If 70, 000 negatives is the measure of a person's life, then photographer Robert Capa lived his beyond anyone's expectations, and the documentary Robert Capa: In Love and War meticulously details the life of this extraordinary artist. Capa, born André Friedman in Hungary, was already noteworthy in France when the Spanish Civil War exposed his talents to the world. Capa's photograph of a Republican solider, caught at the precise moment when a bullet ended his life, is perhaps the best-known of his output from that struggle. The film conscientiously details Capa's personal struggles, from the loss of his greatest love during the Spanish conflict, to his brief affair with actress Ingrid Bergman, to his co-founding of the Magnum photo agency, to his tragic death while recording the French defeat at Dien Bien Phu in 1954. The portrait that emerges is one of restlessness driving his ambition and talent, a person who was, quite likely, never really comfortable either in his own skin or on the planet. What the film lacks is a in-depth critical analysis of Capa's work. From where did the intuition come? Perhaps the best estimation of Capa's talents came from one of the Gibbs sisters, a British family whom Capa made the subject of one of his photo essays concerning the struggles during the Blitz of World War Two: "He had it in him."
Review by Carrie Gorringe · Nitrate Online
