No photographer offers us a more extensive, exciting and stirring record of cultural life at the Cote d’Azur in the 1950s than Irishman Edward Quinn (1920-1997). He penetrated the society jungle on the French Riviera and salvaged invaluable treasures in this former epicenter of high life, big business, art, music and literature. The stage is set for the performance of the social comedy “Glitz and Glamour.” Features photos of Grace Kelly, Pablo Picasso, Audrey Hepburn, Sophia Loren, Brigitte Bardot and many more.
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.
In their soundtrack, Franco Ambrosetti and his band “European Legacy” enter into an exhilarating and compelling dialogue with Quinn’s visual universe, combining the contemporary with the nostalgic in a compellingly musical compliment to an age that has gone down in history as the “Golden Fifties.” Edward Quinn’s career followed a long, meandering trail that ended far away from the Cote d’Azur, but in 1949 he was still shooting anything that promised a bit of income. This included the warships H.M.S. Mermaid and H.M.S. Magpie at anchor in Monte Carlo. Quinn sold the crews some 100 souvenir photographs of their ships but barely broke even because he had to have the pictures enlarged by a professional. He also took pictures in law courts until he finally found out what newspapers and magazines were really interested in: people and especially celebrities.
The American paper the National Enquirer sent copies of photographs to illustrate what the editorial board was after: “As you can see, we prefer the bikini swimsuit and the type of figure that fills it well.” Edward Quinn was quick to realize that he could make a living out of his fascination with the beautiful, the rich, and the famous on the Cote d’Azur. He soon learned the basics of his trade and built up a network of helpful barmen, secretaries, bellhops and service staff at luxury hotels along the coast. Calling himself “Edward Quinn, Photographer, Nice”, he launched his lifelong career, which, seen through the distance of time, can be read, interpreted and enjoyed as a valid and invaluable photographic evocation of a lost world.
SF Schweizer Fersehen / SFR Television Suisse / TeleClub / Avro / YLE-Teema / ARTE
A Film by Heinz Butler, 2007 • A Production of NZZFilm
Details
LENGTH: Two versions: 1 x 97 or 1 x 52 Minutes
FORMAT: Special
CAMERA: Digibeta
INTERNATIONAL TRACK: Yes
TEXTLESS: Yes
CLOSED CAPTIONS: No
ASPECT RATIO: 16:9
PRODUCTION YEAR: 2006
RELEASE YEAR: 2008
SUPPLIER: Accent Films International, Ltd.
COUNTRY OF ORIGIN: Switzerland
RIGHTS TERRITORY: USA & Canada
Awards
Screened at Cannes Film Festival, 2007 and Locarno Film Festival, 2007
Reviews
“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
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