August 2002 Film Journal Published by KNOPF ($39.95) Nevada, 1960. On the set of “The Misfits,” in the middle of the Nevada desert, Marilyn Monroe rehearses the text of her next scene with Clark Gable. She looks concentrated, vulnerable, eager, and with the large pleated back of the mountain range unfolding behind her, like a prehistoric animal. Eve Arnold worked with Monroe for two months during the filming and became her friend. Spain, 1969. George C. Scott sits down in the full army uniform of his character, General Patton. His face blank, he seems to be sinking into himself, his entire being getting ready for a transformation into his character. Paris, 1977. Joseph Losey watches a fashion show at the Chanel studios while the triple blur of the photographer’s silhouette is reflected in the mirrors behind him. Losey does not look at us- he looks through us, absorbed in the spectacle. Mexico, 1983. John Huston, lost in thought, sits with crossed hands on the set of “Under the Volcano.” His weathered, tanned, thoughtful face finds a strange echo in the display of Mexican masks for the Day of the Dead which seem to watch him. These are just a few of the pictures in Eve Arnold’s new book, Film Journal. It is slightly larger in format than a novel and intersperses text and photographs from her thirty-plus years of film shoots. Eve Arnold, one of the very few women to have made it into the exclusive Magnum Photos boys’ club, had plunged into photography with little professional training other than a six-week course with Alexei Brodovitch in 1952. Her first photographs of an African-American fashion show in Harlem ignored the rigid studio techniques of the day in favor of a lighter approach inspired by photojournalism: In lieu of heavy lighting and studio retouching, Arnold used a small, portable camera and depended on the existing light and ambience. Her new book about film stars similarly ignores the conventions of the genre: no heavy symbolism, no glamorizing, but a much more modest, open, diary-like approach. While meeting famous subjects such as Joan Crawford, Richard Burton, Simone Signoret, Sophia Loren, Marlon Brando, Isabella Rossellini, Marilyn Monroe and many others, Arnold did not impose her own scenario. Instead she tried to blend into their lives with an open mind, casting no judgement even when her subjects proved to be exhibitionists, capricious, extravagant or just plain drunk . She let her mind be blank, inviting improvisation and play into the photo sessions so they would have their own logic. Just like photographers, actors spend a good deal of their life waiting. Arnold organized her life around the film shoots and often worked in-between scenes, on the sidelines, during make-up or hair sessions, at meal times. In her pictures the actors are often completely absorbed into rehearsing their role or bracing themselves for public appearance. She seems to have been forgotten and because of the rare freedom she affords the actors they relax, step back into their private sphere, giving us the gift of being in front of the camera as they would be with themselves. The photographs often have an aura of thoughtful melancholy or loneliness, with an occasional burst of whimsy when the actors seize the moment and have fun. Working with people who are as intent as actors in controlling their image, Arnold has managed to substitute a deeper truth, made of light and shadows and glimpses of what lay behind the faces of the beautiful and famous. - Carole Naggar