Richard Press’s terrific documentary follows street-wise fashion photog icon Bill Cunningham (free at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c6vFJv3Mnh4), a classic New York character who naturally lives in a teeny studio at Carnegie Hall. (Not near it; in it.)* Productive and personable, the eccentric Cunningham seems to have no life beyond his work, beginning in the ‘50s as a fashionable milliner before gravitating toward photojournalism (Women’s Wear Daily; DETAILS) before landing at The New York Times with matched columns to fill. Here, pushing 80, but still dashing about town on his bike to cover Night-Life Society: parties, openings, art shows, happenings among the rich and arty/the beautiful and the hip. While during daylight, hitting the streets on his three-speed bike to snap unstaged Found Fashion spottings from encounters among the hoi polloi. Judgmental on fashion, but non-judgmental on people, Cunningham’s speciality might come off as stalking if he weren’t so elfin & asexual. Brilliantly caught by Press & Co. who must truly believe that neither snow nor rain nor heat nor gloom of night should stop them from pursuing their subject. Indeed, they go all the way to Paris where he’s feted and honored without having to change his blue work smock. It’s the most touching part of this elsewise NYC-centric story.
ATTENTION MUST BE PAID: *The last two rent-stabilized Carnegie Hall studios were being phased out as the film was being shot. Too bad we don’t get a better look at the eccentric layout of Cunningham’s.
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