A-List: Cinematographers
By Josh Spiegel
June 10, 2010
BoxOfficeProphets.com
Though next week is fast approaching, and with it one of the most highly anticipated films of the year (Toy Story 3), this week is yet another drop in the pond of mediocrity that is American cinema. What is there to be excited about this week? Not much of anything. So, this week’s A-List is going to talk about a topic close to my heart: cinematography. We don’t often give enough appreciation to the truly great cinematographers, old and new. Yes, directors may be considered auteurs, but they don’t operate the cameras or give the movies they direct as unique a look as do their cinematographers. Plenty of the best directors are well aware that the men and women behind the camera are equally, if not more, important, but most people don’t even know what the ASC is (American Society of Cinematographers). This week, we look at five of the best cinematographers.
Roger Deakins
Fargo. The Shawshank Redemption. Kundun. O Brother, Where Art Thou? The Man Who Wasn’t There. No Country For Old Men. The Reader. The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford. These are the eight films that Roger Deakins, possibly the best living cinematographer, has been nominated for at the Academy Awards. Zero is the number of times he has won. If Martin Scorsese winning his first Best Director Oscar in the 21st century seems tantamount to heresy, what do we say about Deakins? Here’s a guy who’s so good at what he does, so assured, that Pixar Animation and DreamWorks Animation hired him as consultants to recent films of theirs (WALL-E and How To Train Your Dragon). The visual style created by Joel and Ethan Coen is just as much thanks to Deakins and his gifted eye.
Deakins has been providing audiences across the world with memorable imagery, stuff that haunts and inflames us. For whatever reason, the image that keeps leaping out at me is that of Andy Dufresne walking into the prison of Shawshank for the first time, looking up at the endless wall of the main building as it consumes him. When you think of the many films he’s done with the Coens, or of his two films with Sam Mendes (Revolutionary Road and Jarhead), or of his countless other films, it’s hard not to see why he’s so loved in the industry. Why would two cartoons, one set in the future with robots, one set in the past with dragons, want to turn to Deakins? He may not have worked with robots or dragons, but if you want a movie to feel more realistic to the audience, Deakins is the man to help. Pixar, DreamWorks: good idea to call on him.
Jack Cardiff
We take for granted the very idea of color. With the exception of the color-blind and the blind (obviously), color surrounds us every day and we barely take note of it. Even back in the 1940s, when color was barely starting out in film, few cinematographers were as in control of the new way of seeing as Jack Cardiff was. Two of the great Technicolor films had Cardiff’s name on them. One was 1951’s The African Queen, directed by John Huston; still, the true auteur of the film is Cardiff, who brings out the lush colors of the African jungles to eye-popping status. The other film is the classic Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger production from 1947, Black Narcissus. For this film, he deservedly won the Oscar, taking a story of nuns under pressure in the Himalayas to soaring heights. The jaw-dropping backdrops of the Himalayas come to life thanks to his camera.
Cardiff worked with Powell and Pressburger on films such as A Matter of Life and Death (a film I praised at great length a couple of months ago) and The Red Shoes, which is another great example of Technicolor (a film which I recently saw and will be talking up in advance of its upcoming Blu-ray release in July). His work is highly valued by directors such as Martin Scorsese, and a recent documentary, Cameraman: The Life and Work of Jack Cardiff, was released to great acclaim. Here’s what I’ll leave you with: few cinematographers could be as effortless through genres as Cardiff was. He began in England with Powell and Pressburger, with films about ballet, nuns, and war. He ended with Conan The Destroyer and Rambo. That is one hell of a career.
Conrad Hall
Some people out there probably are not fans of American Beauty, one of the more divisive recent Best Picture Oscar winners. It’s hard to argue with the criticisms (I’m not a huge fan of the film, but I’ve always liked it - still, not having seen it in years, I’m curious to see if it holds up) of the film being pretentious, smug, and so forth. That said, one of the reasons why American Beauty (or Sam Mendes’ follow-up film, Road to Perdition, which I would argue is extremely underrated) is so well-loved is because of the cinematography, courtesy of the late Conrad Hall, a man who was so well respected and appreciated that he won an Oscar for Road to Perdition after he passed away in 2002. Yes, the award was posthumous, but Hall won three total Oscars and was nominated a total of eight times. He wasn’t wanting for praise.
What made Hall so special? Think of the classic scene, so often replayed, from the 1967 drama In Cold Blood, where one of the film’s main characters, a murderer with something of a soul, is lying in his bed, as he internally flagellates himself for his crimes, and rain spatters the window outside. The man is crying on the inside, a sappy thing to say, but a wondrous and powerful thing to behold when put on the silver screen. Hall’s work in films as varied as Road to Perdition, Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, Tequila Sunrise, and Searching for Bobby Fischer proved that he was a diverse man behind the lens, and that he was always able to heighten the world of each film he worked on. Hall’s survived by his talented son, but it’s hard not to wish he was still alive to help create stark and memorable images, as he did in the past.
Emmanuel Lubezki
There are a handful of scenes in Children of Men, the classic Alfonso Cuaron film, that were shot in one take. You probably know this. Did you know that the man behind the camera for the scenes managed to not win an Oscar for his obviously excellent work in the film? Yes, Emmanuel Lubezki, the four-time Oscar nominee, has never won, despite his work on A Little Princess, Sleepy Hollow, The New World, Ali, The Cat in the Hat (yes, really), and Lemony Snicket’s A Series of Unfortunate Events. Lubezki’s the kind of cinematographer who most people probably recognize in some way, meaning that his visual style is so noticeable and has been utilized in a variety of films that you’ve probably seen his style even if you don’t know his name.
Lubezki is the kind of cinematographer who makes people remember what the camera can do. Yes, his work in Children of Men is nothing if not showy (and how can it not be, when the handheld sequences almost command more attention than the acting they’re capturing?), but sometimes, showy is a good thing. When we consider how many movies and TV shows these days don’t use the camera as anything other than something for people to sit or stand in front of to talk, Lubezki’s something of a godsend. In the case of Children of Men, he’s collaborating very heavily with Alfonso Cuaron to create a visual aesthetic that is as noticeable as it is confrontational. As I mentioned earlier, the best directors know how to work with their cinematographers, and Cuaron definitely knows how to bring out the best in Lubezki.
Gregg Toland
Is it appropriate that we end at the beginning? Granted, Gregg Toland is not the first cinematographer, and he is certainly not the only great cinematographer of his time (one man left off the list is James Wong Howe). But it’s thanks to Toland that we have pretty much any kind of cinematic visual style. In 1941, he was the man who helped Orson Welles bring Citizen Kane to life, getting an Oscar nomination in the process; he lost, but did win an Oscar in 1939 for his work in Wuthering Heights. Toland, for all of his prowess with camera techniques, was primarily a black-and-white photographer. His only Technicolor film came in 1946, and is one that most of us probably haven’t ever seen, and may not, depending on how stringent the Walt Disney Company continues to be. Yes, film buffs, he was the cinematographer for the controversial Song of the South.
Of course, if you know about Song of the South, you probably know about its racially charged storyline, not about Toland’s work. Still, the man was immensely talented, bringing the idea of deep focus to the silver screen. Citizen Kane wasn’t his only masterwork. Let’s not forget about The Grapes of Wrath and The Best Years of Our Lives. But it’s Kane that everyone remembers, and justly so. I realize that there are some people out there who would only agree that Citizen Kane is an important film (and it is), but it is also great, not only for what it brought to Hollywood but for its memorable visuals. Fans may have their own favorites, but the best shot in the film remains Kane, sitting in an opera house, fiercely getting up to applaud his wife, a mediocre singer, standing alone. Toland didn’t stand alone, but we shouldn’t forget him for all he’s given us.