The Cine Technician (1943 - 1945)

34 THE CINE-TECHNICIAN March— April. 1943 wore in those days) shooting Blackmail. An added complication was that Anny Ondra couldn't speak English, so she only mouthed the words, whilst Joan Barry, standing off-stage, spoke them into a microphone — none of which was particularly helpful to good acting. Anny Ondra, incidentally, Jack found very pleasant to work with. In fact, later on, when he was on his yearly holidays on the Continent, he always used to make a point of visiting her at home in Germany, only discontinuing this, for fear of his visit being misunderstood, when she married Max Schmeling. Hitch, whose very charming wife had been his script girl, had a town flat and a country place and they used to entertain very lavishly, with lashings of champagne and so on, says Jack, with a far-off reminiscent look. When Hitch's contract with B.I. P. run out in 1933, he asked a figure which B.I. P. felt they were unable to meet. Hitch then went off free-lancing and it was years later that Jack shot a picture for him' again, .The Lady Vanishes, for Gainsborough, which pleasantly enough was one of their very best. When Hitch left B.I. P. Jack carried on under his contract with them for several years. But much of the pleasure went out of his work there, with Hitch's departure, and the pictures he had to work on were, as he says, generally not much better than a load of tripe. Finally he was hired out by the studio to do an outside job down at Shepperton. He was a bit suspicious that this might be a " quota quickie " job and let the studio know that if it turned Out to be so when he got there he would give them till midday to find someone to replace him, and would then walk out. Those bad old " quota quickie " days seem far off now, but most people can remember clearly enough how it broke any honest technician's heart to work on them, and probably ruined his reputation into the bargain. Anyway, when Jack arrived on the Monday, he found out from the director that the film (a feature) was scheduled for nine days' shooting; so he rang up the studio to warn them and at midday walked out on the film and his job at B.I. P. The only redeeming feature of this sorry business was that the quota job gave a first lighting opportunity to a man who'd been Jack's second on Blackmail — Ronnie Neame — who has recently made a name for himself with his work on One of Our Aircraft is Missing and In Which We Serve. After leaving B.I. P. Jack had a rather lean time free-lancing for a while, and was then offered a contract by Gainsborough, where he's been ever since. He rinds it a good place to work at, and has had several good jobs to do. Of all the British directors he's worked with, next to Hitch, he likes working with Anthony Asquith best. He finds him very pleasant as a technician and full of .ideas ; in fact Jack goes so far as to say that We Dive at Dawn, the submarine picture he and Asquith have recently finished, is the best film he has ever worked on and the best work he has ever done. The whole picture, with its cramped sets to scale of submarine interiors, was full of lighting problems and opportunities — the effect when the lights go down while the periscope is in use and a high light here and there picks up on the oily faces of the crew — or the effect when the whole submarine shudders under depth charges, which they got by all laying hold of the camera and giving it a good shaking, whilst at the same time one of the crew pulled the lens quickly in and out of focus. Anyway, Jack confidentlv recommends the film. Jack has worked with pretty well every British director in the business and has got on well with all of them, except one who shall be nameless. In fact it would take a pretty funny sort of director. hopelessly arty or hoity-toity or something, not to get on well with a cameraman who gets on with the job with as liftle fuss as Jack does. Mind you. if he takes a dislike to anyone or objects to their way of working, it takes a pretty rough tongue to equal Jack's for outspokenness. There's a nice little story of when Jack .was working on a film with a certain American director a few years ago — now this director was a patronising sort of lout who laboured under the impression that British technicians were a lot of yokels ; well one day he put his hand approvingly on Jack's shoulder and said: "You know, Jack, I'm surprised — you're really a very good cameraman. You'd do well in Hollywood — why don't you come back with me and earn some real money? " To which Jack replied: "Are there many more like you over in America? " " Oh yes! dozens." ' In that case, thanks very much, I'll stop right here." Jack thinks that his most unpleasant job of shooting was on the original Hindle Wakes, directed by Maurice Elvey. which if you remember was a very good film indeed. They were shooting at Blackpool and Jack had' to set up his camera in the front car of the giant switchback and keep turning on Estelle Brody and John Stuart sitting in the front seats. You can imagine what it was like, standing up and hand-turning all the time with his back to the way the switchback was going and never knowing -whether it was going to go up or down. But when it was all over they did at least have a shot that looked like something : today it would all be done with back-projection and turn out as unreal and flat as wartime beer. That's one thing that Jack really regrets from the old days — the location jobs when you could push your actors and actresses against some real scenery and among some real people and come back with stuff that was something like the real thing. It was only the coming of sound and back-projection