A couple to start things off:
Fritz Arno Wagner
Karl Freund
Miyagawa Kazuo
Lee Garmes
John Alton
Bert Glennon
Jack Cardiff
John Alcott
Agnes Godard
Mark Lee Pin-bing
Conrad Hall, Michael Chapman, Robert Richardson, Vittorio Storaro, Michael Ballhaus, Gordon Willis.
Also:
Néstor Almendros
I can’t believe no one said Sven Nykvist first, let alone mention his name! haha!
Néstor Almendros is definitely one of my all time favourites! particularly his “naturalistic” work in both color and black and white with Rohmer and Truffaut as well as Eustache’s coming-of-age masterpiece “Mes Petites Amoureuses” and of course the breathtaking magic hour sequences in Malick’s “Days of Heaven”.
Maybe instead of just rattling off a list you can also say why you personally think they are the"masters of light" otherwise we’re just confirming what we already know.
…which is why I didn’t say Nykvist. I don’t have reasons, their work speaks for themselves. I would love to see more people write-up auteurism of photography, but for the most part all we’ll find here is a couple of attributes (Alton’s use of pools of light! Cardiff’s color!) and a list of finely shot films.
-the best- my favorite two not yet mentioned:
William Lubtchansky
Sabine Lancelin
Yeah Dkaz, but you must have had an emotional response to them, anyway it would be good if people at least list some specific films that they rate highly, maybe there are films that some of us don’t know about, that are worth watching for outstanding and masterful cinematography. Or maybe you have an interesting story or anecdote about a cinematographer.
Jack Cardiff’s colour work is truly masterful, particularly in Powell/Pressburger’s “The Red Shoes” (1948), it is a visually stunning film.
Also the guys from the Polish school of cinematography who did outstanding work for Kieslowski: Piotr Sobocinski and Slawomir Idziak.
Idziak’s innovative use of over 500+ green filters/grads in creating the unforgettably oppressive look of “Short Film About Killing”, it is so innovative that even he hasn’t really repeated it to that extreme since. Other stand out films from Idziak include Kieslowski’s “The Double Life of Veronique” (1991) “Three Colors: Blue” (1993), John Sayles’ “Men With Guns” (1997) and “Gattaca” (1997).
Sobocinski’s stand out works include Kielowski’s “Dekalog” – 2 eps (1990), “Three Colors: Red” (1994) and “Angel Eyes” (2001)
Nykvist did bergman’s “shame” didnt he?
Yeah Bronc Sven shot “Shame” along with numerous other Bergman masterpieces: “Through A Glass Darkly” (1961), “Winter Light” (1962), “Persona” (1966), “Cries and Whispers” (1972) “Scenes From a Marriage” (1973), “From the Life of The Marionettes” (1980) and “Fanny and Alexander” (1982)
Other must see Sven films are: Polanski’s “The Tenant” (1976), Tarkovsky’s “The Sacrifice” (1986) and Kaufman’s “The Unbearable Lightness of Being” (1988) and if you are a Woody Allen fan then “Crimes and Misdemeanours” (1989) and “Celebrity” (1998) are worth seeing.
A couple favourites of mine are Janusz Kaminski, I love his experimentation with lenses and stocks, he’s got an original lunar look. Then there’s Emmanuel Lubezki who’s got that gritty poetry that Latin photographers are crazy about; his blacks and grains are of the most crunched and sharp and striking in movies today. Darius Khondji and Vilmos Zigmond and Jean-Yves Escoffier are cool too for their great indoor magazine look, it’s all so classy.
I’d give away all the tea in China to make a movie with Harris Savides or Lance Acord or Rodrigo Pietro or Robby Muhler or (early) Eric Edwards. Who’ve done Last Days, Buffalo ’66, Babel, Paris Texas, Gummo, and Kids.
And Ellen Kuras, Jean-Louis Bompoint, Robert Elswit, Frederick Elmes, Haskell Wexler, Gordon Willis…
I love dp’s.When Néstor Almendros was shooting Eric Rohmer’s “La Collectionneuse” (1967), he convinced Rohmer into shooting 35mm (not 16mm) even though the budget was incredibly tight, they ended up shooting an insanely low ratio of 1.5:1! The lab technicians thought that they were processing a short film!
“La Collectionneuse” was Néstor’s first feature film and he rated it as his favourite, it truly cemented the “naturalistic” lighting method that he would use throughout his brilliant career.
I highly recommend getting Criterion’s Rohmer Box Set to see how stunning “La Collectionneuse” is and the other five great films in Rohmer’s “Six Moral Tales” and also reading Néstor’s book: “A Man With a Camera”.
Yeah nice Mao! Kaminski is impressive but I’m pretty tired of him only working with Spielberg. He has unlimited resources but this and the digital heavy post work seems to limit his look, he is constantly using the same tricks; lots of smoke, backlighting, bullet proof blacks and blown out highlights, Frazier (Snorkel) lens, narrow (45 degree) shutter angle etc.
So it was great to see him break free and go crazy “lo-fi” with “The Diving Bell and the Butterfly” the film was visually spectacular, very inventive. Reverting back to “in-camera” tricks and photochemical techniques showed what he is truly capable off.
Vilmos Zsigmond is also a true master cinematographer of the “old” school!
Zsigmond’s work with Robert Altman is legendary – his use of pre-flashing to get the desaturated look and milky shadows for “McCabe…” was ingenious. Also his impressive use of the zoom lens and tracking shots.
Stand outs for Altman are of course: “McCabe and Mrs Miller” (1971), “Images” (1972) “The Long Goodbye” (1973)
Zsigmond’s other stand out films include: Boorman’s “Deliverance” (1972), Cimino’s “The Deer Hunter” (1978) and “Heavens Gate” (1980), De Palma’s “Blow Out” (1981)
I’m also a big Emmanuel Lubezki fan, his work with Alfonso Cuarón, particularly “Y tu mamá también” (2001), Michael Mann’s “Ali” (2001) and most impressively his anamorphic “documentary” work on Terrence Malick’s “The New World” (2005). The film is almost completely hand held (otherwise it’s steadicam) and uses only natural light sources, predominantly backlit against the sun.
The behind the scenes on “The New World” dvd is worth checking out, Lubezki is very entertaining to watch, particularly because of the “dogma rules” that he and Malick had layed out for themselves (as stated above: hand held and no lights!) he is truly pushed to the limits in some locations. The film is a truly impressive cinematographic collaboration. I am looking forward to the next one.
Lubezki is notorious for setting crazy obstacles for himself all the time. Even in a 60 million dollar production like Children of Men they set out to limit themselves with little to no lights, purely hand held work, and to go through with making every single long take they had come up with no matter how impossible the task.
O and Kaminski is one of my heroes. I read that for Private Ryan he would shave off layers of a lens and re-work the gears that work the shutters to create the impression of an old 1945 arri… though all he really had to do is check out a camera from my school’s equipment room.
Low Point: The new Indy. He was so busy trying to imitate Douglas Slocomb (another Hollywood maverick) that I think he lost his vision. The ugliest lighting and composition I think you’ll find anywhere.
High Point: The entire beginning of Diving Bell.
Though seriously Antoine, I get a huge kick out of his work with Spielberg. I’m sure any D.P. would love to work with him cuz with his budget and imagination there’s a lot of experimentation to be done despite the fact that it’s still a studio picture. I can see what you mean about him repeating his visuals here and there but isn’t that what defines his visual style?
Yeah, but when a visual style becomes stale/repetitive it’s not really a good thing … also I find with the heavy digital post grading on films now everything ends up looking a like, they lose the original filmic quality, that’s why “Diving Bell…” was a revelation! I definitely think Kaminski could do with laying down the dogma rules like Lubezki does for himself! haha! I’d be fine with him doing his Spielberg movies if he was also doing some worthwhile “independent” films in between.
To add one more name this great list of Cinematographers, from the Contemporary Cinema; I really like the works of Nuri Bilge Ceylan, who shot many of his films, among them his recent film Distant, which was very well received in 2003 in Cannes. I grew up in Istanbul and I am very familiar with all the places that Bilge Ceylan shot his films at, though when I watched Distant, I definitly saw a very different Istanbul; his Istanbul. And, this is I think an unique talent that only a great Cinematographer has. He also does great Photography work, which can be seen at his website: http://www.nuribilgeceylan.com.
Someone else of much importance to the world of cinematography is Giuseppe Rotunno, his collaborations with the Italian masters Visconti and Fellini are very memorable, from his stark black and white photography in “Rocco…” to the lush painterly color “scope” epics “The Leopard” and “Satyricon”.
I remember before I finally got to see Visconti’s “The Leopard”, I had found this huge book on the film (in Italian which unfortunately I couldn’t read), but it had pristine colour photographs of nearly every scene in the film which I studied over for years, just staring at the breathtaking lighting, they were like paintings, most memorable was the photos of the ballroom sequence. When I got to see the restored version in the cinema I was blown away.
Stand outs for Visconti: “Rocco and His Brothers” (1960), “The Leopard” (1963)
Stand outs for Fellini: “Satyricon” (1969), “Armacord” (1973), “Casanova” (1976) and “And the Ship Sails On” (1983)
Stand out films from Rotunno for other directors: Nichols’s “Carnal Knowledge” (1972), Fosse’s “All That Jazz” (1979), Altman’s “Popeye” (1980) and Gilliam’s “The Adventures of Baron Munchausen” (1988)
Nice, Halim, I really want to see some of his films they are unavailable down here in the antipedes, I only “know” Istanbul through the books of Orhan Pamuk (who is one of my favourite authors, particularly “The New Life”, “The Black Book”, “Snow” and his ode to the city “Instanbul”) and of course Fatih Akin’s films and also the end of “The Girl on the Bridge”. So quite fractured but enough to make me fall in love with it.
“Three Monkeys” is coming to the NZFF thankfully so hopefully I’ll get to see it in a couple of weeks. I remember seeing the still for “Distant” in a festival catalogue many years ago, I vaguely remember it was of a guy sitting on a bench by the Bosphorus with snow all around, it was visually stunning, alas I never saw the film!
Luciano Tovoli and Carlo Di Palma are absolute favourites of mine. It’s like the neo-realism period never died with these guys, no matter how modern the film they still have a remarkable naturalistic eye for the streets of Manhattan or parks in London or plains in Rome. They bring out the colours from the walls and the ground and the sky and I’d like to learn it all! They paint with whatever’s in front of them. And the movement is wonderful, they dance with the camera don’t they? A real stand out fo Tovol is his work on Taymor’s Titus.. I could’ve sworn Storarro was suddenly back in his youth, ready to kick ass.
Yeah nice Mao – I’m a huge fan of both those guys too. Di Palma’s color work and “modernist” compositions for Antonioni are incredible, the psychological use of color and the extent they went to achieve it is unparalleled in cinema. And Tovoli’s work in the 70s and 80s was inspired. The Italian’s have it in their blood! They are the true artisans of cinema! The list of great Italian cinematographers is almost endless!
One of my favourite films that Tovoli shot is Marco Ferreri’s “Bye Bye Monkey” (1978), set in New York with Gérard Depardieu and Marcello Mastroianni, if you haven’t seen it you should, it is stunning from the first frame to the last! And of course his work on Antonioni’s “The Passanger” (1975) is unforgettable – I particularly liked his use of the moving camera, the great scene where the camera repeatedly pans back and forth as the cars speed by outside a roadside cafe to reveal the characters – genius! Even Godard would have been jealous! haha!
Stand outs for Di Palma are: Antonioni’s “Red Dessert” (1964), “Blow Up” (1966) and “Identification of a Woman” (1982 – Finally on DVD!) and for Woody Allen “Hannah and Her Sisters” (1986), “Radio Days” (1987), “Shadows and Fog” (1992), and “Husbands and Wives” (1992).
Maybe we should’ve been Italian.
For sure! We could always ask Storaro for a blood transfusion! haha!
Yimou Zhang, Christopher Doyle, Lance Acord, Lazlo Kovakz, Jean-Yves Escoffier, Marcel Zyskind, Hiroshi Segawa
Vittorio Storaro, Sven Nykvist, Nestor Almendros, John Alcott (Barry Lyndon), Gordon Willis, Vilmos Zsigmond, Giuseppe Rotunno
A lot of my favorites already have been mentioned: Almendros, Willis, Nykvist, Zsigmond, Storaro, Kaminski – beautiful and inspired choices, all. Might I add the late David Watkin, who did impressive work in “Out of Africa,” “Chariots of Fire,” “Catch-22” and, perhaps most notably, “The Charge of the Light Brigade?” (And I second the above-mentioned Conrad Hall, for “Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid,” “American Beauty” and the incisive black-and-white of “In Cold Blood.”)
There is a new Cinematographer called Colin Watkinson, who shot the movie “The Fall” directed by Tarsem Singh. The movie was nothing special, however the visuals of the film were unbelievably mesmerizing. Watkinson also responsible for a lot of the visual look of “The City of Lost Children,” which I think is another visually stunning film…
A few other worthy ‘masters of light’ the late great Sacha Vierny who was a regular collaborator with Alain Resnais and produced some of the most memorable images in cinema history: (“Night and Fog”, “Hiroshima mon amour”, “Last Year at Marienbad”, “Muriel”, “The War is Over”, “My American Uncle”). He also photographed Bunuel’s “Belle de jour” as well as his numerous visually inspired collaborations with Peter Greenaway (“A Zed & Two Noughts”, “Drowning By Numbers”, “The Cook the Thief His Wife & Her Lover”, “Prospero’s Books”, “The Baby of Mâcon”, “The Pillow Book”).
Also Robby Müller needs a mention here for his outstanding work in both color and black and white for long time collaborator Wim Wenders (“The Goalkeeper’s Fear of the Penalty”, “Alice in the Cities”, “The Wrong Move”, “Kings of the Road”, “The American Friend”, “Paris, Texas”, “Until the End of the World”). Other stand out films are Alex Cox’s “Repo Man”, Friedkin’s “To Live and Die in L.A.” And also his mesmerizing black and white cinematography for Jim Jarmusch (“Down By Law”, “Dead Man”) as well as his velvety colour work (“Mystery Train”, “Ghost Dog”) and of course his gritty and uncompromising work on Von Trier’s “Breaking the Waves” as well as his stunning video work in “Dancer in the Dark”.
Antoine Doinel
I thought it might be interesting to see what cinematographers everyone rates in the history of cinema, who has made some of the greatest contributions and innovations to the way we perceive not only cinema photographically, but the world and humanity.
I’ll start things off with a couple of my favourites:
- Jimmy Wong Howe: Early master of innovative B&W photography, stand outs; “Body and Soul” (1947), “Sweet Smell Of Success” (1957), “Hud” (1963) and “Seconds” (1966)
- Raoul Courtard: Master of B&W “vérité” style photography and also elaborate tracking shots, stylised and “naturalistic” colour photography, stand outs; “Breathless” (1960), “Jules et Jim” (1962), “Contempt” (1963), “Two or Three Things …” (1967) and “Passion” (1982)
- Chris Doyle: Master innovator/improviser and spearhead in revolutionising and defining the new look of Hong Kong Cinema in the 90s, stand outs; “Chungking Express” (1994), “Happy Together” (1997), “Chinese Box” (1997), 2046 (2002) and “Paranoid Park” (2007)