Masters Essays on Cinematography: Edited by Eugene Doyen
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Masters Essays on Cinematography Twelve essays on the aesthetics and practice in cinematography Eugene Doyen: Editor FOR EDUCATION USE ONLY – ALL RIGHTS RESERVED 1 2 CONTENTS Jack Cardiff and Technicolor RASHPAL SAINI 7 A Matter of Life and Death, Black Narcissus and The Red Shoes John Alton and the Stylistics of Film Noir OLIVER DAVIS 17 T-Men, Raw Deal and The Big Combo Sven Nykvist: Visions of Light VINET CAMPBELL 27 Through a Glass Darkly , Hour of the Wolf and Fanny and Alexander Interior Visions: the films of Dion Beebe JAMES HAY 37 Collateral, In The Cut and Memoirs of a Geisha Roger Deakins and the Period Film NEIL CALLOWAY 51 The Man Wasn’t There, Jarhead and The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford Conflicts in Light: Vittorio Storaro ALISSA TIMOSHKINA 61 Last Tango in Paris, Sheltering Sky and Tango Colour Contrast and the Films of Darius Khondji BASAK YAZAR 69 Delicatessen, Seven and Stealing Beauty Cinematography and Story: Roger Deakins and the Films of the Coen Brothers JARED JULIANO 77 Fargo, O Brother, Where Art Thou? and The Man Who Wasn't There Robert Burks and the Objectification of the Hitchcock Blonde JOHANNE STEPHENSON 83 Rear Window, The Birds and Marnie Robert Richardson: Lighting and Composition in the Scorsese Collaborations ALICE WYBREW 95 Casino, Bringing Out The Dead and The Aviator Blurring the Boundaries of Reality: The Subjective Cinematography of Matthew Libatique SARAH BENTLEY 103 Pi, Requiem for a Dream and The Fountain The Cinematography of César Charlone in the films of Fernando Meirelles GUILHERME PERDIGÃO MURTA 115 City of God, The Constant Gardener and Blindness Teaching Materials The purpose and Intent of Cinematography 131 Cinematography and Videography: essential principles 133 Teaching Programme: Cinematography in the Fiction Film 141 3 4 Cinematography and Film Studies This is a collection of twelve essays written by MA Film Studies students at Queen Mary, University of London. Each makes a substantial contribution to understanding the work of a cinematographer; and crucially, the role of cinematography as part of the collaborative practice of filmmaking. These essays discuss cinematography across a range of historical and theoretical contexts, including lighting for black and white within film noir, the use of Technicolor, and the contemporary use of digital technology in both production and post-production. This work is based on research that links specialist technical writing on lighting and filming techniques to academic film analysis, and in doing this illustrates how the subject of cinematography can be successfully incorporated and articulated within the domain of film studies. Teaching Materials To illustrate how the subject of cinematography was discussed and taught within an MA context, the teaching materials for this four-session topic are included at the end, after the essays. It should be noted that the teaching and learning strategy was research-based learning. There were no formal lectures, and students undertook independent research work developed from screenings, seminars and student-led presentations. It is very impressive that from this limited basis such individual, distinctive and knowledgeable essays were produced. Essay Texts and Images The essays presented in this collection appear in the form they were submitted for assessment. They have not been substantially re-written or edited. As such there may be some variations in referencing, and presentation. Also, since all photographic reproductions are in low resolution black and white they do not accurately reproduce the images as they appear in the actual films. In these circumstances it is useful to refer directly to the film in order to be able to follow the discussion of cinematography in the essay. 5 6 Jack Cardiff and Technicolor A Matter of Life and Death (1946), Black Narcissus (1947) and The Red Shoes (1948) RASHPAL SAINI Jack Cardiff’s pioneering cinematography introduced colour into British cinema. Having worked on the first British Technicolor production Wings of the Morning (Harold Schuster, 1937) as the first British colour cameraman, Cardiff’s name has become synonymous with Technicolor. Using the three-strip colour process Cardiff’s cinematography is so vibrant ‘that you can virtually taste [the colours]’.1 Nowhere is this more evident than in his first three feature films with Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger. A Matter of Life and Death (AMOLAD 1946), Black Narcissus (1947) and The Red Shoes (1948) all represented a turning point in Powell and Pressburger’s post-war cinema in which Cardiff’s colour cinematography played a vital role: ‘I [Powell] was moving into new worlds of light and colour after the drab realism and Khaki of the war’.2 This shift from realism to fantasy cinema gave Cardiff endless opportunities to experiment with chiaroscuro and mixed coloured lighting styles to the point colour was being used more than just for decorative purposes. Cardiff offered a more conscious approach to controlling colour for narrative purposes, which, according to Powell, was lacking in his [Powell’s] earlier work with Technicolor cinematographer George Périnal in The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp (1943) where there was no ‘planning for colour; it was just letting colour happen’.3 AMOLAD was Powell and Pressburger’s first real experiment with colour. The central role of Cardiff’s colour cinematography is evident by the fact the film’s production schedule was postponed for nearly nine months because Technicolor was not easily available during wartime rationing. As Powell puts it, the film ‘had to be in colour. In Technicolor’.4 AMOLAD is a story about two lovers, Peter Carter (David Niven) a British Squadron Leader and June (Kim Hunter) an American radio operator who by chance come into contact and fall in love over the radio as Peter descends from the sky in a crippled bomber plane during the last day of the Second World War. Having escaped death due to the mistake of heaven’s soul collector (Marius Goring) Peter is forced to justify his reason to carry on living on the basis that he now loves June. Central to the film is the correspondences between the forces of heaven and earth. One can see why Powell was insistent that the film must be presented in Technicolor because Pressburger’s script required frequent cross-referencing between coloured earth and black and white heaven vice versa. This occurs, for example, when an extreme close-up of Goring’s black and white rhododendron slowly turns pink as the camera zooms out to establish the conductor is now in earth. A self-reflexive reference to Cardiff’s work is made when the Conductor says ‘one is starved for Technicolor up there’. This is not only a humorous reference to wartime deficit in British Technicolor 1 Magic Hour: The Life of a Cameraman (London: Faber and Faber, 1996), p. ix. 2 MichaelMartin Scorsese, Powell, A ‘Foreword’ Life in Movies: in: Jack An Autobiography Cardiff, (London: Methuen, 1986), p. 501. 3 Ibid., p. 499. 4 Ibid., p. 500. 7 production (there were only eight British Technicolor films that were made during the war5) but the phrase also sets colour’s relationship to Peter; that is to say, he will not only lose his love if he submits to heaven but also the world of colour signified by the deliberate attention to the surrounding rhododendrons.6 Cardiff’s methods of shooting allowed the editor (Reginald Mills) to slowly fade into colour and black and white stock with extended dissolves. Though a switch between colour and black and white was not a new concept in cinema (Ian Christie recalls The Wizard of Oz (Victor Fleming, 1939) where there is a jump from black and white Kansas to Technicolor Oz7) the smoothness of the transition between the two had some novelty at the time: ‘Never has the reviewer seen such perfection of mechanics…. [The] dissolves from color to monotone, as well as from full sets to miniatures are so smooth that it is difficult to tell where one scene ends and the other begins’.8 Cardiff explains that the he shot ‘the black and white sequence with a black and white camera, but the penultimate one was done with a Technicolor camera, and that was printed in black and white’9, which allowed the editor to slowly bring out the Technicolor colours from there on. Cardiff’s method of presenting a slow transition from one world to the other (as oppose to a simple cut) is a key visual signifier of Peter’s intermediate position between both worlds, where he desires to be on earth yet there is a demand for his presence in heaven. Peter’s intermediate position in this world of colour is skilfully suggested during the following shot-reverse-shot sequence as the Conductor and Peter have their first conversation together in frozen time. Where as the rhododendrons in the background are depicted in sharp focus during the low angle shots of the Conductor, a switch to Peter shows a dramatic change in focus where the more distant roses are depicted in a shallow depth of field, blurring and diffusing the pink and green colours of the rhododendron bush to the point colour becomes almost intangible. Peter’s intermediate status on earth is in fact impinged on the character from the outset during the beach scene where he crash lands and miraculously survives. Cardiff’s cinematography turns what looks like an earthy location with strong natural sunlight into an uncanny vast space where the beach looks like earth, but it has enough suggestions to imply it could be heaven as well. As Peter slowly wakes up after being washed ashore there is a strong early morning orange frontal sunlight hitting Peter’s face.