“The best fashion show is definitely on the street.”

So says Bill Cunningham, and he should know.

What: “Bill Cunningham New York”

Star rating: ***

Featuring: Bill Cunningham, Tom Wolfe and Anna Wintour

Directed by: Richard Press

Running time: 84 minutes

Rating: Not rated

Where: Regal Cinemas in North Falmouth (Nickelodeon)

The subject of the documentary “Bill Cunningham New York” — shown as he is approaching his 80th birthday — has been spent decades riding around Manhattan on his Schwinn and stopping to take photos for his “On the Street” and “Evening Hours” columns for The New York Times.

Directed by Richard Press, the film provides an affectionate look at a man who views the world through fashion. To say it’s an “intimate” look may be true, because we see him, for instance, in his small rent-controlled apartment at Carnegie Hall and Press asks Cunningham personal questions, especially toward the end of the film. But this is a man whose whole life seems to involve fashion and photography, and the related travel and socializing that come with those areas. There’s no hint of a romantic life, or even thoughts of one, and when discussing going to church as a youth, he says he probably was looking at all of the hats.

It’s a narrow focus, in a sense, but it makes for a fascinatingly unusual portrait of a man who has devoted his life, his entire life, apparently, to his passion. He’s strikingly genial in an endearing way, but he’s also fiercely independent when it comes to his work, to the point where he often doesn’t take money because “If you don’t take money they can’t tell you what to do.”

He has strong opinions when it comes to what he does. He’s not interested in celebrity. We see him in Paris one night, when a herd of paparazzi swarms Catherine Deneuve. Cunningham’s looking elsewhere. He finds fashion on the streets, worn by everyday people — well, everyday people with style, a sense of fashion. Fashion emerges from the streets, he says: “I let the street speak to me.” He calls fashion “an art form of dressing the body” and “an armor against everyday life.”

His New York Times “columns” — a collection of photos accompanied by words, instead of the other way around — are his vehicles to show what he sees. “On the Street” is exactly what it says, the fashions he finds on the street. “Evening Hours” sounds as if it would be a social column, but Cunningham says it isn’t. It’s his way of documenting charity events — he’s much more interested in the “what,” the nature and value of the charity, and the fashions he finds there, than the “who,” the celebs involved.

Perhaps ironically, given that he’s a man who prefers to observe and record than to be the center of attention himself, Cunningham has become a celebrity in his own right in New York circles. The film features on-screen commentary from many notables, including writer Tom Wolfe and Vogue editor Anna Wintour (supposedly the inspiration for the Meryl Streep character in “The Devil Wears Prada”), who says, “We all get dressed for Bill.”

Something else is going on in “Bill Cunningham New York” besides fashion and photography, something about the trade-offs that come with life.

Cunningham looks so happy, like someone in love, only not with a person. I wonder if he really is happy, though. I wonder if, by being so focused on his passion, he regrets missing out on other things in life. He pretty much says that the other things don’t even occur to him.

I wonder.

TIM MILLER

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