In a famous scene in Ernst Lubitsch’s 1942 classic To Be or Not to Be (about a Polish acting troop during the period of Nazi occupation), the director of the embedded play (“Gestapo”) complains that the actor playing Hitler does not resemble the Fuhrer, and instead is "just a man with a little moustache." The director, casting about for a model to illustrate what he is looking for, sees a photograph on the wall and exclaims, “That’s it, that’s what Hitler looks like,” to which the actor replies, “That’s a picture of me.”
This notion of a picture or portrait possessing a mysterious, ineffable quality potentially transcending that of the ostensible subject, is also evoked in Don Delillo’s 1991 novel, which remarks at one point: “Mao Zedong. She liked that name all right. But it is funny how a picture. It is funny how a picture what?”
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