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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.

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