Love, Cecil: Picturing the Queen

In his memoir, Without Stopping, the American writer and composer Paul Bowles describes a party held on the beach in North Africa’s Caves of Hercules, with one grotto that had been decorated by Cecil Beaton. Truman Capote, fearful of scorpions, had to be carried down the face of the cliff by a group of Moroccans. Guests lay in the moonlight among cushions in the sand sipping champagne and smoking hashish, serenaded by an Andaluz orchestra. If Lisa Immordino Vreeland’s documentary, Love, Cecil, about the life and times of Beaton, a singular British photographer and illustrator for Vogue and Tony and Academy Award winning scenic and costume designer—for the films Gigi and My Fair Lady-- omits mention of this gathering, she must be forgiven, because the detail she does provide—especially of Beaton’s art-- is truly illuminating. As she said in a recent phone chat, “Making the film was a pleasure to me.”

Of course it is a huge challenge to bring a subject to life after he is dead, no matter how dynamic his life and art. With so much material, culled from negatives and prints archived at Sotheby’s, it was a challenge to figure out how to cut it down. As to his life, she tried to read from his diaries in an archive at Cambridge, but did not understand his handwriting. Hugo Vickers, Beaton’s biographer helped create the narration read by Rupert Everett. Beaton was very English, was never publically gay. He came out at a young age to his family and was predominantly an outsider. Though he had important liaisons with men and women, including Greta Garbo, Beaton never had love at the forefront of his life. His astonishing career at Vogue took a turn when he created an Anti-Semitic illustration, and the film had to address that moment, showing how he attempted to redeem himself by becoming a war photographer. He was also invited to shoot Queen Elizabeth’s coronation and continued as a photographer of the royal family. In all, he published 38 books, with his war photos most unique, documenting his subjects with a fashion photographer’s eye.

Lisa Immordino Vreeland says curiosity drives her, but it seems the nexus of fashion and art is a motivation too, for Love, Cecil and prior documentaries, Diana Vreeland: The Eye Has to Travel and Peggy Guggenheim: Art Addict. She has made a film about Manolo Blahnik.

“Oh, Do you own his shoes?”  I had to ask.

“I am wearing a pair right now. He likes to give me men’s shoes.”

Regina Weinreich

Graphic Design: Salpeter Ventura