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Frank and Fearless

2001; Linguagem: Inglês

2562-2528

Florence Jacobowitz, Richard Lippe,

Cinema and Media Studies

THE EVE ARNOLD-JOAN CRAWFORD SESSIONS '...love and eternal trust always' -from Joan to Eve, Eve Arnold: In Retrospect Eve Arnold photographed Joan Crawford in 1959 in Los Angles and New York City, and the results were intended to help launch Crawford's return to filmmaking with The Best of Everything (1959) after an absence of several years. The film, directed by Jean Negulesco and based on a best-selling novel by Rona Jaffe, was designed primarily to be a showcase for a number of 20th Century Fox's young contract players. Arnold had previously worked with Crawford on an assignment for Woman's Home Companion, in conjunction with the promoting of Robert Aldrich's Autumn Leaves (1956). In her book, Eve Arnold: In Retrospect, Arnold elaborates on their first encounter, which did not lead to the publication of any photographs, although Crawford was pleased with Arnold's work. More significantly, the encounter established the beginnings of a relationship based on trust. Arnold recounts her initial impressions of Crawford's idiosyncrasies, and the self-absorbed Hollywood star who was very conscious of her public image. Despite thi s awareness, Arnold also acknowledges that it wasn't until years later that she began to understand the complexities underlying the star's behaviour. At any rate, it was Arnold's suggestion that initiated the assignment for Lire magazine, to do a photo essay to help publicize Crawford's participation in The Best of Everything. Eve Arnold, an established photojournalist and member of the Magnum Photo Agency, had worked previously with other Hollywood stars, most notably Marlene Dietrich and Marilyn Monroe. In many respects the Crawford sessions are continuous with a number of concerns Arnold pursued with these other female stars; but it is also evident that the Crawford photographs are clearly stamped by the star's personality. Arnold's work is remarkable in the way she respects and understands her subjects and their individuality. She is an artist who can work collaboratively with a strong subject who has a commanding presence and identity. Arnold's training as a photojournalist invites a level of observation and detachment as well as a commitment to authenticity. At the same time her empathetic understanding of the gender concerns being addressed allows for a personal engagement which is expressed in the photographs. Arnold's work contains too a marked narrative component and she elicits a performance from her star subjects, howe ver intimate and revealing. These elements contribute to making her photographs function as self-reflexive and self-examining analyses of stardom, the conditions of glamour, the 'invisibility' of work and professional investment. The photographs can be seen as meditations on women professionals in the public domain of entertainment, an area which demands a commodifying of the self. Arnold's works could easily slip into parody, or exploitive journalistic tabloid-like presentations of the underside and secrets of stardom. Instead, they are careful contemplative visual essays that maintain at their base, a profound respect and understanding of the tensions and contradictions inherent in socially empowered women. By the time Arnold photographed Joan Crawford in 1959, the star had become a legend in decline. Crawford had a long film career, beginning as a starlet in the mid-1920s at MGM. Her career accelerated in the early 1930s because of her popularity, the critical acclaim her work received in Grand Hotel (1932) and her ambition, as illustrated by her taking on the role of Sadie Thompson in Rain (1932). In a film such as Possessed (1931), Crawford played a lower-class woman who struggled to survive, resorting to prostitution and having eventually to deal with the consequences of her actions. This narrative trajectory is common to the 1930s melodrama: Susan Lenox: Her Fall and Rise (1931), Blonde Venus (1932), Red-Headed Woman (1932), all address the woman as prostitute. …