2:5:25
Day and Night.
New York Stories, 1989. I forgot to include the opening of Life Without Zoë, the second story from New York Stories, in DECADES: 80s. What a shame. The film is already over 6 hrs long, so some movies/scenes simply couldn’t make it in. But six years later, and it still stings whenever I see 80s movies I wish were in DECADES.
The costume design (18 yr old Sofia Coppola) and set design (George DeTitta Jr., who also did movies like Another Woman, Trading Places, Big, Bright Lights, Big City, Desperately Seeking Susan, and Working Girl. As well as numerous films for Woody Allen in the 80s) in Life Without Zoe is superb. Not to mention the impeccable Vilmos Zsigmond’s cinematography, which is never not gorgeous. No one understood the beauty of celluloid as light the way he did. The three New York stories are a completely lost world of quality (I’m not speaking about the merit of the 3 films themselves). That’s what real style and taste look like: beauty that lasts forever. True elegance is timeless. It spans decades. Centuries.
But there is also the undeniable fact that quality and high culture were infiltrated and used as the gateway (portal) to trash and degradation. They had a built-in audience that would follow them no matter what or who was on the cover of their magazines. Riffraff trafficked and smuggled in through sophistication, tradition, and legacy. Nobody noticed. A frog won’t jump out of a pot of boiling water if the temperature rises slowly. If the culture degrades slowly. All those once-elegant women and young girls, who took pride in their feminine grace, glamour, modesty (or acted like they did publicly at least); who looked to Vogue for their style and beauty inspiration (never a good idea. I was obsessed with style all my life and grew up with very fashionable and sophisticated parents, grandmothers, aunts, and uncles, but never ever read fashion magazines) fell right into Kim Kardashian’s lap, or should I say, ass?
The only thing that soothes me these days is watching old movies. It's like looking at an old photo album, and remembering all the people, places, and things you once loved. Not for nothing, but the photographs (not simply images online) are gone too.
