'Riviera Cocktail' Doc Recommended by Video Librarian

The Janson Media DVD Riviera Cocktail: Edward Quinn (1 x 97') was recommended in a recent review by Video Librarian. The documentary follows the rise of the photographer that captured the cultural and social life of the French Riviera in the 1950's like none other. Edward Quinn spent years barely surviving as a photographer until he finally realized that he could make a living out of his fascination with the beautiful, the rich, and the famous on the Cote d"Azur.

&'Heinz Bütler"s documentary traces the career of Edward Quinn, a photographer who recorded celebrity life on the French Riviera in the 1950s. Quinn struggled as a pinup shooter until realizing that a magazine-buying public hungered for glamorous yet tastefully insightful images of stars from Hollywood and Europe. Quinn"s discretion and knack for being in exactly the right spot at the right moment yielded a number of notable portraits and candid pictures. Featuring archival footage of the genial Quinn (who died in 1997) talking about his life and work, Riviera Cocktail looks at how the shutterbug established a network of contacts in service occupations (working in hotels, etc.), who helped him determine the whereabouts of Cary Grant, Sophia Loren, Audrey Hepburn, and other silver screen luminaries. On the minus side, the efforts to recreate a 1950s style and tone with a jazz score by Franco Ambrosetti (viewers also spend time watching Ambrosetti"s band discussing—in non-subtitled Italian—Quinn"s iconic subjects) is a distracting intrusion in an otherwise fascinating profile (the story of Quinn"s adventures with Pablo Picasso should not be missed). Recommended, overall.&' - Video Librarian Three Stars

For over a decade, Quinn showed a perfect blend of persistence and discretion in his daring exploration of the social jungle on the French Riviera. In this iridescent epicenter of high life and big business, of art, music and literature, he managed to discover incomparable gems. Riviera Cocktail encompasses an entire age, tracing the path followed by Edward Quinn from his early pin-up photography to his unconventional portrayal of all the great stars and, finally, to his relationships, as a photographer, with Pablo Picasso and Georg Baselitz.

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