Andre Leon Talley finds inspiration in the details
Photo by Katherine Rountree
“When I really love a film, I will look at it time and time and time again. Through your life, film will go with you the way a favorite book will go with you, or a favorite memory. It’s a relationship you have with a movie,” said Andre Leon Talley from the armchair of his Savannah cottage on Monday afternoon.
District had the opportunity to sit down with Talley to discuss the importance of film as a source of inspiration for artists throughout a lifetime.
“There are films that you must look at often, just because you love them, because, A, it will make you happy, and B, you will get something from the viewing that you didn’t get before,” Talley said. “There are things and juxtapositions and places and nuances about how the directors have placed people in the frame. There’s so many things you can get, time and time again.”
He said these special details come together with the hard work from people of all parts of the artistic community who specialize in a wide range of mediums. Together, they create an experience that can affect a viewer throughout his or her life.
“This attention to details is very important in movies because some people relate to the story in maybe a mental way, or in dialogues,” he said, “but I’m always looking for the details that help you express the story through all the the production design, the scenic design, the cinematography, the lighting, the makeup, the hair, the clothes.”
Talley stressed that artists should cling to whatever genre of film they connect with most, whatever speaks to them or makes them feel.
According to Talley, one of the most important films to watch for costume design is “Mildred Pierce.” Milo Anderson designed the costumes.
“Milo Anderson made extraordinary clothes that also portrayed how Joan Crawford went from middle-class housewife to this extraordinary, independent woman owning her own chain of restaurants,” said Talley. “You see her at the end with these fabulously, very square padded fur coats and hair and gloves with these fur tips that show that she has arrived and succeeded and she is wealthy. The clothes of Milo Anderson are just amazing.”
For students in fashion or accessory design, Talley said older films are a great reference and research tool for inspiration.
“I just went to a fashion show that Miuccia Prada had, maybe four or five years ago, and the entire fashion show had been inspired by Mildred Pierce and the clothes,” said Talley. “It was very modern, but they had this sense of the Mildred Pierce school of fashion — that moment in the ’40s when things were very big and shoulders were padded.”
Historical films Talley said he wishes could have been brought to the festival include “Midnight Cowboy,” which is the first X-rated film ever to win an Oscar award, as well as “The Women,” and a variety of French films.
“Lots of documentaries, too,” said Talley. “ I do think that one of the best things I’ve seen on television is Ken Burns’s ‘The Roosevelts,’ the saga of the Roosevelt family. This is an extraordinary film. It’s just exceptional archival research, and the story of a great dynastic American family. Two presidents came out of that family, and Eleanor Roosevelt, who was an incredible American Woman.”
“I think film is one of the great arts, visually,” he said. “A director, or screenwriter, or production designer — it’s important to see into the world of film, the various moments of inspiration and artistic direction that come together to make a story.”