THE ILLUSION OF AN ILLUSION

By MICHAEL PERKINS

LOS ANGELES’ ACADEMY MUSEUM OF MOTION PICTURES is, in a town veritably built upon buzz, one thing that more than lives up to the hype, a dazzling treasure house that celebrates the entire history of Hollywood magic-making. Packed with exactly what you’d expect from a century of trophy hoarding by the same folks who brought you the Oscars, the Academy Museum is the place where you go to catch an up-close encounter with Dorothy’s ruby slippers or Charles Foster Kane’s sled. But as amazing as the permanent collection at the AMMP is, the special exhibitions are even more astonishing.

An offer you can’t refuse, at least with a digital camera: f/4, 28mm, ISO 3200, 1/30sec, handheld.

One of the museum’s key attractions from 2024, ending early in 2025, is an entire wing honoring the 50th anniversary of the release of “The Godfather”. Some of the exhibits are of the standard museum variety, with costumes and fashion sketches of the main characters or an original script draft from Mario Puzo, complete with red-pen notations and revisions from director Francis Ford Coppola. The feature which, alone, is worth the price of admission, though, is a stunning re-creation of the set for Don Corleone’s office, the room where the first definitive sequences of the film are staged. Perfect down to the Nth detail, the area is the kind of stunt only Hollywood could pull off; the illusion of something that was an illusion in the first place.

What gives the entire set its greatest ring of authenticity, however, is the duplication of the minimal lighting that was used by cinematographer Gordon Willis, a deep universe of shadow that threatened to swallow everyone in a menacing murk. The veteran film maker had to drastically re-invent whole processes to get acceptable exposure on the severely under-lit set, and the Academy Museum’s replication of that atmosphere is what most excites visiting photographers. To get clear, noise-free results, handheld, with today’s digital sensors, most of which can crank their light sensitivity up to levels undreamed of in the film world of the early 1970’s…well, it’s like some nerd shooter’s fever dream. And Hollywood, in the worldly wise words of Sam Spade is, indeed, the stuff that dreams are made of.