VTIFF Presents: Harold and Lillian
Sponsored by Main Street Landing
Directed by Daniel Raim
USA | Documentary | 2016 | 94 min.
Post-screening Q & A with the director
A deeply moving and yet humorous account of the romantic and creative partnership of storyboard artist Harold Michelson and his wife, film researcher Lillian Michelson—a talented couple once considered “the heart of Hollywood.” Harold’s compositions often served as templates for some of cinema’s most iconic shots, like the view through Anne Bancroft’s leg towards Dustin Hoffman in The Graduate or the parting of the Red Sea in The Ten Commandments, not to mention the haunting scene of the birds in Hitchcock’s The Birds. Through an engaging mix of love letters, film clips and candid conversations with Harold and Lillian, Danny DeVito, Mel Brooks, Francis Coppola and others, the film chronicles their remarkable relationship and two extraordinary careers spanning six decades of movie-making history. So revered were they by the top directors in Hollywood that when Steven Spielberg produced the film Schreck, he named the king and queen Harold and Lillian.
“A passionate and beguiling movie-love documentary that shines a light on two of the unsung artisan heroes of Hollywood.”
-Variety
