But no cigar.

I have said it before.

Any self respecting photographer should have a subscription to Vanity Fair.

Sure, they confuse amateur hour politics with photography, but I don’t buy it for their perennial bashing of anything that is right of center. I can get that on the nine o’clock news, free.

No, the magazine is a great showcase for photography, never better than with their annual Hollywood Issue which comes out right before the Oscars.

This year the photo essay is an attempt to recreate the most famous scenes from Hitchcock’s movies – Dial M for Murder, Rear Window, Marnie, Rebecca, Strangers on a Train, Vertigo, To Catch a Thief, Psycho, Lifeboat, The Birds and my favorite, North by Northwest. You know the scenes.

The sets are fabulous, the evidence of hard work and attention to detail abundant. Astonishing in many ways.

Yet the whole thing is a failure and the reason is that the actors posing in the picture are – well, it’s really what they are not.

What they are not is Cary Grant, James Stewart, Kim Novak, Grace Kelly, Eve Marie Saint and so on.

That’s some sort of commentary on the lost era of glamour that was Hollywood. Just take a look at the snap of the North by Northwest recreation where the hero is being chased by the crop dusting plane. VF says they even tracked down the tailor who made the suit worn in the movie and had him make a replica. The actor has a spare tire of some 20lbs excess weight around his stomach and looks like nothing so much as an ad for a Big Mac and fries. Cary Grant must be spinning in his grave.

Nonetheless, a brave try by some fine photographers. Get the magazine. Whether you look at the commissioned photos or the advertisements, you are in for a treat. Just avoid the editorials.