The year 1966 marked a turning point in film. Much in the way British pop groups invaded America in 1964, cutting-edge European movies made by risk-taking French, British, Swedish and Italian directors were being distributed in the U.S. Their impact was huge, especially among young American adults looking for diversions more in sync with their experiences and sexual awareness.
Influential European art films of 1966 included Alfie, Blow-Up, The Battle of Algiers, A Man and A Woman, Georgy Girl, The Good The Bad and The Ugly and Masculin Féminin. These films also helped paved the way for the young directors of New Hollywood in the late 1960s and early '70s, a movement that infused American movie-making with brash reality and more youthful themes. [Photo above of director William Klein and model-actress Dorothy McGowen]
One of these influential French films in 1966 was Who Are You, Polly Maggoo? Directed by American-born photographer and documentary filmmaker William Klein, the satirical reality film starred American supermodel Dorothy McGowan (above), who came to epitomize the youthful Swinging London look on the covers of Vogue, Harper's Bazaar, Elle, Glamour and other publications in the 1960s. In a way, the film was an elbow from Klein, who viewed fashion photography as advertising, not fine art.
Also starring were Grayson Hall as Miss Maxwell, a fashion-magazine editor modeled after Diana Vreeland,and Philippe Noiret as the TV reporter and director. Also appearing in the film are Jean Rochefort, Sami Frey and Alice Sapritch.
By 1966, the cult of the childlike supermodel had evolved and reached a high point. Beginning with the waif-like appeal of actresses Audrey Hepburn in Sabrina in 1954 and continuing with Jean Seberg in Breathless (1960), Mia Farrow in Guns at Batasi (1964) and Jane Birkin in Blow-Up, a wave of fashion designers and models such as Twiggy, Jean Shrimpton and Peggy Moffitt (also in this movie) took on the new look and became superstars.
Polly Maggoo masqueraded as a reality film and not only poked fun at faux drama of the new fashion world but tried to find depth in the models themselves, as if all beauty was automatically art. After the release of McGowan's first and only film, she vanished from public view and neither acted nor modeled again. In 2013, she gave an interview to Harper's Bazaar. She died earlier this year in January in Mamaroneck, N.Y., at age 82.
Additional note: The film's music is by Michel Legrand.
Here's Who Are You, Polly Maggoo?...
