For all his lucid dreams. They will be remembered with Godard, Varda, Lanzmann, Straub & Huillet, Rivette, Truffaut, Garrel, and the rest of cinema, which will not be the same.
Top: From Jacques Rivette's The Story of Marie and Julien(2003); featuring Jerzy Radziwilowicz and Emmanuelle Béart; cinematography by William Lubtchansky.
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"I met him only once, in 2001, when he granted me an interview that turned into a long and amicable talk at his home in Paris (concluding with directions to the nearby Poîlane bakery)." The New Yorker's Richard Brody: "[A]rguably, no cinematographer in the history of cinema has photographed a more significant set of movies.... As a cinematographer, Lubtchansky may not have brought about as manifest a technical revolution as did Gregg Toland and Raoul Coutard, but he played a crucial role in the work of the most historically-informed and classical-minded of modernist filmmakers, by infusing traditional cinematic craftsmanship with a decisively modernist spirit."
More tributes: Mark Asch, Miriam Bale, Ronald Bergan, Matthew Flanagan, Andrew Grant, Ed Howard, Craig Keller, Glenn Kenny, Ekkehard Knörer, Jeremy Mathews, Dave McDougall, Matt Prigge, Andy Rector and Gina Teleroli.
"While it has become standard practice for directors to establish the look of a film in its pre-production stages, Mr Rivette has long preferred to find his visual approach while working with his actors on the set," writes Dave Kehr in the New York Times. "With Mr Lubtchansky present, he would run through the scene several times, and then consult with his cinematographer to choose the camera angles and lighting schemes he believed most appropriate to the material. The results could vary widely — from the fluid, sunny images of Le Pont du Nord (1981) to the dark, heavy, almost Germanic manner of The Duchess of Langeais (2007) — but they seemed always to grow organically from the material, rather than being imposed on it."