An Interview With the Director of ‘Love, Cecil’

Thirty-eight years after his death it’s likely millions of girls still have posters of photographer Cecil Beaton’s work splashed across their freshman dorm rooms — with little clue as to who he was, the details of his life, or the full scope of his creative endeavors. The Academy Award-winning costume and set designer for “My Fair Lady,” who famously photographed Audrey Hepburn, Marilyn Monroe and Twiggy, was driven by loneliness and a sense of inferiority to create a remarkable life. He was friends with English socialite Stephen Tennant’s decadent circle of “Bright Young Things” that would inspire Sebastian Flyte’s school crowd in Evelyn’s Waugh’s “Brideshead Revisited,” photographed victims of the London Blitz during World War II and forged a lasting relationship with the British royal family, indelibly changing the way we view them today.

Lisa Immordino Vreeland  (“Diana Vreeland,” “Peggy Guggenheim”) hopes to change our limited knowledge of Beaton with her new documentary, “Love, Cecil,” a beautiful yet honest portrait of a man who mastered the beautiful yet honest portrait. Vreeland spoke with Compass in anticipation of her Q&A following a screening of “Love, Cecil” at The Moviehouse on July 27.

Alexander Wilburn: Beaton was so, so prolific, what was it like going through his archives?

Lisa Immordino Vreeland: I loved the challenge of having all this visual material. We had to show all the portraits that were really well known, but I was much more interested in the portraits that he’s not as known for. There was also a lot of reading, he wrote over 38 books. I would say the narrative arc was locked earlier than the visuals. I wanted to make the film as creative as he was. We’re always thinking about our characters because we want them to be proud of the work we’re doing. We want people to walk out of the theater thinking about him, and really feeling him, and being immersed in his world. We worked on some visual finishes that were exciting. Color washes on black and white photographs. Having scrapbooks come alive. Footage coming out of the pages. Really capturing the viewer visually. Just because it’s a documentary doesn’t mean it can’t be completely cinematic. 

AW: In a way do you feel you’re having a conversation with him, even though he’s not around to be interviewed? 

LIV: I like it because I’ve gotten to know him through his writing. He was a brilliant writer, and he was very honest about what he was writing. It’s a real pleasure to be able to understand certain things, and in a sense you know certain secrets. When you go in to interview a subject you can say, “This is what he said about you,” or “This is what he said about your movie.” We have these secrets that he’s shared with us. 

AW: He could be a shrewd observer of people, and could be quite mean.

LIV: Oh, that’s an understatement. But that’s his insecurity coming up. He was always on the move and on the make, and being so ambitious at such a young age. Wanting to be a part of a different social class doesn’t exactly make for happiness. When he became a Bright Young Thing, these were aristocrats, they all had money. He had to make his living. He had a lifestyle he needed to support. He was not only in search of beauty, he was in search of creating this theatrical aspect to his whole life. He had a vision of what his life should be, it was his birthright, but he didn’t get it through his birthright. So he had to create it. But his insecurities would pop up and all these horrible statements would come out. 

AW: Of course, after the era of the Bright Young Things, there’s World War II. 

LIV: His work in the war was really important because not only was it introducing a new form of war photography, it was kind of a behind-the-scenes of what was going on. He was not on the front lines, but he was applying the eye of an aesthete to war photography. There was also this undercurrent of his homoerotic photographs of these men. It humanizes the war for the English, because he was one of the official photographers for the Ministry of Information so these photographs were be published all over the world.

AW: I didn’t know that actually. Many likely know him for his portraits of the British royal family.

LIV: The fact that he was photographing the royals for three decades was a huge feather in his cap. But he was never part of them. Then you have a photographer like Lord Snowden marry into the family. He couldn’t quite believe it — Snowden’s now part of them. So he still always felt like an outsider.

AW: What do you think the royal family saw in his work?

LIV: It was the Queen Mother who invited him, and I’m not sure she was so attuned to his photographic work, but they happened to know each other. What was really important was his portraiture humanized the royals to the British, and it was a really important turn. They related to him in a way. He had that touch that probably made them feel really comfortable. He introduced this style of photography that has still been carried on. Think of the pictures that Mario Testino took of Princess Diana, or these new pictures of Kate Middleton and their three kids, or Meghan Markle. There’s something much more approachable about the family. I think people think they’re not that far away from us.

AW: If he were still alive and working, what do you imagine his photographs of Kate Middleton and Meghan Markle would be like?

LIV: I think they would have been beautiful. He really has a way of getting into the soul of his sitters. I think there would have been something really playful and stripped down, and at the same time elegant. He understood how to maintain a veneer to the image. 

AW: I don’t know if you saw, but he was depicted on “The Crown” recently.

LIV: I know! They hire Matthew Goode to play Lord Snowden looking sexy, and Beaton was this old curmudgeon. It was definitely not flattering. But he was in four of five of the episodes. So that’s what’s important to me, that he was so much a part of it. They make him a fuddy-duddy, but the fact that he could photograph the royals and then go photograph the Rolling Stones is what’s so fantastic about him.

“Love, Cecil” will play on July 27, at 7pm at the Millerton Moviehouse, 48 Main St. Millerton, NY. A Q&A with the director Lisa Immordino Vreeland and Jeff Daly , the former head of Design at The Metropolitan Museum of Art will follow the screening.