.4375rem;}}.css-1gtxqqv{margin-bottom:0;}.css-1g3vlj0{font-family:nyt-franklin,helvetica,arial,sans-serif;font-size:1rem;line-height:1.375rem;color:#333;margin-bottom:0.78125rem;}@media (min-width:740px){.css-1g3vlj0{font-size:1.0625rem;line-height:1.5rem;margin-bottom:0.9375rem;}}.css-1g3vlj0 strong{font-weight:600;}.css-1g3vlj0 em{font-style:italic;}.css-1g3vlj0{margin-bottom:0;margin-top:0.25rem;}.css-19zsuqr{display:block;margin-bottom:0.9375rem;}.css-12vbvwq{background-color:white;border:1px solid #e2e2e2;width:calc(100% – 40px);max-width:600px;margin:1.5rem auto 1.9rem;padding:15px;box-sizing:border-box;}@media (min-width:740px){.css-12vbvwq{padding:20px;width:100%;}}.css-12vbvwq:focus{outline:1px solid #e2e2e2;}#NYT_BELOW_MAIN_CONTENT_REGION .css-12vbvwq{border:none;padding:10px 0 0;border-top:2px solid #121212;}.css-12vbvwq[data-truncated] .css-rdoyk0{-webkit-transform:rotate(0deg);-ms-transform:rotate(0deg);transform:rotate(0deg);}.css-12vbvwq[data-truncated] .css-eb027h{max-height:300px;overflow:hidden;-webkit-transition:none;transition:none;}.css-12vbvwq[data-truncated] .css-5gimkt:after{content:’See more’;}.css-12vbvwq[data-truncated] .css-6mllg9{opacity:1;}.css-qjk116{margin:0 auto;overflow:hidden;}.css-qjk116 strong{font-weight:700;}.css-qjk116 em{font-style:italic;}.css-qjk116 a{color:#326891;-webkit-text-decoration:underline;text-decoration:underline;text-underline-offset:1px;-webkit-text-decoration-thickness:1px;text-decoration-thickness:1px;-webkit-text-decoration-color:#326891;text-decoration-color:#326891;}.css-qjk116 a:visited{color:#326891;-webkit-text-decoration-color:#326891;text-decoration-color:#326891;}.css-qjk116 a:hover{-webkit-text-decoration:none;text-decoration:none;}The recordings, completed about 10 years before his death, describe Newman’s early life, including his difficult relationship with his parents, as well as his troubles with drinking, his shortcomings as a husband in his first marriage, and his flaws as a parent. It is candid about his sorrow when his son, Scott, died of a drug and alcohol overdose at 28.One of several photos of Newman and his family that will appear in his forthcoming memoir.via KnopfThe book also delves into Newman’s insecurity in his younger years, exploring his jealousy of peers like James Dean and Marlon Brando when they were all working in Hollywood.“He said that his mother did not so much think of him as flesh and blood, but as a decoration,” Gethers said. “He says that if he was not a pretty child, she never would have paid attention to him at all. It’s a devastating thing to read, and clearly forms so much of his life and his insecurity about being an actor.”The memoir will also cover his marriage to Woodward, which Gethers called “remarkably loving, affectionate and sexy,” as well as his acting career and racecar driving.The book was purchased at auction this spring, Gethers said. It will be about 80 percent memoir, with the remaining part based on the recordings Stern made with people close to Newman. It will also include previously unreleased family photographs.The transcripts were given to Knopf, which was then charged with turning it into a book. (After the publisher bought it, more transcripts were found in a storage unit in Connecticut, in a banker’s box marked “PLN / HISTORY,” Gethers said.) Stern died in 2015, so Newman’s daughters are participating in the editing process, in essence as an author would, approving changes and drafts.Gethers himself is the author of 13 books and several screenplays, and has produced movies and television shows. He said that while wooing the Newman family during the bidding process, he told them that his father, a TV writer and producer, wrote one of Newman’s earliest starring roles in 1956 on a show called “Rag Jungle.” Gethers also mentioned that he had two cats named for Newman roles: Harper and Hud. More

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      ‘Isolation’ Review: Dispatches From a Different Pandemic

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      In an anthology of nine short films made during the onset of the coronavirus pandemic, people around the world fight to survive.Given that horror films tend to reflect our anxieties back at us, manifesting them into solid, solvable problems like zombie hordes or possessed houses, it makes sense that movie lovers have turned to the genre for comfort during the coronavirus pandemic. Filmmakers have likewise mined this moment for terrifying inspiration. Last summer Shudder released “Host,” a collaborative horror film made entirely over Zoom. Now “Isolation,” a collection of nine short horror films set all over the globe, offers stories of survival created under the limitations of quarantine. Though there are a few standout creations, the anthology is mostly muddled, privileging a heightened version of 2020 over a reality that was plenty scary on its own.In “Isolation,” each short is set in a specific city in a world upended by a mutating virus. Economies are crashing and food supply chains have halted, resulting in mass civil unrest. “Pacific Northwest,” directed by Bobby Roe, follows two children as they outrun murderous escaped convicts who have been inexplicably freed from a nearby facility. This hovering between real-world horror and tacked-on scares results in more confusion than it does poetry.For instance “The Dread,” directed by Dennie Gordon, artfully depicts a woman’s anxiety as her husband slowly dies in their bed — but the film ends with gunshots and explosions as unknown vigilantes ransack the Hollywood Hills. Two films about conspiracy theorists, “5G” and “It’s Inside,” only compound confusion. Without consistent information about this slightly different world, it’s impossible to tell if these characters are totally unhinged or if their paranoia is justified.The gimmick of this collection is its main draw. Seeing what the filmmakers have pulled off at the height of quarantine, with only at-hand resources at their disposal, is fascinating. Drone footage abounds; family members and friends play starring roles. Some films are meditative, while others go full-on slasher. But the bizarre 2020 that “Isolation” presents — exactly like ours, except when it’s not — is ultimately a hobbling distraction.IsolationNot rated. In English and German, with subtitles. Running time: 1 hour 44 minutes. Rent or buy on Apple TV, Google Play and other streaming platforms and pay TV operators. More

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      Lawyer for ‘Rust’ Assistant Director Says Checking Gun Was Not His Job

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      The assistant director, Dave Halls, had previously told a detective that he should have more thoroughly checked the gun before Alec Baldwin handled it, according to an affidavit.A lawyer for the assistant director on the film “Rust” — who law-enforcement officials said had handed a gun to the actor Alec Baldwin before it discharged a live round that killed the cinematographer — said in an interview on Fox News Monday that it was “not his responsibility” to check the weapon.The assistant director, Dave Halls, had told a detective shortly after the fatal shooting that when the movie’s armorer had shown him the firearm to inspect its rounds, he “should have checked all of them, but didn’t,” according to an affidavit released by the sheriff’s office in Santa Fe County, N.M. According to another affidavit, Mr. Halls had called out “cold gun,” indicating that the gun did not contain any live rounds, and handed it to Mr. Baldwin.But Mr. Halls’s lawyer, Lisa Torraco, contended in an interview with Martha MacCallum on Fox News that the main responsibility for checking the gun was with the film’s armorer, claiming that it was “not the assistant director’s job.”“What I can tell you is that expecting an assistant director to check a firearm is like telling the assistant director to check the camera angle or telling the assistant director to check sound or lighting,” she said in the interview. “That’s not the assistant director’s job. If he chooses to check the firearm because he wants to make sure that everyone’s safe, he can do that, but that’s not his responsibility.”The film’s director, Joel Souza, who was wounded in the shooting, later told a detective that the firearms were checked by the film’s armorer, Hannah Gutierrez-Reed, and “then the firearm is checked by the assistant director Dave Halls, who then gives it to the actor using the firearm,” according to another affidavit released as part of a search warrant application.Larry Zanoff, a veteran armorer whose past films include “Django Unchained” and “Fantastic Four,” said it was common practice on a film set for the first assistant director to be one of the people responsible for inspecting guns on set, including checking to make sure a gun is empty before the armorer hands it to an actor.The shooting on the set of “Rust” killed Halyna Hutchins, an up-and-coming cinematographer.Since the shooting, public scrutiny has been largely focused on Mr. Halls and Ms. Gutierrez-Reed, because investigators reported that they handled the gun shortly before the incident. In an affidavit released by the sheriff’s department, a detective, Joel Cano, wrote that he learned that shortly before the shooting, Mr. Halls had picked the gun up from a gray cart that had been set up by Ms. Gutierrez-Reed and had taken it onto the set, where he handed it to Mr. Baldwin and yelled “cold gun.”.css-1xzcza9{list-style-type:disc;padding-inline-start:1em;}.css-3btd0c{font-family:nyt-franklin,helvetica,arial,sans-serif;font-size:1rem;line-height:1.375rem;color:#333;margin-bottom:0.78125rem;}@media (min-width:740px){.css-3btd0c{font-size:1.0625rem;line-height:1.5rem;margin-bottom:0.9375rem;}}.css-3btd0c strong{font-weight:600;}.css-3btd0c em{font-style:italic;}.css-1kpebx{margin:0 auto;font-family:nyt-franklin,helvetica,arial,sans-serif;font-weight:700;font-size:1.125rem;line-height:1.3125rem;color:#121212;}#NYT_BELOW_MAIN_CONTENT_REGION .css-1kpebx{font-family:nyt-cheltenham,georgia,’times new roman’,times,serif;font-weight:700;font-size:1.375rem;line-height:1.625rem;}@media (min-width:740px){#NYT_BELOW_MAIN_CONTENT_REGION .css-1kpebx{font-size:1.6875rem;line-height:1.875rem;}}@media (min-width:740px){.css-1kpebx{font-size:1.25rem;line-height:1.4375rem;}}.css-1gtxqqv{margin-bottom:0;}.css-19zsuqr{display:block;margin-bottom:0.9375rem;}.css-m80ywj header{margin-bottom:5px;}.css-m80ywj header h4{font-family:nyt-cheltenham,georgia,’times new roman’,times,serif;font-weight:500;font-size:1.25rem;line-height:1.5625rem;margin-bottom:0;}@media (min-width:740px){.css-m80ywj header h4{font-size:1.5625rem;line-height:1.875rem;}}.css-12vbvwq{background-color:white;border:1px solid #e2e2e2;width:calc(100% – 40px);max-width:600px;margin:1.5rem auto 1.9rem;padding:15px;box-sizing:border-box;}@media (min-width:740px){.css-12vbvwq{padding:20px;width:100%;}}.css-12vbvwq:focus{outline:1px solid #e2e2e2;}#NYT_BELOW_MAIN_CONTENT_REGION .css-12vbvwq{border:none;padding:10px 0 0;border-top:2px solid #121212;}.css-12vbvwq[data-truncated] .css-rdoyk0{-webkit-transform:rotate(0deg);-ms-transform:rotate(0deg);transform:rotate(0deg);}.css-12vbvwq[data-truncated] .css-eb027h{max-height:300px;overflow:hidden;-webkit-transition:none;transition:none;}.css-12vbvwq[data-truncated] .css-5gimkt:after{content:’See more’;}.css-12vbvwq[data-truncated] .css-6mllg9{opacity:1;}.css-qjk116{margin:0 auto;overflow:hidden;}.css-qjk116 strong{font-weight:700;}.css-qjk116 em{font-style:italic;}.css-qjk116 a{color:#326891;-webkit-text-decoration:underline;text-decoration:underline;text-underline-offset:1px;-webkit-text-decoration-thickness:1px;text-decoration-thickness:1px;-webkit-text-decoration-color:#326891;text-decoration-color:#326891;}.css-qjk116 a:visited{color:#326891;-webkit-text-decoration-color:#326891;text-decoration-color:#326891;}.css-qjk116 a:hover{-webkit-text-decoration:none;text-decoration:none;}Ms. Torraco disputed that chain of events in the Fox interview, saying, “This idea that my client grabbed the gun off of a prop cart and handed it to Mr. Baldwin absolutely did not happen.” Ms. Torraco said she has heard differing accounts from crew members on set.She did not directly give her client’s account. “My client went through something that was such a freak accident that he’s in shock,” Ms. Torraco said. “He’s having a hard time sorting out what happened.”Mr. Halls has not responded to several requests for comment; Ms. Torraco’s office declined to comment last week and has not responded to several requests for comment this week.Mr. Halls has been the subject of complaints on previous film productions. In 2019, Mr. Halls was fired from a movie, “Freedom’s Path,” after a gun discharged unexpectedly on set, causing a minor injury to a crew member, its production company said. Ms. Torraco did not respond to a question in the Fox interview about the previous complaints.No criminal charges have been announced in the case, but the district attorney overseeing it, Mary Carmack-Altwies, has said that her office has not ruled them out. As details have emerged around a series of errors on set that preceded the fatal shooting, how a live round got into the revolver that Mr. Baldwin handled remains unclear. More

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      The ‘Jaws’ Shoot Was a Drama. Now It’s a Play.

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      The hit movie’s set was plagued by malfunctioning sharks and drunken feuds — perfect material for a night at the theater.LONDON — When Ian Shaw was 5, he did something to make any movie fan jealous: He visited the set of “Jaws.” On location on Martha’s Vineyard, an assistant pulled back a huge sheet and young Shaw found himself staring into the gaping mouth of the man-eating shark that would soon become a cinematic icon.“I was terrified!” Shaw, now 51, recalled in a recent interview.Shaw was on set because his father, Robert Shaw, was starring in the movie as Quint, the psychotic shark hunter who, by the film’s end, has been bitten in two. Shaw said he visited many of his father’s sets, and the “Jaws” shoot seemed like any other. But what he didn’t know back then was that the shoot was one of movie history’s most notoriously dysfunctional, plagued by technical problems and cast feuds.The production’s three mechanical sharks kept breaking down, and shooting was often delayed: Steven Spielberg, the film’s director, took to calling the special effects team the “special defects department.” At one point, a boat they were filming on sunk, sending two cameras down to the sea floor. (The film inside the cameras turned out to be safe.)Shaw’s father — who died in 1978 — brought difficulties of his own to the production. He drank heavily during the shoot, and clashed with a co-star, Richard Dreyfuss. The elder Shaw repeatedly belittled and tried to humiliate Dreyfuss, making off-putting comments seconds before the cameras rolled, or goading Dreyfuss into performing silly stunts, like climbing a ship’s mast and jumping into the sea.Roy Scheider, the movie’s other star, was stuck between the feuding pair.In “The Shark Is Broken,” the three main characters are stuck together on a boat as tensions wax and wane. Helen MaybanksThe younger Shaw didn’t learn the full extent of the chaos on the set of “Jaws” until decades later, he said, but he realized that they had enough the drama for a play. Now he is winning rave reviews in Britain for “The Shark Is Broken,” a comedy three-hander running at the Ambassadors Theater in London’s West End through Jan. 15. In it, Shaw plays his father, stuck on a boat with Dreyfuss (Liam Murray Scott) and Scheider (Demetri Goritsas) as the tensions wax and wane.In a recent interview, Shaw talked about the difficulty of portraying his father’s darker side onstage, and whether conflict can spur creativity. These are edited extracts of that conversation.In the play, your father clearly dislikes “Jaws.” Did he ever take you to see the movie?I saw it when I was very young, in a screening room somewhere, and was absolutely terrified and couldn’t go in the swimming pool afterward. I remember having nightmares, imagining sharks around my bed and calling for my dad to come and save me. Even though I knew that in the film he got eaten, I was able to suspend my disbelief about that.From left: Roy Scheider as Martin Brody, Robert Shaw as Quint and Richard Dreyfuss as Matt Hooper in the film “Jaws.”Universal StudiosFrom left: Demetri Goritsas as Roy Scheider, Ian Shaw as Robert Shaw and Liam Murray Scott as Richard Dreyfuss in the play “The Shark Is Broken.”Helen MaybanksWhat made you come up with the idea to turn the movie’s problems into this play?I once had to grow a mustache for a part, and looked in the mirror and thought, “Oh, I look like Quint.” That’s what started it, but it seemed a very silly and foolish idea because I’d spent my whole career avoiding association with my dad.Then I read Carl Gottlieb’s “The Jaws Log,” and watched documentaries, and saw there was this really interesting relationship between Robert and Richard and Roy — this triangle which makes for great drama. And you only need three people, so it’s affordable!I toyed with the idea for years, because I felt it could be very embarrassing — potentially disrespectful to my dad and to the movie “Jaws,” which I love. To step into my dad’s shoes, and to paint him as an alcoholic — do I have the right to do that publicly?Did you know he was an alcoholic at the time? He died only a few years after making “Jaws” when you were still young.I did used to see him drink. I was often playing under the table in the Irish pubs when he would be having a session. But it didn’t seem a problem then. It actually seemed kind of normal.I feel that generation, especially the more working-class actors like Richard Burton, had a little discomfort with the profession in terms of putting on tights and makeup. So their way of asserting their masculinity was to be hard drinkers, the sort of Viking method of proving themselves.What made you get over your fear of disrespecting him?When I started writing the play with Joseph Nixon, we quickly saw it wasn’t just about “Jaws.” Joe’s father died very sadly, and it became a little bit more about fathers and sons, about addiction, about making movies in general. There were these other themes that meant it wasn’t just a stunt.The “Jaws” shoot used three mechanical sharks. They kept breaking down, delaying the production and ratcheting up tension on the set.Universal Studios, via Everett CollectionYou show your father continually antagonizing Dreyfuss, often seemingly just for fun. Why do you think he behaved like that?He really didn’t want to do “Jaws,” because, at the time, he was offered [the remake of] “Brief Encounter,” or was certainly in the running for it. He would have rather have done that, to break away from this macho image. He kind of felt handcuffed to “Jaws” to provide for his family.Then the shark’s not working, so they’re hanging around. And he liked to drink. But also Dreyfus genuinely did wind him up and so he thought he needed a bit of a slap down. He dared Dreyfuss to jump off the mast from the top of the ship, and I think he fired a fire hose in his face. There’s so many stories, and a lot of them are true.In the play, your father says he’s needling Dreyfuss to improve the movie. Their characters are meant to dislike each other. Did you consider that he might just have been trying to create a mood?Personally, I think it was both because he was annoyed with Richard, but also he did think it was getting some good work done between them. The acting is so good in the film, so it probably did help.You once auditioned for a role in a production Dreyfuss was directing. How did that go given his past with your father?He was directing “Hamlet,” and I went in and mentioned that I was Robert Shaw’s son and he looked, ironically, like Hamlet seeing his dead father. He just sat down and looked slightly ill. I was really taken aback at the time. I’d been expecting him to go, “Wonderful!” then give me a big hug. But he was very professional, because we obviously went through the audition.Did you get the part?No, I didn’t!“The Shark Is Broken” isn’t just about “Jaws,” Shaw said; it became “more about fathers and sons, about addiction, about making movies in general.”Lauren Fleishman for The New York TimesGiven that “Jaws” experienced so many problems, did you have any of your own making “The Shark Is Broken?”Not that I remember. When I had the first ideas on paper, I did wake up with cold sweats at three o’clock in the morning thinking, “This is really bad idea,” because I was really worried that I would offend my family. But in terms of the writing process, I really enjoyed it.Do you think “Jaws” would have been a better movie without the problems?No, because the problems meant they all hung around and developed it. It allowed them to improvise. “You’re gonna need a bigger boat” was a piece of improvisation from Steven Spielberg. And the delays allowed my father to rewrite the Indianapolis speech, which is a big moment. All sorts of things in it were devised while they were hanging around waiting.So disaster is a good recipe for creative success?Well, it can be. More