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He filmed him at work as he performed two tasks of which he is an acknowledged master: drawing the male nude, and painting in the ancient medium of egg yolk tempera. He encouraged Cadmus to talk about his life. Haltingly at first, but with increasing fluency, Cadmus spoke about a wide variety of subjects; including the WPA; "The Fleet's In", and several other controversies; his place in American painting; his friendship with E.M. Forster; the influence of the Old Masters on his work; his involvement in photography; his interest in music, literature and dance.

Sutherland then studied the sketch to see what "worked" on film: what lines, what camera angles, what scenes. He showed the super 8 mm study to Cadmus, convincing the somewhat reluctant subject that he came across well on film. Convinced, Cadmus began to contribute his own ideas — part of Sutherland's plan to make the artist an extension of the filmmaker, and vice versa. Sutherland made full use of this unusual collaboration. Cadmus helped to plan the graphic moves the cameraman would use to capture the wealth of detail within Cadmus' dense narrative paintings, and he suggested the pose the model would assume in the sketching scene. As a director, Sutherland remained the final decision maker, but that job was easier as it became apparent to both men that Sutherland's vision of Cadmus was very close to the artist's conception of himself. Sutherland planned the final shooting carefully, relying heavily on the lessons learned from the super 8 mm sketch. The final film, for all its apparent spontaneity is anything but random. Sutherland even went so far as to write out the best of Cadmus' lines from the sketch onto large sheets of posterboard, and used these cue cards to feed the artist his own words on the day of the shoot.

In the final 16mm version, the best scenes from the sketch take on a new life. Sutherland is able to take advantage of a number of important assets, including Cadmus' carefully cultivated rapport with the camera, and the addition of a highly skilled cameraman, borrowed from the National Geographic television specials. 

Cadmus talks engagingly about subjects ranging from his life-long commitment to satire and exaggeration ("People's noses should be rubbed in all sorts of things, pleasant and unpleasant, or else they skip it") to the paradoxical contrast between an artist's work and his life ("Be regular and ordinary in your life, like a bourgeois," he says, quoting Flaubert, "So you can be violent and original in your art.") In a feast for the eye, he demonstrates his masterful technique of sketching the nude, and painting in egg tempera. He reveals much about himself and his work, but he will not, he insists, tell all. "I'm not going to unravel all the mysteries," he warns, "I think people should discover them for themselves."

"PAUL CADMUS: Enfant Terrible at 80" was Produced and Directed by David Sutherland. Photographed by Joe Seamans. Edited by Michael Colonna. Presented by Fairfield University under the guidance of Steven Weber, Dean of Arts and Sciences; and with the research assistance of Art Historian Phillip Eliasoph. Funding was provided by the Sara Roby Foundation, Forbes Inc., and Maupintours.

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David Sutherland 

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