recent viewings

[David Mullen ASC]

Now that I'm between jobs (and recuperating from surgery), I've been drifting between the movie theaters and my DVD player catching up on stuff. Sometimes I'll go to a multiplex and see about a third of a movie (if I'm only checking out the cinematography and the print quality) and then move on randomly to another movie.

 

On DVD, I've been watching some old 1960's movies, not the great ones, just old studio stuff that I had read about years ago in old "American Cinematographers" and other magazines and books.

 

I have mixed feelings about 1960's-era cinematography. On one hand, some of the best cinematography in history comes from that era, movies like "2001", "Lawrence of Arabia", "In Cold Blood", many foreign classics from Japan, the U.K., France, Italy, etc.

 

On the other hand, the Hollywood studio style was in its deathknell and somewhat moribund before the 1970's U.S. cinematographers discovered a fresh way to shoot and light movies (partially inspired by European cinematography trends of the past decade). You had a lot of the great DP's of the studio era going back to the 1930's still working in the 1960's and their approach was clearly tired by then, although because they were still getting Oscar nominations for their work, they probably assumed they were on the right track.

 

I just watched "Shoes of the Fisherman" (DP Erwin Hillier, who did great b&w work on two Powell-Pressburger movies, "Canturbury Tales" and "I Know Where I'm Going") and "The Cardinal" (DP Leon Shamroy, who was the most Oscar-nominated DP in history -- 18 nominations, 4 wins).

 

Shamroy was perhaps the most egotistical of his generation too, having once said in an interview: "Lee Garmes will never see the day that he's as good as I am, and that goes for anybody in the motion picture business."

 

Even though Shamroy got another nomination for shooting "The Cardinal", the look is rather conventional compared to his great 3-strip Technicolor work of the 1940's like in "Leave Her to Heaven" or "Forever Amber". Although for a mainstream studio picture, director Otto Preminger hits on a number of controversial topics like partial-brith abortion, the KKK, the cooperation between the Catholics of Austria with the incoming Nazi party, etc.

 

And "Shoes of the Fisherman" seems almost prophetic, being about the first non-Italian pope being elected from a communist country, someone named "Kyril" (wasn't John-Paul II's name "Karol"?) I'm guessing that the fact that the studios were interested in these epic tales of Catholics in the 1960's was probably due to the election of John Kennedy.

 

The look of a lot of these 1960's studio movies basically seems to be to park a 10K next to the camera lens on a high stand as a key light, which actually can be fairly flattering to the actresses in these movies, but it gets repetitive. However, due to the slow-speed and contrast of these stocks, often when a night scene goes dark, it really goes dark, and shadows are a lot blacker than what is typically done today with soft ambient fill. I remember noticing how shadowy and dark the photography was at times for "Greatest Story Ever Told", almost like film noir.

 

It is refreshing, compared to modern movies, for these old Panavision / CinemaScope movies to take advantage of the wide frame to stage scenes in looser shots, even though it can border on the theatrical.

 

Next film to watch is "Boston Strangler" (shot by Richard Kline).

 

--

 

Of the recent movies, I just watched on DVD: "Flags of Our Fathers", "Inside Man", "The Proposition", plus a DV documentary called "Orwell Rolls in His Grave" (about the consolidation of the media under a few corporations.)

[Jonathan Bowerbank]

I have some of the same feelings regarding those old studio films. While I love the b&w photography, there's really not TOO much I can take from those films and put into my own films, cinematographically speaking. If I were incorporate to the array of lights they used, ALWAYS adding a kicker, backlight, eye light and even a HAIRlight (which always looked great with say, Cary Grant's greased up do) I don't feel anyone would be accepting of it and it would look perhaps too...TV like.

 

Could it be that TV and it's confines to the studio had a hand in urging DP's to go outside and create more naturalistic looks...I'd say probably yes :)

[David Mullen ASC]

There was a trend towards realism after WW2; it's just that what defined realism has changed over the years, and the tools that allow it (like faster film stocks) have also been evolving.

 

And to some extent, each generation rejects aspects of the previous generation's style, so it's also a cyclical thing. For decades, what was considered "good" color cinematography was to be sharp and clear, so on the one hand, you had a fairly natural straight-forward shooting approach after the 1950's but unnaturally hard crisp lighting and higher levels of fill to achieve what was considered technically "correct" for color.

 

So in the 1970's, you had two opposite trends: greater naturalism in lighting but increasing use of diffusion, smoke, flashing to knock down the sharpness and color saturation, a rejection of what was considered "good" color cinematography. Then in the 1980's, you saw a rejection of this heavily filtered style.

 

I think there are things to learn from every era of cinematography, although in the 1960's, for me, it's more the use of the widescreen frame than the lighting.

[Guest Tim Partridge]

Don't forget that Shamroy's best work was in the 60s: AGONY AND THE ECSTACY. Clearly it took him a lifetime to light like that. Those big master crane shots of the Sistine Chapel leave me breathless every time. The night time interiors in that location are especially impressive- deep T-stops too.

 

I love the stylised look of a lot of hard frontal lit/wide master shot Hollywood movies from the 60s such as THE ODD COUPLE, BREAKFAST AT TIFFANY'S, THE BIRDS, BAREFOOT IN THE PARK, FANTASTIC VOYAGE, MARY POPPINS- BUTTERFIELD 8 earlier too- Across many different genres, it's a rich, magical escapist look. Yeah, there were many slouchs who did the look badly (Ted Moore, Lucien Ballard, Philip Lathrop all come to mind, who all did better before this period), but you get sloppiness with any trend. TV had caught up with the hack Hollywood DPs too. Also, many of the older DPs had trained been trained lighting black and white and Technicolor, both mediums for the most part dead by the mid 60s. Did they keep that hard lit style going anticipating a return to black and white and colour later on in the late 60s and onwards? Something to consider.

 

ROSEMARY'S BABY I think is an interesting turning point, as it had to be lit to 5.6 for the zoom work on 50asa film, meaning hard light was the only option. William Fraker however was part of the next generation of DPs influenced by the new wave, where lighting was embracing the source driven and natural. While bounce light was out of the question, Fraker lit the film as if from sources only, and there's not one instant where you can see a fill shadow. Anytime before that movie an old studio DP would have had a 10K behind the camera, but the mentality was changing...

 

Cinematography peaked for me in the 1970s, when you had EVERYTHING all at once, with flashing, anamorphic low light photography, pushing, chemtone, faster lenses, flashing, high contrast, low contrast, hard light, bounce light, diffusion filters/nets- the variety was unreal, while at the same time wide open natural light photography could co-exist with beautifully composed and controlled studio light. There wasn't one generic way to shoot anything.

 

IMO, from somewhere around the early 1990s to now I think everything has gone to this drab, samey, monotonous muted colours/crushed blacks TV look. Endless wide open close up shots on long lenses with bokah going nuts. Obviously there are many exceptions, but overall if a movie from the last fifteen years is on television and I turn on, I'll never know if I'm watching DESPERATE HOUSEWIVES or not. Soft light isn't an art anymore (Watkin, Coutard), it's a right, thanks to compact, flexible Kinos and the like. Too much reliance on "capturing" images for the telecine/DI, because the eye is on how it will look for home viewing. Same for composition. That escapist, cinematic magic has long gone, in favour of some realist aesthetic that peaked in execution forty years ago (when it still acknowledged classical disciplines). More importantly, there's no argument that the directors were largely better in the 60s, and had Robert Wise, Stanley Kubrick and David Lean to look up to, as oppose to say Brian Singer, Tim Burton and The Wachowskis or whoever.

[David Mullen ASC]

Don't forget that Shamroy's best work was in the 60s: AGONY AND THE ECSTACY.

 

That and "Cleopatra" are great, although I still prefer his 1940's 3-strip Technicolor work in general. I saw a few reels of a new 70mm print of "Cleopatra" that looked amazing. He was one of the most innovative users of color along with Jack Cardiff and the movies of Vincent Minnelli.

 

But to me, a lot of the average 1960's studio work looked like 1950's color cinematography, only with better film stocks and lenses. There weren't any major aesthetic developments in Hollywood cinematography after 1950 until the late 1960's. It was more of a technical refinement process going on spurred on by large formats like 65mm/70mm. There were interesting developments in directing and editing styles though, and sound design too.

 

The advent of drive-in movies didn't help, with studios requiring a certain higher-key look that would survive being projected at a drive-in. The cinematography of "The Godfather" was partly possible because of the demise of the drive-ins and the rise of "hot" directors who could force new types of cinematography onto the studio, giving DP's wider creative power by being backed up by the director.

 

There has always been trends towards more realism in cinema but I always wonder when it will reach a sort of endpoint, or be dropped temporarily in favor of romance and fantasy. In some ways, the painted efx-heavy worlds of "300" and "Lord of the Rings" suggest a new trend away from strict naturalism. New film stocks and digital technology allow simultaneously the chance to shoot in more practical low-light conditions that are similar to what we experience everyday, yet also allow greater degrees of manipulation and stylization. We get these wierd hybrids like "Miami Vice" which somehow are both sort of gritty (or noisy) because of being shot in ultra low-light conditions, yet oddly unreal and stylized. And the rise of star power, huge box office stars driving ticket sales, has sometimes pushed lighting backwards to an earlier time when all the mattered was that the lead look good. We've got certain stars demanding enough light on their faces to wash out any defects, etc. which has led to a certain number of movies having this sort of flatter, soft, low-contrast version of realism.

 

The main problem I see with modern directing, other than a lack of story sense, is an over-reliance on coverage and fast editing, so that they really don't need to make up their mind on the set as to what the scene is about as long as they shoot enough angles so they (or the editor) can figure it out later. So the art of blocking actors to the camera in a way that means something dramatically is weakened -- now we cut to what's important instead of design a shot that leads the viewer to what's important.

[Jonathan Bowerbank]

so on the one hand, you had a fairly natural straight-forward shooting approach after the 1950's but unnaturally hard crisp lighting and higher levels of fill to achieve what was considered technically "correct" for color.

 

So in the 1970's, you had two opposite trends: greater naturalism in lighting but increasing use of diffusion, smoke, flashing to knock down the sharpness and color saturation, a rejection of what was considered "good" color cinematography.

 

I was watching Black Narcissus the other night and watched some of the DVD extras. It was interesting that the film actually had a Technicolor specialist on set, basically to approve whether certain colors and wardrobe items were suitable and not too bold for the 3 strip process. While "Black Nacissus" is still a gorgeous film with some brilliant colors that are almost unavoidable with Technicolor, it was interesting to hear that at the time their focus was to not get "too much color".

[David Mullen ASC]

All 3-strip Technicolor productions had a "Technicolor consultant" but they were not necessarily making day to day decisions. They were advisors mostly, telling the production designer and DP what worked and didn't work well for them. Sometimes there was disagreement. Technicolor advised early features to not "show off" the colors too much because they feared eyestrain and people getting tired of colors, even though Technicolor made plenty of their own short films that showed off the colors to ridiculous levels. Some producers took this notion of subdued colors even further -- movies like "Trail of the Lonesome Pine" and "Drums Along the Mohawk" are fairly naturalistic in their use of color -- while others went the opposite route and used bold colors.

 

But I don't think Michael Powell wanted to use a lot of strong colors throughout the movie -- he had some taste afterall, as "Black Narcissus" demonstrates. There is a juxtaposition between the bland, sterile whites of the nun's world to the rich colors of India; that conflict is really what the movie is about, symbolized by the insane nun putting on red lipstick and a red dress near the end.

 

There were technical things that the Technicolor people monitored like the whiteness of the nuns' habits. Pure white tended to make dye transfer printing harder without picking up a bias, so they prefered greyed-down whites. The staff were always trying to stop art directors from putting pure white towels and bedsheets in movies.

 

Jack Cardiff famously got into trouble at the end of the movie when he decided to use a Fog Filter for the final pre-dawn murder sequence, for a soft, misty pastel look. Technicolor was usually shot clean except for close-ups and they told Cardiff and Powell that all the footage was "out of focus" and unusable because of the filter. When they viewed a test and liked the results, Powell then yelled at the Technicolor people for being so conservative, saying that they should give them the same creative freedom as b&w movies got. The irony is that later Natalie Kalmus of Technicolor said that "Black Narcissus" was her favorite Technicolor movie for its photography.

 

Ozzie Morris went even further with smoke and Fog Filters on "Moulin Rouge" and really got in trouble with the Technicolor staff.

[Satsuki Murashige]

I was watching Black Narcissus the other night and watched some of the DVD extras. It was interesting that the film actually had a Technicolor specialist on set, basically to approve whether certain colors and wardrobe items were suitable and not too bold for the 3 strip process. While "Black Nacissus" is still a gorgeous film with some brilliant colors that are almost unavoidable with Technicolor, it was interesting to hear that at the time their focus was to not get "too much color".

On the Cardiff documentary in the DVD extras, it was interesting to hear how he chose a green fill light for the climactic scene in the chapel (green=danger). I wonder what Mrs. Kalmus had to say about that? Or was she out of the picture by then?

 

Regarding Technicolor, has anyone seen a print of John Ford's "The Quiet Man"? I've only seen it on tv (not a very good transfer), but the shadows seem to have a purple-ish tint to them which is rather beautiful. I'm curious if this is also there on the print (ie. was it an intended effect?), and if so how was it done? The film was shot by Winton C. Hoch, ASC, who shot most (if not all) of Ford's Technicolor pictures.

 

There has always been trends towards more realism in cinema but I always wonder when it will reach a sort of endpoint' date=' or be dropped temporarily in favor of romance and fantasy.[/i']

I think music videos fulfill some of that fantasy criteria, in terms of unmotivated or highly stylized lighting. But it's surprising to me that with so many recent comic book-derived feature films like "Spiderman," the lighting and blocking in these films is mostly naturalistic and unfortunately, banal. Even a film like "Sin City" rather slavishly emulates it's source material. The same is true of recent animation films with the increasing use of motion capture for the characters' movements. Perhaps contemporary filmgoers are more conservative in their tastes and the product reflects that.

 

The main problem I see with modern directing' date=' other than a lack of story sense, is an over-reliance on coverage and fast editing, so that they really don't need to make up their mind on the set as to what the scene is about as long as they shoot enough angles so they (or the editor) can figure it out later.[/i']

Are there any recent films that you've seen where the blocking of the actors and camera has been especially good or cinematic? My recent favorite has been "Pride & Prejudice" (2005) directed by Joe Wright. Apparently, he was (or is) a television director, not that it shows. Some very bold choices in blocking and shot design in that film. Does anyone know more about the film's DP, Roman Osin? Looks like he has about 12 feature credits since 1996 on IMDB. I'd be interested to know if anyone has seen his other films and if they are as cinematic as this one.

Edited March 26, 2007 by Satsuki Murashige

[David Mullen ASC]

Well, in defense of the look of "Spider-Man" there is the argument ever since Donner directed "Superman: The Movie" that the best way to shoot a comic book superhero is in a realistic fashion, that the thrill of these sorts of movies is seeing a recognizable world that we live in but with the juxtaposition of someone with super powers that can save us. The alternate approach is to create a comic book universe that is very stylized.

 

Obviously comic book movies exist in a range between realistic and super stylized. "Unbreakable" is sort of a comic book movie made in as realistic style as possible, and on the other end, is something like "Dick Tracy" or the Joel Schumacher Batman movies. I think you can reach a tipping over point where the setting just gets too fantastical, so much that the superhero doesn't stand out anymore. That's what happened with the last two Schumacher Batman movies, as opposed to the Tim Burton movies which were also stylized but had enough gravitas and grit to create some visual juxtapositions between Batman and the world he moved in.

 

In terms of staging complex scenes with actors and camera movement, with an editing plan in mind, Spielberg is a good example of someone with real skills at that. A looser, more natural version of that would be someone like Robert Altman -- it only seems uncoordinated, unplanned.

[John Holland]

I dont know if you have the DVD of "Catch 22" Paramount Golden Classics ? its really worth listening to the director Mike Nichols talking to Steven Soderberg about David Watkins cinematography on the picture , like me Soderberg has great respect for the man Nichols also has some funny stories about Watkins antics , i have the Gossen Lunasix he used on the night scenes on that film , a present from him . it still works.

[Rupe Whiteman]

Interesting discussion...

 

David, you mentioned Inside Man - Although very slick, the mixture of different styles of shooting was a little too self concious for me and took me outside of an emotional response to the film because I was too distracted by the form. Normally I like to get into the story of a movie on a first viewing and (if it's worth it) get more into how it's shot/cut/directed etc on a 2nd viewing. On the inside man the 'flashback' scenes where Denzel Washington interrogates those inside the bank have an overtly stand-out look to the rest of the film with very burnt-out highlights and sickly colours. Fine, it makes visual and story-telling sense to give these senes their own look as they are set in a different time/place than the bulk of the story, but I felt Labatique went a too far in this instance...

 

Generally I'd agree with Tim that the 70s was perhaps the greatest decade for cinematography and probably films too. There was such a huge diversity in the ways of shooting and people took a lot more risks than they seem to today. I'd argue that Nic Roeg and Tony Richmond's work on 'Performance' was a big influence on the hipper movie makers in the 70s. It's cinematography is highly stylized but the form matches the content, it doesn't distract from it. The advent of the blockbuster at the end of the 70s changed so much. The 80s started so well with Raging Bull (1980 I think) then you had Blade Runner in '82 but then what? - a lot of middle order, overblown stodge for the greater part. At the end of the decade came Unforgiven in 1990 and things got a little better. And now? - I think they are a lot of great cinematographers out there, who carry with them all they've learned from the past and all the amazing new technologies, but I don't think there are as many great directors to combine with to make new great films...

 

nb - I should add that in the middle of the dross that was the 80s came 'Come and See' in 1985 directed by Emil Klimov. If you haven't seen it you should. Period.

[Christian Appelt]

I feel like David about 1960s cinematography, but the same goes for 1970s cinematography.

I always try to see older movies in vintage prints and in the cinema, which is possible if you have a film museum or cinematheque near you. Not only because these films were made to be seen in a theatre, but also because you learn more from it than from watching restored, digitally fine-tuned and optimized DVD editions.

 

Many 1970s films are - to me - hardly watchable on a big screen because many DPs and directors tended to degrade their image so far. To them it was style, to me as a spectator sitting before even a medium sized screen, it's nothing but suffering and eye strain.

 

Recently I saw M*A*S*H in a vintage 1970s print (very slight fading), and about a fourth of all shots in the film should have been left on the editing room floor. It may look fine on DVD and TV, but with all the zooming, panning, muddy telephoto shots and bad focus pulling, this is to me a perfect example of how not to photograph a movie.

Usually I never leave the theatre, no matter how bad the film may be, but THE MAN WHO FELL TO EARTH made me so sick with its stupid zooming and panning that added nothig to storytelling that I had to go.

 

It's true, there were really innovative films using low light levels, like FRENCH CONNECTION, but the style matched the story and atmosphere. With other films in similiar settings, especially in anamorphic format, a bit more lighting would have resulted in better image quality and less artifacts. THE TAKING OF PELHAM ONE TWO THREE (a favourite film of mine) is one of these - I saw it on the big screen recently, and it looks even worse than today's worst S-35/D.I./hyperspeed mass prints.

 

Yes, there was a lot of innovation in cinematography, but the low light approach became a cliché in itself.

 

1960s photography may look very artificial in many cases today, but at least it was not so damn self-conscious as much of post-1960s work. Even with the blandest 10K lighting, as David commented, I still can see the sets and the actors doing their work, which is more than I could say for todays fast-editing-low-depth-of-field-do-a-tracking-the-audience-may-fall-asleep school of filmmaking. :)

 

David, a question on SHOES OF THE FISHERMAN: Do the stock shots around the Vatican (especially at the end) stick out on DVD as much as they did on the big screen? Last year, the German Film Museum screened a vintage 70mm blowup print of SHOES, and I was surprised that they had the guts to intercut rather traditional studio lighting with the audience stuff. - Some shots remain in my mind, like Anthony Quinn walking through the narrow streets incognito, the scene in front of the drugstore had an almost three dimensional look in the 70mm print.

[David Mullen ASC]

David, a question on SHOES OF THE FISHERMAN: Do the stock shots around the Vatican (especially at the end) stick out on DVD as much as they did on the big screen?

 

Yes. The movie itself was shot in 35mm anamorphic and the transfer is really nice on DVD, but those b-roll shots of crowds outside St. Peters obviously come from some other source, either 35mm flat or 16mm, they are pretty grainy on DVD.

 

It's such an odd movie -- ultimately a world crisis is solved by the Pope, the head of the Soviet Union and the head of China coming together. And the head of the Soviet Union is played by Laurence Olivier as a very reasonable man. The United States does not figure at all in this crisis; they are only represented by David Janson as a philandering TV reporter and his depressed doctor wife (who may have been British in the story.)

[Max Jacoby]

Satsuki

 

For more elaborate staging and shots that last longer than the blink of an eye one needs to look beyond Hollywood and its coverage/editing based style of filmmaking.

 

My favourite of the current long-takes directors is Theo Angelopoulos. His shots last way over one minute on average and most scenes are filmed in one shot (plan-séquence). 'The Weeping Meadow' is his latest film and it looks simply stunning.

 

Otherwise directors like Hou Hsiao-Hsien (The Flowers of Shanghai), Edward Yang (Yi-Yi), Bela Tarr (Satantago, Damnation) and lately Gus Van Sant (Gerry, Elephant & Last Days) all work with very long takes. The only Hollywood director who uses plan-séquences from time to time is M. Night Shymalyan (Unbreakable).

[John Holland]

Max sorry to be a bore , check out " Catch 22" very long takes with loads of incredible background action going on i.e B25 crashing actors carry on with there scene , because its war and see planes crashing every day ,loads of narritive problems with this film , but you just dont see films like this anymore , without CGI .

[Max Jacoby]

John,

 

I only mentioned directors still working today that use long shots. Thanks for the tip though, I've been meaning to check out 'Catch 22' as I've heard good things about it (and never finished the book).

 

There was a whole period in Hollywood, starting in the early 40s where directors used long takes with very fluid camera moves and elaborate staging, but that evolved (or rather regressed) into the coverage-heavy style of today.

[Rupe Whiteman]

I too would really reccomend catch 22. There's a really interesting point Nichols makes in the commentary; they started shooting/rehearsing with lots of background extras but when they watched the rushes back they decided with all the extras it looked like a movie! - so they got rid of most of them... Perhaps because of the longer lenses used there just too many bods crossing frame...

[Leo Anthony Vale]

Yes. The movie itself was shot in 35mm anamorphic and the transfer is really nice on DVD, but those b-roll shots of crowds outside St. Peters obviously come from some other source, either 35mm flat or 16mm, they are pretty grainy on DVD.

 

It's such an odd movie -- ultimately a world crisis is solved by the Pope, the head of the Soviet Union and the head of China coming together. And the head of the Soviet Union is played by Laurence Olivier as a very reasonable man. The United States does not figure at all in this crisis; they are only represented by David Janson as a philandering TV reporter and his depressed doctor wife (who may have been British in the story.)

 

The 'newsreel' footage was from the death of John XXIII and election of Paul VI.

I first saw it in 70mm. At the time I found the grain and softness enhancincing the somber mood.

 

That movie's become a guilty pleasure for me.

 

I think it was made right after Anderson and Hillier made 'Operation Crossbow', another guilty pleasure.

The V-1 manned tests in that one are good. & I don't care that the wires on the models are so visble.

Emeric Presberger co-wrote under a pseudonym.

[Chad Stockfleth]

I've been meaning to check out 'Catch 22' as I've heard good things about it (and never finished the book).

 

Man, that book. Not necessarily the best cross country flight reading material. Hell of a movie though. As was mentioned, the commentary with Soderbergh and Nichols on the DVD is really good.

[Leo Anthony Vale]

It's true, there were really innovative films using low light levels, like FRENCH CONNECTION, but the style matched the story and atmosphere. With other films in similiar settings, especially in anamorphic format, a bit more lighting would have resulted in better image quality and less artifacts. THE TAKING OF PELHAM ONE TWO THREE (a favourite film of mine) is one of these - I saw it on the big screen recently, and it looks even worse than today's worst S-35/D.I./hyperspeed mass prints.

 

I've only caught bits of 'Pelham' on TV. That used ChemTone, which was a chmical flashing at TVC lab, in the processing. 'Nashville' used Chemtone too, & I never liked the look of that one.

There was only a 100ASA color negative availiable and all sorts of tricks were being used to squeeze as much speed as possible out of it.

 

In the early to mid60s, high speed B/W was starting to take off, 'Mirage ' was all 4XN.

Then TV went all color & that was the end of B/W and there was only 50ASA color.

[Leo Anthony Vale]

"On the Cardiff documentary in the DVD extras, it was interesting to hear how he chose a green fill light for the climactic scene in the chapel (green=danger). I wonder what Mrs. Kalmus had to say about that? Or was she out of the picture by then?

 

Regarding Technicolor, has anyone seen a print of John Ford's "The Quiet Man"? I've only seen it on tv (not a very good transfer), but the shadows seem to have a purple-ish tint to them which is rather beautiful. I'm curious if this is also there on the print (ie. was it an intended effect?), and if so how was it done? The film was shot by Winton C. Hoch, ASC, who shot most (if not all) of Ford's Technicolor pictures."

 

---Mrs. Kalmus was in LA. The Technicolor London color consultants weren't as inflexible.

 

Until 1954 or '55 IB prints were very soft. About that time a major improvement was made in the sharpness of the matrices in order to accomadate widescreenprints.

 

I think the current prints of 'The Quiet Man' are restored from a print. The originals YCM negs might be at UCLA, noone seems to want to go to the expense of a full restoration from them, if they're still usable.

 

PS pressberger's pseudonym on 'Operation Crossbow' is Richard Imrie. Seems he developed alot of ill will in the industry.

Edited March 26, 2007 by Leo Anthony Vale

[Ignacio Aguilar]

ROSEMARY'S BABY I think is an interesting turning point, as it had to be lit to 5.6 for the zoom work on 50asa film, meaning hard light was the only option. William Fraker however was part of the next generation of DPs influenced by the new wave, where lighting was embracing the source driven and natural. While bounce light was out of the question, Fraker lit the film as if from sources only, and there's not one instant where you can see a fill shadow. Anytime before that movie an old studio DP would have had a 10K behind the camera, but the mentality was changing...

 

Yet most of the day exterior stuff with Mia Farrow was done in available light and wide-open lenses...

 

Great film and very interesting cinematography from Fraker. The fake practicals at the end contribute a lot to increase the creepy atmosphere and the handheld camera work is superb. But I don't think they lit those sets up to T/5.6, as the whole picture was shot on two wide-angle primes, a 18mm and a 25mm. I don't remember any zoom shot. Fraker used a lot of hard light on the sets, but the actors themselves were mostly lit by indirect sources and softer lights. He probably used too his usual mix of Mitchell diffusers, low-cons and mild corals, which also helps the actors to look better and makes the picture a bit less saturated and creamier than the usual 60's studio photography.

 

On the other hand, Sven Nykvist shot Polanski's "The Tenant" (AKA "Le Locataire") in France a few years later in much lower light levels to achieve a bigger degree of realism. The film is quite similar in tone to "Rosemary's Baby", but overall it is more gritty and contrasty and Nykvist seems much more interested than Fraker in recreating natural lighting effects. But then again, a few years later Witold Sobocinski (the late Piotr's father) shot both "Pirates" and "Frantic" for Polanski using very small apertures and hard lights to achieve a deeper focus. "Pirates" may well be a failure as a whole, but the cinematography is great and its old-fashoned style reminds me a lot of Slocombe's "Indiana Jones" films, or even his own Polanski film "The Fearless Vampire Killers". There's a studio night exterior in "Pirates" that takes place at a beach supposed to be lit by a bonfire, but it looks lit to T/11 or T/16 in anamorphic! And it looks great.

 

Definitely, there were very different styles from the late sixties to the early eighties. That's why I love the period so much.

[Guest Tim Partridge]

Nacho,

 

I'm pretty sure Stephen Burum says in the AC that covers MISSION IMPOSSIBLE that Fraker had to light to 800 footcandles, 5.6 for all of ROSEMARY'S BABY. I haven't seen the film in years, but the use of hard light to fake a natural, sourced look struck a chord. Whatever his approach, that movie did not look like your regular William Castle hack job! I'm sure Polanski wouldn't have allowed it to look anything less than classy either.

 

BTW, I thought PIRATES looked dreadful.

 

I feel like David about 1960s cinematography, but the same goes for 1970s cinematography.

I always try to see older movies in vintage prints and in the cinema, which is possible if you have a film museum or cinematheque near you. Not only because these films were made to be seen in a theatre, but also because you learn more from it than from watching restored, digitally fine-tuned and optimized DVD editions.

 

Many 1970s films are - to me - hardly watchable on a big screen because many DPs and directors tended to degrade their image so far. To them it was style, to me as a spectator sitting before even a medium sized screen, it's nothing but suffering and eye strain.

 

Recently I saw M*A*S*H in a vintage 1970s print (very slight fading), and about a fourth of all shots in the film should have been left on the editing room floor. It may look fine on DVD and TV, but with all the zooming, panning, muddy telephoto shots and bad focus pulling, this is to me a perfect example of how not to photograph a movie.

Usually I never leave the theatre, no matter how bad the film may be, but THE MAN WHO FELL TO EARTH made me so sick with its stupid zooming and panning that added nothig to storytelling that I had to go.

 

It's true, there were really innovative films using low light levels, like FRENCH CONNECTION, but the style matched the story and atmosphere. With other films in similiar settings, especially in anamorphic format, a bit more lighting would have resulted in better image quality and less artifacts. THE TAKING OF PELHAM ONE TWO THREE (a favourite film of mine) is one of these - I saw it on the big screen recently, and it looks even worse than today's worst S-35/D.I./hyperspeed mass prints.

 

Yes, there was a lot of innovation in cinematography, but the low light approach became a cliché in itself.

 

1960s photography may look very artificial in many cases today, but at least it was not so damn self-conscious as much of post-1960s work. Even with the blandest 10K lighting, as David commented, I still can see the sets and the actors doing their work, which is more than I could say for todays fast-editing-low-depth-of-field-do-a-tracking-the-audience-may-fall-asleep school of filmmaking. :)

 

 

Really cool and interesting post, Christian.

 

Whatever fads you can't argue that more than any other decade the 70s offered the greatest diversity of styles. You had literally EVERYTHING (except digital), and so many different DPs with their own voices and opinionated approaches. I mean, even for the dark fad, Gordon Willis, Owen Roizman and Bruce Surtees all produced work that looked completely different. One was into pushing, the other underexposing and pushing and another more interested in the underexposure itself, and their lighting approaches were all totally different. With any recent fad nowadays the style is interchangable (just look at when high contrast/ skip-bleach had a renaissance after SE7EN came out til around 2001), but in the 70s with the more sophisticated directors and the aesthetic changing of the guard, where ever you looked someone was doing something different. The old school and the new school all blurred together with unequalled excitement.

[Christian Appelt]

Yes, you're right about the diversity of cinematic styles. Recently I found a number of 1970s local newspapers and read most of the cinema ads. I had no realised what variety of styles and genres was on the screens back then, from American major studio films and smaller films (like TWO-LANE BLACKTOP) to Eurotrash, spaghetti westerns, Japanese monster & scifi movies, and even some black&white films from the 1960s that were not arthouse films.

Today, it seems to be strictly art vs. mainstream, only exotic food and fast food served except for those few films which William Goldman called "the exception to the rule", films that cannot be neatly put into a drawer labeled "Art" or "Entertainment". As for cinematography, I would say that never so many and subtle tools of cinematography were available - but so little use is being made of them in terms of telling a story in the most simple and impressive way.