Watching Kodachrome on Netflix earlier this week had me remembering other movies where a photographer, real, fictional or a blend of both played a leading part.
In Kodachrome, a record company executive (played by Jason Sudekis of Saturday Night Live fame) joins his estranged dad (played by Ed Harris), a famous photographer who is dying, on a road trip to Kansas to find the last lab still developing Kodachrome film. The movie pays little attention to the father's actual photographs until the last few minutes of the story. The story centres on a much used theme - a father neglecting family life, concentrating instead on his talents and profession earning, instead of love, bitterness and hostility from his offspring later in life.
Another movie that comes to mind where a photographer plays a leading role is one of my all time favourites: The Bridges of Madison County. It's love story about a photographer on assignment, from National Geographic, to shoot the historic bridges of Madison County, Iowa. He meets a housewife, whose husband and children are away on a trip to the State Fair. Say no more! Oh my - I get a lump in my throat even thinking about some of the movie's last scenes! I've read the novel of the same name by Robert James Waller too, as well as several of his other novels. He's an excellent story teller - there's little wonder that the movie is so memorable. We also took a trip to the covered bridges of Iowa some years ago - my blog post is here.
Fur is more of a faux documentary film, about the imagined career of real-life photographer, Diane Arbus . We saw the film, but no special memories of it come to mind, though I think I had some reservations about it and didn't write a blog post after having seen it. I had written about Ms Arbus herself earlier though - LINK
The only other movie I recall seeing, involving photography as a main theme, rather than a photographer, has a sci-fi or time-warp theme : Time Lapse. Three friends discover a mysterious machine that takes pictures twenty-four hours into the future, and conspire to use it for personal gain, until disturbing and dangerous images begin to develop.
There are several lists online naming a few dozen other movies, fictional, bio-pic or straight documentary style, featuring photographers. Linking here to a straight-forward text-only list.
In Kodachrome, a record company executive (played by Jason Sudekis of Saturday Night Live fame) joins his estranged dad (played by Ed Harris), a famous photographer who is dying, on a road trip to Kansas to find the last lab still developing Kodachrome film. The movie pays little attention to the father's actual photographs until the last few minutes of the story. The story centres on a much used theme - a father neglecting family life, concentrating instead on his talents and profession earning, instead of love, bitterness and hostility from his offspring later in life.
Another movie that comes to mind where a photographer plays a leading role is one of my all time favourites: The Bridges of Madison County. It's love story about a photographer on assignment, from National Geographic, to shoot the historic bridges of Madison County, Iowa. He meets a housewife, whose husband and children are away on a trip to the State Fair. Say no more! Oh my - I get a lump in my throat even thinking about some of the movie's last scenes! I've read the novel of the same name by Robert James Waller too, as well as several of his other novels. He's an excellent story teller - there's little wonder that the movie is so memorable. We also took a trip to the covered bridges of Iowa some years ago - my blog post is here.
Fur is more of a faux documentary film, about the imagined career of real-life photographer, Diane Arbus . We saw the film, but no special memories of it come to mind, though I think I had some reservations about it and didn't write a blog post after having seen it. I had written about Ms Arbus herself earlier though - LINK
The only other movie I recall seeing, involving photography as a main theme, rather than a photographer, has a sci-fi or time-warp theme : Time Lapse. Three friends discover a mysterious machine that takes pictures twenty-four hours into the future, and conspire to use it for personal gain, until disturbing and dangerous images begin to develop.
There are several lists online naming a few dozen other movies, fictional, bio-pic or straight documentary style, featuring photographers. Linking here to a straight-forward text-only list.
2 comments:
I've never seen 'Time Lapse', but your description immediately brought 'The Twilight Zone' to mind. In December 1960, an episode called 'A Most Unusual Camera' aired. Sounds like genius Rod Serling had another original idea stolen from him. Here's the episode - it runs about 25 minutes and is from the Golden Age of American TV.
http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x5roncy
A Casual Reader ~ Ah yes - I watched the Twilight Zone episode up to the first commercial, then stopped because I remembered it! We used to watch several TZ episodes each night, via Netflix (I think - or Amazon - not sure which). We had probably forgotten the episode by the time we saw "Time Lapse" - but yes, it does look as though it was the inspiration for the movie's central theme, which the writers embroidered and expanded upon to make it more fitting to the 21st century.
Rod Serling came up with some superb yarns! Ray Bradbury did too, in his short stories. :)
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