Jerry Schatzberg
Tribute
An essential filmmaker
Nothing made him seem destined to become a photographer, much less a filmmaker. Yet it’s through these two mediums that Jerry Schatzberg made his mark as one of the most brilliant artists of our times. His iconic snapshots remain forever etched on our retinas, as does his intense filmography, another emblematic figure of the New Hollywood.
Behind the lens, in still or moving images, the New Yorker immortalized the greats, from Bob Dylan to Faye Dunaway, from Mick Jagger to Catherine Deneuve, from Al Pacino to Andy Warhol, and never stopped depicting the byways and fringes of America, harking back to the denizens of his neighborhood as a child.
After growing up in the Bronx in the late 1920s, Jerry Schatzberg reluctantly followed in his father’s footsteps to work in the family furrier business. He ended up assisting the famous photographer William Helburn, and quickly decided to set up his own studio.
Noted for his singular approach to portraiture and fashion photography in the 1950s and 1960s, Jerry Schatzberg became a renowned photographer, collaborating consistently with the magazines Vogue, Life, Glamour and Esquire.
Inspired by Bergman and the New Wave, which he discovered in New York’s arthouse cinemas, he simultaneously embarked on a film career, directing Puzzle of a Downfall Child, a first feature released in 1970 with Faye Dunaway in the lead role.
One year later, his sophomore film, The Panic in Needle Park, chronicled the day-to-day of a gang of Manhattan drug addicts and served as the breakout role for a promising young actor, Al Pacino. But it wasn’t until his third film, Scarecrow, and the mythical pairing of Gene Hackman and Al Pacino, that Jerry Schatzberg truly arrived, receiving the Palme d’Or at the 1973 Cannes Film Festival from jury president Ingrid Bergman.
“No other American director made three such extraordinary films in a row,” according to Michel Ciment. Through a career spanning over 60 years, hundreds of memorable photographs, and a rich filmography crossing paths with Meryl Streep (The Seduction of Joe Tynan, 1979), Morgan Freeman (Street Smart, 1987) and Guillaume Canet (The Day the Ponies Come Back, 2000), Jerry Schatzberg remains unforgettable as “an esthete, a great formal director, who was also interested in emotions and human relationships, like all of the greatest directors.”
This year, the Deauville Festival has therefore decided to flip the script and put Jerry Schatzberg in front of the lens, to capture his talent and pay tribute to him in person. The Pierre Filmon-directed documentary on the photographer-director, Jerry Schatzberg, Landscape Portrait, will be shown on this occasion.
