We'll Take Manhattan

I love photography, and whilst I knew I wasn't going to be watching a masterpiece, I did hope for something at least interesting and re waking about the legend and his muse. Instead I was offered what I assume we're anecdotes from Bailey's memoir that barely get fleshed out and then moved on to the next obvious bit of storytelling. The acting was pretty average and overall I felt somewhat cheated. Bailey being one of the best fashion photographers in British history, I had hoped for a deeper look at this man. Instead I watched the end credits and wondered if the swinging 60's was actually all hype.

I've been drawn back to watch this film several times. It is a very well crafted film with excellent performances. The pace can be slow at times, but with the excellent sound track this simply adds to the atmosphere. Perhaps it's too "arty" to be main stream, which might explain many of the negative reviews from people who presumably enjoy Pirates of the Caribbean.

Not bothered about other reviews being on the negative side, I thoroughly enjoyed We'll Take Manhattan. I originally saw it in 2012, and have recently downloaded it from itunes and watched it twice. I thought Aneurin Barnard was cheeky and irreverant as David Bailey, Karen Gillan was funny and lovable as Jean Shrimpton and Helen McCrory was a scream as Lady Clare Rendlesham. I particularly enjoyed the clashes between Bailey and Rendlesham in New York. Karen Gillan wasn't a perfect Jean Shrimpton lookalike, but it would have been hard to find someone with her unique looks.

Terribly childish script, superficial with very one dimensional characterisations; makes the acting look very hammy. Such a shame - they had all that style and locations to play with - such a waste.

This dramatisation of the epochal David Bailey / Jean Shrimpton photo-shoot in New York, January 1962 made for an entertaining if occasionally shallow viewing. Presented very much as a confrontation between rebellious youth and fusty conservatism (in the person of their accompanying chaperon, the tyrannical, but brittle and of course much older Lady Rendlesham), Bailey and Shrimpton are portrayed as the advance guard of the whole Swinging 60's movement, a point rather unsubtly made with its references to the Beatles and Mary Quant just before the end.

Whether Bailey's contribution to photography was quite as seismic as the Beatles on music or Quant on fashion is open to debate but as a light, amusing and easy on the eye entertainment, it worked well I thought. Bailey's famous pictures are well recreated, much to the righteous indignation of behind-the-times Rendlesham, and while there's not much more to the piece than their various contretemps, interspersed with Shrimpton's occasional vulnerability, precocity and gaucheness, one has to respect the difficulty in making the fashion world a gripping dramatic undertaking.

The acting of the three leads was very good, Aneurin Bernard especially good as the saturnine, Cockney-on-the-make, "don't call me David" Bailey, Helen McCrory equally so as the ever-so posh Lady Rendlesham and if Karen Gillan sometimes seems too old for the 18 that the real Shrimpton was at the time, she comes through in the end as her character develops some maturity and wisdom. I don't have much of an opinion of the fashion world but saw from this how the whole "supermodel" phenomenon of recent times got its start. Whether that was something I desperately needed to know, I'm not sure but the production did satisfy my curiosity in British popular culture in the 60's and was also one of the rare programmes my wife and I could sit and watch together with equal interest and yes, enjoyment