Plot

Screened at Cannes Film Festival, 2007 and Locarno Film Festival, 2007

No other photographer has captured the far-flung social and cultural life of the Cote d'Azur in the fifties with such intelligent verve and remarkably gentle irony as the Irishman Edward Quinn (1920 - 1997). For over a decade, Quinn showed a perfect blend of persistence and discretion in his daring exploration of the social jungle on the French Riviera. In this iridescent epicenter of high life and big business, of art, music and literature, he managed to discover incomparable gems. Riviera Cocktail encompasses an entire age, tracing the path followed by Edward Quinn from his early pin-up photography to his unconventional portrayal of all the great stars and, finally, to his relationships, as a photographer, with Pablo Picasso and Georg Baselitz.

In their soundtrack, Franco Ambrosetti and his band "European Legacy" enter into an exhilarating dialogue with Quinn's visual universe, combining the contemporary with the nostalgic in a compellingly musical complement to an age that has gone down in history as the "Golden Fifties." In 1949 Edward Quinn was barely surviving as a photographer until he finally realized that he could make a living out of his fascination with the beautiful, the rich, and the famous on the Cote d'Azur. He soon built up a network of helpful barmen, secretaries, bellhops and service staff at luxury hotels along the coast. Calling himself "Edward Quinn, Photographer, Nice," he launched his lifelong career, which, seen through the lens of time, can at last be interpreted and enjoyed as an invaluable photographic evocation of a lost world.

SF Schweizer Fersehen / SFR Television Suisse / TeleClub / Avro / YLE-Teema / ARTE
A Film by Heinz Butler, 2007 - A Production of NZZFilm

Review:
"The name of Irish photographer Edward Quinn remains synonymous with a specific decade and region: the Cote d'Azur of the 1950s. In launching his career, Quinn quickly recognized the public's twin fascinations with international celebrity and ritzy living, and thus spent years trolling up and down the French Riviera, capturing indelible images of the high life among the exorbitantly rich. Heinz Bütler's biographical documentary Riviera Cocktail: Edward Quinn, Photographer, Nice traces the life and career of this iconic figure and purveyor of pop culture, from his early days as a pinup photographer, through his celebrity liaisons and the images he captured on the Cote d'Azur, through the relationships he forged with such giants as Baselitz and Picasso late in life." -Nathan Southern, All Movie Guide

Related Links

• IMDb Page

Additional Information

• Country: Switzerland
• Language: English
• Format: NTSC
• Aspect Ratio: 4:3 (standard TV)
• Color: Color
• Sound: Dolby Digital