The international photographer (Jan-Dec 1930)

Knights of the Camera Some Unsung Artists of the Cinema — Reprinted by Special Permission from the Theatre Guild Magazine of New York By HARRY POTAMKIN IT IS taken for granted among American film-makers that "cameramen rarely break into print." Although the photography and shots of a movie may be admired, the identity of the cinematographer excites no curiosity, save in the industry of the film and in the trade of the cameraman. What devotee of the American film will recall these names: Billy Bitzer, Alvin Wyckoff, Karl Brown, Charles Rosher, Gilbert Warrenton,, George Folsey, Oliver Marsh, Bert Glennon, Karl Struss? The enthusiast may recognize two associated with direction, Karl Brown and Bert Glennon. But he would never remember that so many of the films which he enjoyed owed much of their merit to the camera work of either. Yet many a film has been given its outstanding quality by the cinematographer. Frequently the work at the camera has deetrmined the film. In a consideration of the cameraman (who is more truly the camera engineer), one naturally begins, in America, with George William (Billy) Bitzer. About thirty-five years ago Bitzer turned to the camera from his trade of electrician, and American motion picture history wrote its first chapter. In 1896 Bitzer caught McKinley receiving the notification of the presidential nomination in Canton, Ohio. FILMS PRIZE FIGHT A few years later he recorded the Jeffries-Sharkey bout, inaugurating the practice of artificial lighting. This historical note is highly interesting, when we recall that Hollywood was founded in the search for natural sunlight. The movie began outdoors, but the Jeffries-Sharkey fight at the Coney Island Athletic Club on Nov. 3, 1899, brought the film indoors. Some four hundred arclamps were clustered over the ring and the camera speeded to a night's mileage of seven-and-a-quarter of negative, then postal card size. The American Mutoscope and Biograph Company was born into the studio world with that film and Bitzer was its dominant figure. The director was incidental. With the new century, however, the film moved toward its creator, and that evolution was consummated in David Wark Griffith. D. W. was an actor. Bitzer was camera lord. One dav the director of a film was absent. Griffith was called in to substitute. With that incident the famous AB (American Biograph) became a leader; the great Griffith-Bitzer team commenced. This combination was responsible for the close-up. Of course, the bold image existed in the film before the Biograph days. The very first peepshow films were large scale. That, however, was an expedient to film a moment. The first use of the close-up in the movement of a narrative film was made in "The Mender of Nets," in which Mary Pickford acted and which Griffith directed and Bitzer photographed. It is a victory such as this that I call camera engineering. EVOLUTION OF CLOSE-UP The too superficially reasoning critic may condemn the close-up as a banality — its use has been banal — it is nevertheless, as a rhythmic component, intrinsic cinema. We may note here that in America the closeup has remained a device for effect. In Europe it has evolved as a structural element and has attained, in "The Passion of Joan of Arc," the eminence of a structural principle. In this evolution we connect two great directors, Griffith and Carl Dreyer, who acknowledges the former as a pioneer; and we join as well two very great cinematographers, Billy Bitzer and Rudolph Mate. Bitzer is responsible for certain controls of photographic quality. It was he who originated the soft focus, the elimination of the sharp corners of the film frame and the use of gauze to tone the film to a mist (as in "Broken Blossoms"). In America, again, we have not gone on with these modifications of the literal in film photography. It is in Europe we find their continuation and extension. Cavalcanti films "The Petite Lily" through gauze to depersonalize the characters, and Man Ray sees his characters through a mica sheet which grains the picture and renders it liquid in consistency. There is one European device we have borrowed and abused to death: the rising mist. This appeared in "The Flesh and the Devil," was used effectively in "Sunrise," and then repeated in numerous Fox films. But otherwise our cinematographers have not learned the treatment that modifies the literal. The mind of the American film, regarding both content and approach, is literal; and that is why the American film is still rudimentary, and why no on& -here has extended or even equalled the composftftfns of Griffith or logicallv developed the innovations of Billy Bitzer. For instance, let us refer to the camera angle, a major instance of camera engineering. In "Intolerance," in 1915, Bitzer used the angle and the mobile camera to descend, in the Babylonian scene, from a view looking down upon three thousand persons to a close-up of the central personage. America quite forgot this powerful method until the German film, "Variety," introduced the angle as the determining structure of a film and sent all Hollywood into a frenzy from which it has only recently recovered. Nor has there yet been very much learned by director or cinematographer of Hollywood about the angle as a principle, rather than as an effect device. We have few camera engineers, or camera estheticians; they are mostly cameramen. Coupled with the name of Billy Bitzer is that of Alvin Wyckoff. Wyckoff is to the reputation of De Mille what Bitzer is to the realization of Griffith's ideas. There is no knowing what Wyckoff might have accomplished had he worked with the creator instead of the barker. Nevertheless, what remains with one after an early De Mille film is, besides the sense of claptrap content, a memory of photographic, cinematographic splendor. Wyckoff is especially noted for the invention of new lenses and for innovations in lighting. He is accredited with having first effected the reproduction in the film of the lighting of a cigar or cigarette. BITZER AND WYCKOFF In 1928 the famous "originals" and olden rivals, Bitzer and Wyckoff, joined together to film (at the behest of George Barnes, the Goldwyn cameraman) the movement of men through a marsh in "The Rescue." This itself attests to the fact that the "originals" have not yet been duplicated. These two men, Bitzer and Wyckoff, belong to the category of camera engineers. The camera esthetician I term the cinematographer who is also an independent director. In America we may number among these, Schoedsack and Cooper, makers of "Chang"; Robert J. Flaherty, the great lyricist of the cinema who made "Nanook of the North" and "Moana of the South Seas"; and Karl Brown, who constructed and realized "Stark Love." Brown is one of Billy Bitzer's boys, and his record in cinematography includes "The Covered Wagon,; and "Beggar on Horseback." Fourteen