A Tribute to Photography and the Movies

The Ten Best Movies About PhotographersNo. 6Fairy Tale: A True Story, 1997
Back when my kids were little I took them to see what I thought would be another G-rated waste of my adult time. Ten minutes into the film, I was hooked. In the ravaged society of Britain after World War I, two young girls wander into the woods and photograph a family of fairies. It is all a fake-the girls carefully created the scenes-but their images nonetheless convince many eager believers that such a fantasy world really exists. The film is based on real events, bringing in a cast of characters such as Arthur Conan Doyle (Peter O'Toole) and Harry Houdini (Harvey Keitel). Here we learn that to believe in photographs, it helps to believe in magic.