a review of 线条之王：阿尔·赫施费尔德的故事

#18: The Line King: The Al Hirschfeld Story (streaming on Mubi) Since Filmstruck hasn't hit Roku yet, I thought I'd pop for a month or two of Mubi to keep things interesting for the 365 challenge. It's a really interesting little service, with a rotating daily selection of eclectic art films, each kept around for only 30 days, with one new film every day. For my first Mubi selection, I went with this 1996 Hirschfeld documentary (which coincidentally expires in about 2 days,) which presents a warm, compelling portrait of an artist whose work I was basically familiar with, but hadn't really delved into his biographical details. As it turns out, Al Hirschfeld the man was just as delightful as his art, and seeing how steady and sharp he was at ~93 years old was unbelievably inspiring to me, a guy who's staring down the barrel of 40 in a few months. The film definitely shows its age in places, with production values and editing that seem more of a piece with a mid-80s PBS documentary than a modern arthouse feature doc might. But director Susan Dryfoos has a terrific eye for montage, pulling us in close to the details in Hirschfeld's work, and juxtaposing the art and narration to show his development as a visual stylist over 70+ years. Recommended!