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BACK AGAIN AT THE OLD STUDIO!
Hollywood Costume: It’s Not an Exhibit, It’s an Experience
February 19, 2015
“Do it big, do it right, and give it class,” said L.B. Mayer about making a film the MGM way. Mayer’s quote must be the motto for the costume exhibit: It takes visitors who couldn’t care less about costumes and leaves frothing at the mouth for more.
The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences exhibition Hollywood Costume is presented by Swarovski in partnership with the Victoria and Albert Museum, London. It includes more than 100 years of prime Hollywood costumes from 150-plus legendary films, curated by costume designer Deborah Nadoolman Landis. The exhibition is a multimedia extravaganza worthy of the most dynamic blockbuster. And it’s housed at the historic May Company, the Art Deco architectural jewel and future home of the Academy in Los Angeles,
Edith Head’s Oscars
To give you a hint of what is to unfold before you, all eight of Edith Head’s Academy Award statuettes greet you in the entrance hall of the exhibit.
The black galleries convey an intriguing sense of weightlessness that makes visitors feel as if they are floating through the exhibition, transported by creativity—from the awe-inspiring ultra-luxe gem-encrusted dinner suit costume worn by Marlene Dietrich in 1937’s Angel or the high-flying techno punch of 2009’s Avatar.
Students of film, art direction, costume design, fashion design, or digital or communication media—in addition to the general public—will leave ravenous for more.
Adjuncts to Informing the Audience
The exhibit communicates how costuming artistically expresses the psychological, social and emotional attitude of the character. Costumes are nonverbal messages that speak to the mood of the individual and the film. The show explains how tireless research is conducted into costuming so the audience can believe in the characters’ authenticity.
Electronically illustrated design tables with mock-up boards of the creative process abound. There are video feeds of interviews with heavy hitters like Quentin Tarantino, Martin Scorsese and Meryl Streep.
Streep has a mini costume exhibit devoted just to herself, and she and Johnny Depp credit costuming with helping them complete their characters. The costume designers weigh in too, and seeing their sketches come to life is inspiring to anyone who has a picture in their head and then sees it realized.
Presentations of the designs from The Bourne Legacy and Argo are as carefully thought out as are the lush costumes from The Last Emperor.
A case in point is Michael Kaplan’s 1970s sleaze-themed wardrobe for Brad Pitt in 1999’s The Fight Club. Not only are the sketches dynamic but the prints of porn posters on Pitt’s polyester shirts and his pleather jacket scream “one sketchy dude”—in an artistic way.
Fight Club costumes by Michael Kaplan
Queens Galore
Holding court in one area are the queens of cinema’s historical dramas, from several versions of Queen Elizabeth, including Shakespeare in Love, plus Marie Antoinette, Queen Christina and Guinevere. Marisa Berenson’s promenade costume from Stanley Kubrick’s Barry Lyndon and Glenn Close’s Dangerous Liaison formal court gown all seem to be scheming an intricate plot. The results are delighted and awe-inspired audience reactions.
This exhibition brings the viewer into the mind of the costume designer and the love of craft that inspires the creation of sumptuous visual feasts.
Another case in point is Guinevere’s bridal gown from Camelot, designed by John Truscott in 1967. More than 100 skilled craftspeople were needed to fashion the spider web of delicate lace encasing thousands of pumpkin shells. The effect is sensational.
Shakespeare in Love costumes by Sandy Powell
It’s All About the Process
The warren of gallery spaces leads to digital tableaux of work tables illustrating the conceptual creative process of designers with the actual garment on display. Quentin Tarantino talks about Sharen Davis’s costume for Django Unchained. The idea was based on the character Little Joe’s short corduroy riding jacket from the classic TV series Bonanza. Only after umpteen fittings did the costume finally fulfill their shared vision.
Edith Head’s creations for Hitchcock heroines Tippi Hedren and Kim Novak’s are on display too. Malevolent crows peck at the mannequin wearing Hedren’s light gray-green suit from The Birds. In a video interview, Hedren talks about costume design’s effect on a film. The costume is all about the importance of context in the story. Kim Novak’s deep green knit dress with polka dot trim in Vertigo leaps out at the viewer, both in the film and in the exhibit.
Iconic
The great costumes from Hollywood’s most illustrious films and legendary stars bring utter joy to the visitor. There is Kate Winslet in her traveling suit from Titanic and Nicole Kidman in her pink swan feather creation from Moulin Rouge.
In the first gallery, there is Charlie Chaplin’s 100-year-old “Little Tramp” costume, which looks completely at home with Helen Mirren’s hunting outfit from The Queen. There is Beyoncé Knowles’ Dreamgirls Barbie gown, resplendent in silver-violet shimmering nylon by Bill Condon. Set for a sort of haunted mansion-style family photograph are The Addams Family: Morticia, Gomez and the children, complete with Thing, await your arrival, complete with a Charles Addams illustration.
Titanic costume by Deborah L. Scott
Moulin Rouge costumes by Martin /Strathie
The Film Floodgates Explode
From here on the exhibit fairly pops, like a Champagne cork unleashing pure exuberance. Carole Lombard’s deliciously liquid creamy silver sequined dinner suit from My Man Godfrey is a show stopper. Marilyn Monroe’s chiffon heart-shaped derriere cutout that only she knew about lets us in on a sexy secret to her performance in Some Like it Hot.
We get to see Joan Crawford’s quarterback-shouldered Mildred Pierce waitress costume, and realize costumes are not just clothes but carefully constructed projects that further a film’s narrative. It’s wonderfully mind-blowing.
A Name Dropper’s Paradise
Gazing at video monitors of the stars’ faces set atop mannequins, making them look at you in a sort of robotic suspended animation, is unexpectedly wondrous. Visitors come face to face with Marilyn Monroe in her white halter top dress from The Seven Year Itch, Glenn Close’s dementedly chic black-and-white Cruella De Vil costumes from 101 Dalmatians, and Judy Garland’s ruby slippers and blue gingham dress from The Wizard of Oz. John Travolta’s white disco suit from Saturday Night Fever and Sylvester Stallone’s boxing shorts from Rocky are here too.
Multiples abound, including garb from two very different Cleopatra’s, two versions of The Great Gatsby, a pair of Superman’s and a collection of Batman’s. Indiana Jones and Darth Vader make appearances, too. The show is an embarrassment of riches.
Indiana Jones costume by Deborah Nadoolman Landis
We have legendary Harper’s Bazaar and Vogue magazine fashion editor Diana Vreeland to thank for the new way we experience costume exhibitions. Her spirit is the starting point of such an intimate relationship between audience and exhibit items.
The only trouble is, like all good things, the show will do a classic Hollywood fade-out after March 2, due to construction of the Academy’s new home. So make the most of it before the exhibit will reside only in memory. Take heart, though, because you can still enjoy the subtle magic of costuming in classic movies anytime.
Friday, October 31, 2014
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Sunday, September 21, 2014
SO OVER IT SUNDAY PRESENTS MY ARTICLE ON "MASTERS OF SEX". ENJOY!
Crusaders for Truth: Heart and Soul Makes ‘Masters of Sex’ More than Physical
Richard Lloreda, Staff Writer
September 19, 2014
Right from the playful opening credits, Masters of Sex, Showtime’s critically acclaimed seriocomic series, examines sex, from what its power is to how people define themselves through it, a subject that still raises gooseflesh in mixed company.
The program is presented as a tasteful period drama set in Middle America, namely Washington University in St. Louis, Mo., during the buttoned-up 1950s and early 1960s. With human sexual response as its topic, it is everything that revolves around sex from which the real dramatic thrust comes.
As Dr. William Masters and Dr. Virginia Johnson’s relationship unfolds, the program reveals more than what the naked eye can see. Their research touches off more than just a laboratory’s conditioned environment would have allowed. They are in fact part of their research.
Each inspires the other to stretch their intellectual capabilities by exploring their differences. Their relationship is intricate as research partners, co-authors and more—much, much more than either one of them ever imagined. In modern terms, they could be seen as Pierre and Marie Curie, or to some, Victor and Elizabeth von Frankenstein.
Therein lays the conflict of opinion debated by Masters and Johnson.
Michael Sheen portrays Masters with brooding complexity. The emotionally unavailable Masters just begs to peel back his buttoned up layers, and Lizzie Caplan depicts Johnson as the intuitive explorer carefully pursuing her quest for emotional truth.
Their conflicting viewpoints are the weekly spark that ignites this powder keg of a mid-century drama. Inspired by Thomas Maier’s book, Masters of Sex: The Life and Times of William Masters and Virginia Johnson, the Couple Who Taught America How to Love, the program unfolds elegantly, playing against the backdrop of the Eisenhower to Johnson administrations.
Five Golden Globe nominations and a win for best actress Allison Janney as Margaret Scully in 2014 show the program is clearly a hit with critics and audiences.
“Masters and Johnson were suddenly famous with the publication of their first landmark book, Human Sexual Response,” according to Maier.
However, this series is not about fame or even solely about sex so much as it is about the human responses to life as lived through this complicated period of world history. Topics woven throughout the program confront themes including the inequality of women, the struggle with integration, battles against racism and breaching the taboo subject of sex and all of its facets, which parallel modern day anxieties.
Masters’ take on the study is from a physiological point of view, but as the story unfolds, it is Johnson, compelled by the psychological effects, who guides the personal outlooks regarding all aspects of the motivations of behaviors behind the sexual responses. Masters is emotionally isolated and is somewhat perplexed by human relationships. His struggle is based on a complicated past, and by studying human sexual responses in a clinical light he keeps emotions at a safe distance. Love is something he cannot wrap his mind around, as evidenced by his rudimentary approach to intimacy with his wife, Libby Masters, played by Caitlin Fitzgerald.
Johnson is discovering that the questions raised by the study touch her in ways she finds intriguing about both other human beings and herself. She struggles with being taken seriously, even by Dr. Masters, in the male dominated world of the hospital environment and larger society. She is ostracized by her female peers, who regard her as an oddity, whispering rumors about this strange sex research in which she is involved with Masters. As a single mother, she is both fighting for independence and doing work she cares about with the added financial realities that lead to her to sell diet pills to make ends meet.
Johnson discovers enlightenment in her dealings with very human aspects of sexual response through the study. She is emotionally connected and desires to tell the personal stories behind the sexual behavior. Her road is one of mounting self-discovery as seen in her ability to form complex friendships with women. Johnson begins, through the study, to question and then understand her motivations and who Dr. Masters is. Johnson is a woman alone yet so immersed in the study that she really isn’t wounded by loneliness. Although her focus is on her work, she also develops a certain savvy in a man’s world, maneuvering around men with watchful caution, reacting to her situations as case scenarios.
If Masters of Sex were a Turner Classic Movie, one could easily imagine the story set in the mid-1950s. Dr. Masters would be played by Henry Fonda at his most removed self. Johnson would be Ava Gardner, completely covered up, far more seductive and compelling than currently portrayed in today’s overly sexualized visually stimulated society. The irony of Masters of Sex lies in the fact that while there is nudity and there are sexual situations, these are not the most provocative aspects of the program. The key to the exciting story line is everything else going on rather than the actual sex.
Michael Sheen’s Masters is fairly bursting to tell the audience why his character is so pent up. Caplan presents Johnson as so fascinating that she could make emptying a swimming pool with a teaspoon mind-blowing. In other words, if a cigarette company sponsored this program there would be a veritable skyrocket in sales on Sunday nights. Masters of Sex is high-performance drama that leaves the audience to ponder more questions than answers, a format that maximizes viewing pleasure.
In a nutshell, Masters of Sex, Masters and Johnson’s relationship reflects the timeless lyrics of Johnny Mercer, “When an irresistible force such as you meets an old immovable object like me you can bet just as sure as you live something’s gotta give.”
Wednesday, September 10, 2014
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