Who Are You, Polly Maggoo?

Legendary fashion photographer and photojournalist William Klein exploded into narrative filmmaking with this Prix Jean Vigo–winning mockumentary, now a cult record of groovy 1960s mod fashion.

Trailed by a gormless French film crew through Paris, American model Polly (played by director William Klein’s favourite model, Dorothy McGowan) is a mod Alice weaving her way through a stylishly shambolic Wonderland. Right from the famous opening sequence – a runway show in a Gaudi-esque colosseum in which fashionistas coo over models encased in sheet metal – Klein is fascinated with fashion’s theatre of the absurd. His satirical eye finds something solemn, even religious, in the banal pronouncements of fashion editors and the nonsensical questions of TV interviewers, while Polly seems bemused to find herself an object of worship for trend-hungry teens and lecherous men.

Two years before he would make the unnerving American satire Mr. Freedom, Klein skewers the rarefied world of Parisian haute couture and its hangers-on from his privileged position as one of the most subversive photographers to appear in American Vogue. With his sights on the commercialisation of the ‘60s “youthquake”, he mashes up the French New Wave with Beatles caper A Hard Day’s Night, using playful animation that anticipates Monty Python’s Flying Circus.

“[This] gleeful satire on the fashion industry underlined [William Klein’s] reputation as a brilliant, iconoclastic photographer” – The Guardian

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Content: Melbourne International Film Festival