The Legend of 1900

Giuseppe Tornatore has a gift for creating timeless and extremely original films. Cinema Paradiso, perhaps his most well-known film, is a classic and is taught in film classes throughout the world. I recently saw his film "The Legend of 1900" about a man who was born, grew up, and lived his life aboard a cruise ship at the beginning of the twentieth century. I immediately fell in love with the story, visuals, acting, music, and just about everything else about it.

Tornatore has a unique talent and vision that incorporates a little bit of heartbreak, a lot of love, and extremely unique characters into his films and stories. "The Legend of 1900" combines a little bit of "Titanic" (for the setting) with "The Curious Case of Benjamin Button" (for the unique and pained characters) and creates this strange and tragic main character, 1900 (yes that is his name), who is completely captivating and commands the screen and our hearts. He remains separated by his bizzare situation that no viewer could ever completely relate to or have experienced themselves, just like in the strange circumstances surrounding Benjamin Button. There are parts of the characters that each of the viewers can understand or identify with, relate to, but there is a part of the character that is so deep and so unique that because of it, the viewer cannot completely understand the character nor do I think is really meant to.

Tornatore makes people care about the things that the characters care about. In 'Cinema Paradiso" he made us fall in love with film and the silver screen because that is what the characters loved, and in "The Legend of 1900" he makes us fall in love with music and the sea. We can take this bizarre story of a man who has never set foot on land and completely understand that mans motivations for doing so through the brilliant music (which won a Golden Globe for best original score in 2000) and by the amazing performance by Tim Roth. If you haven't seen this film, go out and rent it, netflix it (its on instant watch!!!), or do whatever you have to in order to see it. It was a captivating film and I hope everyone goes out and enjoys it.

Watch the trailer or a scene showing the exquisite music.

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Sophie's Shoot NYC

My friend Sophie Reppert came into the city this past weekend and we had a few hours to do an impromptu photo shoot. We walked around central park and went up on my roof and took some shots along the way. Keep your eye out for her. She is going to be an famous actress someday!

All images taken by me, Mathea Millman.

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Vintage Portraits

Yesterday one of my best friends came into the city to visit. A little before she had to catch her train home at the end of the day we went to visit her grandmother who lives on the upper east side. She was a very elegant woman and a few things about the visit really stuck with me and inspired me to think about the inspiration for this post.

I am always interested in family photographs, especially older ones from a few generations back. There was one image in particular that this woman had on one of her cabinets of herself as a young child and her mother who had an amazing wavy hairstyle very characteristic of the 1920's and 30's, like this one here:

In another image, my friends-grandmothers-mother was sitting on a row of chairs looking back at the camera. The sheer elegance and the way she was posed seemed so relaxed and natural that it made the image even more captivating. It seemed as if the photograph were interrupting her glamourous way of life and that even when the photographer was done taking the picture, the woman would go right on back to living her (literally) picture perfect life. I think that what makes images from the 20's, 30's and even 40's so incredible is that they seem so cinematic. I see movies about those time periods and everything in those movies is re-created in a perfectly composed way and for me, that viewpoint translates into my imagination so when I see images from these times they are part of a bigger scene that my mind is filling in the gaps for. It seems magical and compositionally wonderful.

I can't seem to get enough of old images and I love looking at them in antique stores but I think seeing them in a home is even better when you can get the stories directly from the family members; it doesn't necessarily make the image better or worse but instead makes them more meaningful and I tend to take more time looking at the image.

For this post I gathered a bunch of "vintage" images. Not all of them are actually from the earlier half of the twentieth century, but there are parts of each of the images that are reminiscent of the time period. Enjoy these and start looking through your own family albums!

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