You were our patron saint, yet still they blame us for only praying to be famous

[sovay]

Late last night, I discovered this photograph:



It's David Lean in 1943, on the set of This Happy Breed. I found the image unattributed on a site devoted to his movies; I thought it was a film still. I had never seen a picture of him before. He could have been one of his own leads. I wouldn't wish him out of his directing career—for all I know, he was a block in front of the camera—but that's a character actor's face if ever I've seen one. He looks like a very ascetic faun.

Comments

[sovay]

I keep wondering if it's the medium of black-and-white film that makes people look so distinct and interesting, or if people were just fundamentally more distinct and interesting before colour photography.

I think there has been a change in the fashion of faces, and we are going through a boring patch. I continue to hope that popular tastes will weird up again. I also think there's a sorting process at work, in the same way as the 1930's and '40's produced some amazingly unremarkable movies, but no one bothers to rediscover them. That said, I really like black-and-white as a medium—because it is not (and cannot be) naturalistic, it may automatically transform its subjects into art.

[negothick.livejournal.com]

Reminding us of that evocative book title, taken from Sunset Boulevard.
They Had Faces Then: super stars, stars, and starlets of the 1930's By John Shipman Springer, Jack D. Hamilton

(snippet view only on googlebooks)