Capturing Film History in the Making recently transferred from London's Getty Images Gallery to the exhibition space of the Walter Reade cinema at New York's Lincoln Center – apt enough for a show that celebrates transatlantic collaboration. A collection of photographs taken at Pinewood, Shepperton and Teddington, mostly in the 40s, 50s and 60s, it's a rum and variable grouping of the glamorous, the ordinary and the absurd – and occasionally all three at once, as in one amusing shot from the set of Cleopatra.

Joseph Mankiewicz looks through his viewfinder at Richard Burton, whose ornate breastplate is somewhat undercut by the civilian trousers and shoes he wears underneath it, and the fag dangling from his lips. Elizabeth Taylor, meanwhile, sits next to him in fishnets and a white fur hat, apparently swilling wine and having a gay old time. None of the footage shot at Pinewood made it into the final cut of the movie.

There's always something pleasing about the sight of stars mucking about in costume – it confirms the notion that movie-making is essentially a lark, however much detailed information we might have about to the contrary – and there are several other such shots here. There's Margaret Rutherford chucking young Norman Wisdom on the chin (on the set of his 1954 breakthrough, Trouble in Store); there's Brando, hovering attentively over Lollobrigida lolling on a reclining armchair off-set on A Countess from Hong Kong.

There's also the opposite effect, in which fantasyland is made to look boring, even laborious. Look at Kubrick, sat in General Buck Turgidson's quarters while shooting Dr Strangelove: George C. Scott is on his left, in boxer shorts and an open Hawaiian shirt, Tracy Reed on his right, in her underwear, either putting a gown on or taking it off. A killer tableau – yet the maestro couldn't look more bored if he tried. Nor does Alec Guinness look at his most content rehearsing a mamba for Captain's Paradise; while a shot from the set of The Road to Hong Kong – the last of Bing Crosby and Bob Hope's Road movies, also featuring Peter Sellers – sees three of the screen's consummate entertainers each gazing blankly in a different direction.

There are also reminders of once-prevalent practices that have fallen from favour. With the occasional notable exception – Nicole Kidman, step forward – the false nose is rarely deployed by major stars these days. Here, however, we find no fewer than three case studies in proboscis enhancement. Orson Welles is seen in the studio café during the shooting of the forgettable whodunit Trent's Last Case, perhaps considering how to negotiate his cup of coffee without threatening the integrity of the latex. (Sadly, there are no images here from the Shepperton set of The Third Man, one of the few movies in which Welles appeared without a false nose.)

Elsewhere, Laurence Olivier is seen being made up as beaky Richard III, arrestingly arranged against a black background. But most striking of all is Alec Guinness, similarly composed against black, David Lean crouching at his feet as the finishing touches are applied to the outrageous hook nose he wore as Fagin. Leaping out from the dark as if shot in 3D, it's a reminder of why the characterisation becomes harder to defend with each passing year.

There are fewer than a handful of colour shots in the whole show. The Red Shoes's Moira Shearer poses with half-tied slipper for a print of weirdly saturated red and turquoise, while Sellers vamps for a photographer in half a Clouseau outfit, his hat, moustache and trenchcoat incongruously matched with jeans and sneakers. Perhaps the weirdest image in the show, and also by far the most recent, shows Keira Knightley in front of a blue screen, her skin bleached and hair wild – because, you realise after a moment, she's floating in a tank. The scuba diver perched beyond her chartreuse-clad shoulder in a vivid lemon-yellow-rimmed mask completes the look. What strange larks.