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Swope Studios Camera Over Hollywood |
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The camera looks down, not from any great
height but to see feet down on the ground. Hollywood has that, the dream
factory wears glasses to bed, Wellman’s A Star Is Born was
filmed during Swope’s stay. Chaplin took his camera around the set
decades before. But there is a sense in which even this is
part of the act. Swope as Harpo plays the drum in costume next to Henry Fonda
and James Stewart as Groucho and Chico, drummer and fifer (with a head
wound), he is on friendly terms with the best of Hollywood, there is no
outsider’s view. The profession cannot be reduced, W.C.
Fields and Mack Sennett at the Oscars are themselves and no impostors. Norma
Shearer without her mask next to Stewart in a little rowboat on
sky-reflective water is the artist self-contained. Swope photographs sets inside and out not
from any useful angle but with a theatrical sense of their usefulness. Ann
Rutherford posing with a canine holding a feline in a basket is seen next to
a reflector on the lawn and a photographer shooting the layout, the
performers are seen at work, not in it, like Reginald Gardiner, Jeanette
MacDonald and Nelson Eddy on the set. Swope’s resources are abundantly
varied, Cartier-Bresson instantaneity and Kertész intimacy and Halsman setups
and Karsh portraiture are in his line, the main thing is to know the place
and see it for the first time. |
