27 days to view 100 years of Hollywood

Take a wild guess at Audrey Hepburn's thoughts, share Clark Gable's gaze or play dress up with Elizabeth Taylor, at Magnum Ke Tasveer: At The Movies, a photo exhibition of Hollywood icons, at Sua House

Remember how your heart went out to Sabrina? The sweet, love-stricken chauffeur's daughter (Audrey Hepburn), so madly in love with David Larrabee (William Holden), the rich playboy who doesn't even know she exists. Every time you watch the movie, you're thrilled when David chases after her (post her Parisian makeover) and amused that his elder brother Linus (Humphrey Bogart) barely notices the change.


Ingrid Bergman: Shot by Robert Capa, the much-acclaimed photographer
who met the Swedish bombshell in Europe. The duo shared a brief romance.

Then, sequentially, you hate Linus for trying to break up the duo, love him for his sensitivity, hate him for packing the poor girl off to Paris and love him again for following her at the end.u00a0 All that emotion in less than two hours. Aren't Hollywood Classics awesome?

For 100 years now, these movies have been responsible for the smile, and sometimes, the scowl on your faceu00a0-- surely that's something to celebrate. Magnum, a cooperative organisation of some of the world's finest photographers, has an exhibition travelling the globe for this reason.

Abhishek Poddar, art-collector and director of Tasveer, an organisation that promotes photo-art, tells us he was thrilled when Magnum got in touch with him to organise, At The Movies, an exhibition that will showcase 40 unique images of Hollywood iconsu00a0-- James Dean, Sophia Lauren, Yul Brynner, Dustin Hoffman, Ingrid Bergman, Marlon Brando, Brigitte Bardot, Paul Newman and Elizabeth Taylor, to name just a few.

"Priced from R 60,000 onwards, purchased images will either be estate-signed or, in rare cases, signed by the photographer," Poddar tells us, pointing out that not all the images are for sale. In fact, two of his favourites, the only coloured images in the collection have been included for your viewing pleasureu00a0-- a stunning portrait of British filmmaker Alfred Hitchcock when he filmed the 1963 suspense-horror-flick, The Birds with a bird all set to perch on his cigar, and an image that captures Charlie Chaplin behind the camera as he directed the comedy-drama, Limelight in 1952.

Signed by photographer Dennis Stock, an image of Audrey Hepburn clicked during the making of, Sabrina in 1954 and an image of Andy Warhol and Edie Sedgwick (an It-girl of the '60s) popping out of a New York gutter that's signed by Burt Glinn are some of the rare finds. Marilyn Monroe has never looked sexier than she does in the picture clicked by Eve Arnold (one of the many Marilyn images here) when the diva was just resting between takes during the shoot of The Misfits and equally captivating is Arnold's 1963 picture of Elizabeth Taylor with her children.u00a0

It's impossible to select a favourite image, but one thing is for certainu00a0-- miss this exhibition and just like Boghart said in Casablanca, "You'll regret it. Maybe not today, maybe not tomorrow, but soon and for the rest of your life."

At: Magnum Ke Tasveer: At The Movies, Tasveer, Sua House, Kasturba Cross Road
On till: January 10, 10 am to 7 pm
Call: 22048138 / 22048139