American Cinematographer - May 2020 - 51

Photos courtesy of the AC Archive.

up suspense through the variety of
'points of view' this method affords for
each take."
Renoir's director of photography
on the picture was Georges Leclerc, who
had several feature films and a number of
short subjects to his credit, and who had
also been lighting programs for French
TV. In France, the Nouvelle Vague (New
Wave) movement was already underway,
with its rejection of more traditional filmmaking methods and an embrace of
experimentation in cinematography, editing, and storytelling methods in general.
Another cinematographer of
European renown, future ASC member
Sven Nykvist, penned an article titled
"Photographing the Films of Ingmar
Bergman" for the October 1962 issue of
AC. In it, he touts the creative benefits of
the new, fast black-and-white emulsions
he'd been using on The Silence: "When
Bergman handed me the script, he
explained the dream effect he wanted:
'There must not be any of the old, hackneyed dream effects, such as visions in
soft focus or dissolves. The film itself
must have the character of a dream.'
"Bergman believes in photography
having high contrast, so my preparations
for this dream effect began with a series of
experiments with different kinds of film
emulsions. We were surprised to discover
the strong graininess effect we obtained
from our experiments with 16mm
Ektachrome Commercial blown up to
35mm black-and-white. We also made
photographic tests with ordinary sound
recording film and with orthochromatic
emulsions, and all these tests included the
films of various manufacturers.
"The conclusion reached through
the tests was that each film and each laboratory method employed offered some of
the advantages we sought. Our final decision was to shoot with Eastman Double-X
negative and develop it to a higher than
normal gamma."
The influence of European cinema
is also apparent in the magazine's April
1960 coverage of Federico Fellini's
masterpiece La Dolce Vita, shot by Otello
Martelli, who had previously shot La
Strada and Nights of Cabiria for the Italian

ttp Stanley Kubrick's cerebral sci-fi epic 2001: A Space Odyssey, shot by Geoffrey Unsworth, BSC,
blew minds in the late '60s. ttq A triptych of trippy AC covers from the 1960s. pt Sven Nykvist,
ASC penned a 1962 piece about his collaborations with Swedish director Ingmar Bergman.
pu The crew of thrifty director-producer Roger Corman's low-budget horror movie Pit and the
Pendulum, shot by Floyd Crosby, ASC (AC Oct. '61) grabs a shot of star Vincent Price on set.
q Director John Cassavetes helped define the concept of "indie cinema" with Shadows,
shot by Erich Kullmar (AC Aug. '61).

director. In a piece titled "Filming La
Dolce Vita in Black-and-White and
Widescreen," author Libero Grandi
writes, "Foregoing many of the established photographic rules, Martelli
expresses in a key-tone all the various
characters and events taking place in
the film itself. His choice of lenses is
often unique, too. Martelli used 75mm,
100mm and 150mm long-focus lenses
for close-ups and two-shots in place of
the 50mm lens generally used for
making similar shots in CinemaScope."
Analyzing the psychology of the
duo's approach, the article observes,
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"Where there are shots with dialogue
between two actors (one in C.U. and
the other in the foreground) the depth
of field is quite limited because of the
long-focus lenses used; the focusing
operation (during shooting) had to
follow each actor in turn very carefully,
throwing out of focus the actor who
had just finished speaking and bringing the other into sharp focus. An
example is the dialogue scene between
Steiner and Marcello at Steiner's house
- the technique underscores their
hopeless isolation.
"The hazy background against
May 2020

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American Cinematographer - May 2020

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