Cecil Beaton: The Beaton Image

A lavish and artfully constructed portrait of the great British dandy, photographer, aesthete and designer, illustrated with a wealth of Beaton's photographs from his earliest schoolboy experiments to high society portraits, using family albums, home movies and interviews with Beaton himself and many friends and collaborators. One extraordinary fragment of silent film from 1928 directed by Oswald Mosley features Beaton in drag as a brothel keeper and Stephen Tennant as an urchin.

As a Bright Young Thing he was at the heart of the British aesthetic establishment but really came into his own when he came under the wing of the Sitwells as their official photographer. His affair with Garbo, a scandal at Vogue, the trauma of his great unrequited love, the Oscars for costume design, and his reign as Britain's celebrity photographer are all revealed in a deeply satisfying and insightful film.