A Love Letter to Moviemaking

The film “Hugo,” is the first family movie Martin Scorsese, director of such disturbing works s as “Taxi Driver,” “Cape Fear,” “Shutter Island” and “Raging Bull,” has made. Here, he creates a world about innocence, ecstatic creativity and love of his chosen art, film, which both entrances and instructs. My 12-year-old companion assured me that it was faithful to the book, a graphic novel by Brian Selznick about the true story of George Méliès, a French filmmaker who, at the dawn of the 20th century, made more than 500 short films, fantasies of fairies and lobsters and rocket ships to the moon, before sinking into almost complete obscurity. Hugo Cabret (Asa Butterfield) is a small boy who lives in the Paris train station in the 1930s, keeping the clocks wound and the gears oiled. He tiptoes around, palming a croissant here, a plum there and stealing mechanical toys from the elderly proprietor of the toy shop (Ben Kingsley). But he is caught, and the shopkeeper makes him empty the pockets where he keeps his treasures: gears, tools, and a small sketch pad with drawings of mechanical gadgets, including the inner workings of a life-sized metal man. The sight of these sketches seems to deeply upset the shopkeeper, and he confiscates the book. A mystery unfolds as Hugo tries to get his book back and keep working on the metal man, an automaton his father (charmingly played by Jude Law) found in a museum attic and was attempting to fix when he died in a fire. Its significance to the shopkeeper unfolds slowly as Hugo, assisted by the shopkeeper’s goddaughter, Isabelle (Chloë Grace Moretz), poke around, finding clues in dusty volumes in the bookshop and boxes of letters hidden in a wardrobe. Gradually the movie shifts from the story of the neglected orphan and his brainy friend to the story of her Papa George, who is, of course, the long-forgotten Méliès. Scorsese lets the story unfold with both gentleness and spirit. His cinematographer, Robert Richardson, brings the detailed charcoal drawings to glowing, sepia-toned, life. The cast is a delight: Kingsley is a fearsome yet sad Papa George, Helen McRory is sad and beautiful as his wife Jeanne, who starred in Méliès’ films and was in his magic act even earlier. She floats above the stage, seemingly unsupported, with dreamy elegance. Frances de la Tour and Richard Griffiths are aging suitors, kept apart by her fierce little dog, and Sacha Baron Cohen is wonderful as the officious station master, who keeps the station safe from orphans and yearns for the sweet-faced flower-seller (Emily Mortimer). Hugo is frightened yet determined. He believes that everyone has a purpose and his is fixing things. If he can only fix the automaton he’ll receive a message from his father. It turns out his purpose is to fix something entirely different – an injustice of history that robbed Papa George of his rightful place as the grandfather of modern comedic cinema. Film illuminates your dreams — it’s like magic, this movie says — and by invoking Harold Lloyd and Charlie Chaplin, and while placing Méliès alongside them as a master of fantasy and comedy, Scorsese has created a romance, an adventure, and a love letter to the craft he has done so much to advance. “Hugo” is rated PG for some perilous situations and smoking. It is playing at The Moviehouse in Millerton, NY, and elsewhere.

Latest News

South Kent School’s unofficial March reunion

Elmarko Jackson was named a 2023 McDonald’s All American in his senior year at South Kent School. He helped lead the Cardinals to a New England Prep School Athletic Conference (NEPSAC) AAA title victory and was recruited to play at the University of Kansas. This March he will play point guard for the Jayhawks when they enter the tournament as a No. 4 seed against (13) Samford University.

Riley Klein

SOUTH KENT — March Madness will feature seven former South Kent Cardinals who now play on Division 1 NCAA teams.

The top-tier high school basketball program will be well represented with graduates from each of the past three years heading to “The Big Dance.”

Keep ReadingShow less
Hotchkiss grads dancing with Yale

Nick Townsend helped Yale win the Ivy League.

Screenshot from ESPN+ Broadcast

LAKEVILLE — Yale University advanced to the NCAA men’s basketball tournament after a buzzer-beater win over Brown University in the Ivy League championship game Sunday, March 17.

On Yale’s roster this year are two graduates of The Hotchkiss School: Nick Townsend, class of ‘22, and Jack Molloy, class of ‘21. Townsend wears No. 42 and Molloy wears No. 33.

Keep ReadingShow less
Handbells of St. Andrew’s to ring out Easter morning

Anne Everett and Bonnie Rosborough wait their turn to sound notes as bell ringers practicing to take part in the Easter morning service at St. Andrew’s Church.

Kathryn Boughton

KENT—There will be a joyful noise in St. Andrew’s Church Easter morning when a set of handbells donated to the church some 40 years ago are used for the first time by a choir currently rehearsing with music director Susan Guse.

Guse said that the church got the valuable three-octave set when Harlem Valley Psychiatric Center closed in the late 1980s and the bells were donated to the church. “The center used the bells for music therapy for younger patients. Our priest then was chaplain there and when the center closed, he brought the bells here,” she explained.

Keep ReadingShow less
Picasso’s American debut was a financial flop
Picasso’s American debut was a financial flop
Penguin Random House

‘Picasso’s War” by Foreign Affairs senior editor Hugh Eakin, who has written about the art world for publications like The New York Review of Books, Vanity Fair, The New Yorker and The New York Times, is not about Pablo Picasso’s time in Nazi-occupied Paris and being harassed by the Gestapo, nor about his 1937 oil painting “Guernica,” in response to the aerial bombing of civilians in the Basque town during the Spanish Civil War.

Instead, the Penguin Random House book’s subtitle makes a clearer statement of intent: “How Modern Art Came To America.” This war was not between military forces but a cultural war combating America’s distaste for the emerging modernism that had flourished in Europe in the early decades of the 20th century.

Keep ReadingShow less