Masters Essays on Cinematography: Edited by Eugene Doyen

Home , Dion Beebe, John Alton, Robert Burks, Sven Nykvist, Visions of Light

Masters Essays on Cinematography Twelve essays on the aesthetics and practice in cinematography

Eugene Doyen: Editor

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

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 MartinMichael 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. Furthermore, as Lightman suggestions, a heavenly dream state is created by ‘the curious effect of backlighting on the water’10 which picks up the uneven texture of the coastal surface. Cardiff’s control of natural lighting establishes a sublime space that is

5 Duncan Petrie, The British Cinematographer (London: British Film Institute, 1996), p. 43. 6 Cardiff makes earth look more visually attractive and enviable than heaven. The unfettered explosion of colour in this scene (the blossoming rose bushes) contrasts with the mundane clinical look of heaven created with high intensity arc lamps. This is demonstrated in the setting of the final trial where there is a large pool of flat white light hitting the white glossy floor. 7 Ian Christie, A Matter of Life and Death (London: BFI, 2000), p. 11. 8 Herb A. Lightman, ‘Two Worlds in Technicolor’ American Cinematographer, Vol. 28, No. 7 (July 1947), pp. 236 – 37 and 263 (p. 237). 9 Natacha Thiéry, ‘Interview with Jack Cardiff, “enfant terrible” of Technicolor’ La Lettre de la Maison Française d’ Oxford, No. 11 (October 1999), pp. 150-59 (p. 152). 10 Lightman, ‘Two Worlds’, p. 237.

8 enough to convince Peter he has arrived in heaven. Yet the low horizons and the towering skies in Cardiff’s compositions continue to remind us Peter is still indebt to the world above (heaven) and that he has still not completely handed himself in.

Cardiff’s expressive use of lighting is also evident in the chiaroscuro lighting style he adopts for the interior scenes. A reoccurring interior lighting pattern he uses in AMOLAD is half lit figures. During the opening sequence depicting Peter and June’s intense conversation over the radio Cardiff lights half of Junes face, creating an ellipsis on the top of her head. The accompanying red coloured backlighting adds to the dramatic intensity of the scene which is further heightened by the piercing close-ups of both characters. Cardiff again casts a black shadow on half of June’s figure when Peter wakes up from his mental journey to heaven in which he has just escaped from the Conductor by running down a large staircase. Cardiff maintains this lighting pattern to the final scene of the film when the forces of heaven descend to earth. Here the upper part of the frame (representing heaven) is lit using low-key shadows and the lower frame is lit with intense light revealing the coloured world of earth at the base of the staircase. This high contrast style of lighting were frames and characters are split into two relates to the way the characters are also divided between the two worlds that are clashing. The blackness of the upper part suggesting monochrome heaven almost consumes the purity of the coloured mise-en-scène of earth, reminding us that Peter’s right to love in a world of passionate colour remains unsettled. Such a bold experimental style where colour is polluted with high contrast black shadows was not permitted by Technicolor consultants at the time who preferred to see high-key lighting levels and low contrast ratios in order to maintain a level of purity in the display of colours.11 Cardiff instead set new standards using Technicolor where he could offer a black and white German expressionist style of photography in colour; a style that was deeply embedded in Powell and Pressburger’s cinema since their first film together called The Spy in Black (1939).

The experimentation with colour and lighting in AMOLAD led the way to further experimentations in Black Narcissus. Set in the windy Himalayas of India a group of Anglican nuns lead by Sister Clodagh (Deborah Kerr) have been sent by Mother Dorothea to establish a religious community in the mountainous village of Mopu. Soon Mopu’s erotic past, eerie atmosphere and the sexual seductiveness of Mr. Dean (David Farrar) drives the Sisters mad. This leads to the death of Sister Ruth (Kathleen Byron) and the withdrawal of the nuns from Mopu. Powell exclaimed ‘the atmosphere in this film is everything; and we must create and control it from the start. Wind, the altitude, the beauty of the setting – it must all be under our control’.12 This was the main artistic reason as to why Powell had chosen to film at Pinewood studios and not venture on an expedition to India. Such a decision meant Powell was dependent on Cardiff’s lighting and colour cinematography in order to create different moods that corresponded to the Sisters’ changing state of minds.

One could argue this is Cardiff’s most painterly film. Cardiff’s style of lighting in this film was heavily influenced by impressionist painters hence the term Cardiff often uses to describe his cinematography, ‘painting with light’. In Craig McCall’s documentary

11 Petrie, British Cinematographer, p. 43. 12 Powell, A Life, pp. 562-63.

9 ‘Painting with Light’ Cardiff explains what attracts him to painters like Johannes Vermeer is ‘simplicity of light’ where there are basic contrasts between light and dark.13 Vermeer often painted his characters next to large windows where streams of natural light seep into dark interiors. A few examples are Woman Holding a Balance (c.1664), The Milkmaid (c. 1660) or The Geographer (1668). Cardiff’s character compositions in Black Narcissus point out to this influence when characters are frequently placed beside the permeable lattice windows of the palace in Mopu, which lets in wind and light from the outside in order to suggest how Mopu’s erotic atmosphere is slowly penetrating into the Sisters’ minds.

One particular scene in which Cardiff demonstrates his influence by Vermeer’s lighting and composition style is in the opening scene in the Calcutta convent. High contrast shadows are created on the walls as Mother Dorothea looks out of a large window. The static camera matches the stillness of a painting. White light from the outside beams onto Mother Dorothea’s white costume and it is reminiscent of the way light is used by Vermeer to accentuate the hand, the sleeve and the face of the female figure in Woman Holding a Balance. The clear white light cuts through the Venetian blinds, creating horizontal liner shadows on either side of the window’s pale white outer frames which metaphorically suggests a certain level of purity in the disciplined life the Sisters lead. The simplicity of Cardiff’s lighting style matches the simplicity of life in the convent. Cardiff also uses his chiaroscuro lighting style (seen previously in AMOLAD) in order to cast a shadow of a rotating fan mounted on the ceiling onto an empty chair and a bookcase. This harmonious, repetitive, rotating shadow further draws attention to the orderliness and strong discipline in the convent.

The purity of the Sisters’ way of life is also maintained by lighting in the small chapel the Sisters have created for themselves in Mopu. This is the only room in which the Sisters can preserve any level of purity against the erotic scenic beauty of Mopu and the vibrant blue room inside the palace. In one scene a long shot establishes four nuns praying in the narrow chapel. The nuns are in a triangular composition which symbolises the trinity of Father, Son and Holy Spirit. The symmetric orderliness of the composition again points out to the simple life the Sisters desire in Mopu, which is becoming increasingly unattainable as the erotic atmosphere of the village dominates. In a BBC documentary Cardiff suggests he wanted the lighting in this scene to match the purity of the Sisters’ oatmeal white costumes for which high intensity arc lights where used against Junge’s (the set designer) blue sky backings to create a strong natural sunlight effect. This is shown in a point of view shot as Clodagh looks towards an open window in the chapel.14 Similar to the opening scene in the convent, Cardiff also casts overbearing shadows, this time of a cross across Sister Clodagh’s face in order to imply how the burden of religious discipline is beginning to imprison her since she now yearns for the life she previously had in Ireland as shown in the flashback that follows. The pure white light that Cardiff uses in sacred spaces during the day contrasts with the coloured lighting he uses during the night scenes. In one scene Cardiff’s blue

13 Craig McCall, Painting with Light (Modus Operandi Films, 2007), available in the Criterion DVD edition of Black Narcissus. 14 Richard Blanshard, Behind the Camera (British Broadcast Corporation, 1999) aired on BBC 2 on 6 November 1999.