Take One (Jan 1979)

Stars Behind The Lens Hollywood's ten best cameramen and how they shot A decade ago, it would have been a cinch to name the finest cinematographers in Hollywood. The last great wave of studio practitioners were alive and well—in 1967, William Daniels went from Garbo to In Like Flint, William Clothier was working on Valley of the Dolls, Russell Metty shot Thoroughly Modern Millie, Charles B. Lang did Wait Until Dark, and so on. The young turks were still in graduate school or stinting as camera operators or just starting out. The Easy Rider explosion of 1968—the production code upheaval, the influx of unbound filmmakers—had not yet happened. Much has taken place since then. The Seventies have witnessed extraordinary technological advances—among_ them, the steady-cam, the versatile Panaflex, the development of ultra high-speed lenses for low-light conditions—that have revolutionized the craft, putting it in a sort of perpetual transition. The pioneers have retired or died or simply vanished. Studio work has fallen off, as indeed the studios have fallen off, tapered output, merged, diversified, liquidated. The giants of the past are still being emulated by the new rebels, but the cameraman of today is also digging fresh ground. Black and white usage has slipped away, and with it the secret strides of the old masters. Increased location work has called for a tremendous resourcefulness about exterior conditions. And the cameramen in Hollywood. today Patrick McGilligan is the editor of Boston’s The Real Paper. their way to the top by Patrick McGilligan are engaged beyond the _ pictorial— Wexler, directing bits of American Graffiti; Butler, conceiving entire sequences of Grease; Willis’ “oneness” with a director—in an open-role manner that might have raised a few eyebrows (or hackles) in the so-called Golden Age. The modern challenges—the new freedoms—have created a community of cinematographers, much like the USCUCLA network of directors, who swap ideas, pool information, selflessly collaborate. Movies like One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest (three cinematographers) and Close Encounters of the Third Kind (11 cinematographers, under Vilmos Zsigmond) suggest that a collective approach to cinematography is already a reality, in some circumstances. Meanwhile, there is a movement among cameramen towards directing—Wexler, Fraker, Alonzo, now Willis—which is indicative of their individual range and ambitions. Who are these men (for it is still a maledominated profession), and what do they contribute, individually, to a film? A tough question, possibly an unfair one. In the first place, a cinematographer is valued, traditionally, for his slavish fealty to a director. Thus, it is dangerous to estimate where a director's personality leaves off and the cinematographer’s sensibility enters in. Cuckoo's Nest, for example, had three of Hollywood's bestbrightest cinematographers in Wexler (who set the tone, then quit), Butler (who completed the interiors) and Fraker (who lensed the outdoor scenes). Yet the movie is a seamless whole, one cinemato grapher’s ‘style’ virtually indistinguishable from the other’s, everything subordinated to the story, the director, the package. Of course, some directors exert a more creative influence on cinematographers, just as some cinematographers exert a more creative influence on directors. Some (I'm thinking of Joseph Biroc/Aldrich or John Coquillon/Peckinpah) are inseparable compadres, mutual colorists. A cinematographer like David M. Walsh is pedestrian in his studio assignments (W.C. Fields and Me, Silver Streak), but inspired in his teamwork with Woody Allen (Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Sex, Sleeper). Likewise, Paul Lohmann is inspired in his. relationship with Altman (California Split, Nashville, Buffalo Bill and the Indians) but merely adequate elsewhere (The White Buffalo). So it goes, so it goes—there are distant ends of the spectrum, merit in an obsequious cinematographer as well as a maverick one, endless variables. And while I wouldn't advise anyone to see a movie for its cinematography alone, for, say, a Gordon Willis assignment, I would hastily add that Willis’ work is almost always a virtue in otherwise flawed movie-making. (I am thinking of Comes A Horseman, for example.) Plus, Willis’ involvement usually clues good taste, an intelligent project. It helps, therefore, to know the difference between Michael Butler and (no relation) Bill Butler, veteran Ernest Laszlo and upstart Laszlo Kovacs, Robert Surtees and his son Bruce, not to mention Claude Renoir and TAKE ONE /JANUARY 1979 23