VIDAL SASSOON: THE MOVIE - VODMarch 02, 2011
Phase 4 Films
On Demand Weekly provides new movie reviews of movies on demand from the POV of watching from the comfort of your home. Today’s review: VIDAL SASSOON: THE MOVIE (Phase 4 Films).
HOW ONE MAN CHANGED THE WORLD WITH A PAIR OF SCISSORS
By Amy Slotnick
If you didn’t already know this, Vidal Sassoon is the most important person in hair dressing. And after watching the new documentary, VIDAL SASSOON: THE MOVIE, that is more meaningful than I originally thought. Not only did he reinvent how women look and feel and inspired what’s fashionable for the past 50 years, his is a true rags to riches story.
The story of Vidal Sassoon before he founded his first salon is as interesting and impactful as his celebrated career. As a Jewish child of post war London, Vidal lived in a London orphanage before reuniting with his mother. She had a vision that he would one day be a hairdresser and as a result, arranged for him to apprentices a barber.
Taking much of his inspiration from the modern architecture Bauhaus and Frank Lloyd Wright, Sassoon says in the film that, “hair dressing needed to be changing.” Instead of poufy and teased, for the first time hair became geometric and angular, styled to fit a woman’s bone structure. Sassoon’s iconic look, which he says took nine years to develop, eliminated the superfluous and was easier for women to maintain.
In those nine years Sassoon did more than just develop how hair could be cut. He also developed himself. He says several times that he wished he had the benefit of a college education and that had he gone to college, he would have become an architect. Instead, Sassoon is self-educated and he even spent three years in elocution lessons to get rid of his cockney accent.
Not only did he change how women looked, Sassoon also changed the design of the modern salon. He developed hair academies, a product line and a book on health. He moved to the US and became a celebrity, cutting famous heads such as Mia Farrow for Rosemary’s Baby. We learn of his commitment to health and exercise, through pilates and yoga, as well as a charity he launched for post-Katrina New Orleans.
It wasn’t until I saw the amazing images that this film puts together that I realized what a distinctive Sassoon look really was. What came across even more is that he was and is an innovator, a risk taker and a driven, conscious, thoughtful person. He overcame poverty and created a modern aesthetic for how we look and feel.If the film doesn’t make it to your local theaters, or even if it does, it is a great film to watch on demand.
Amy Slotnick is a contributor to On Demand Weekly. She works as an independent producer and freelance consultant to film financing start-ups. Previously she was a Senior VP of Production at Miramax Films.
VIDAL SASSOON: THE MOVIE is availabe until 11/11/11. Look for VIDAL SASSOON: THE MOVIE in the Independent Film and/or Documentary area on your cable system's Movie On Demand section.
Running Time: 93 minutes / Rated PG
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