And the post that inspired this microcosmic orgy of William Cameron Menzies:
Can a film’s designer be its effective auteur? He can, if his name is William Cameron Menzies.
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Menzies, who 30 years ago didn’t even rate an entry in Andrew Sarris’s The American Cinema, has been enjoying something of a revival recently — at least, in the blogosphere.
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Menzies’ visuals are so distinctively his that I am reminded of what Jean-Luc Godard once said contrasting Alfred Hitchcock and Roberto Rossellini: Re Rossellini, “Where there is that much content, there must be style,” and re Hitchcock, “Where there is that much style, there must be content.” So does Menzies have any consistent themes or content that are expressed through his visual style? At least one thread runs through almost all of Menzies’ work, and that is a protest against totalitarian uniformity. In that sense, he is the opposite of a Leni Riefenstahl whose Triumph of the Will and other films celebrated the visual patterns of groups subordinating their individualism to a uniform ideal.
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William Cameron Menzies and the Totalitarian menace << Bright Lights film journal
