American Cinematographer - December 1995 - 18

ematography by the duo of Hou Yong and
Gu Changwei, ASC, the film traces the
Faustian downfall of a young prince who
discovers a magical mask that helps him
lead his tribe to victory - and then ex¬
acts a heavy price on his soul.
Another impressive Chinese
entry was Shanghai Triad, the latest dazzler by master director Zhang Yimou
[Raise the Red Lantern, Ju Dou, The Story
of Qiu Ju), who was honored by the fes¬
tival at a special reception. Set in the
1930s, the film relates the adventures of

14-year-old boy who gains a job attend¬
ing to the haughty mistress of a Triad
gang boss. Like all of Yimou's films,
Shangai Triad is a veritable clinic in gor¬
geous cinematography, courtesy of cam¬
a

eraman

Lu Yue.
One of the festival's subtler

Feast of July) Great

Britain)
Christopher Menaul
Cinematographer: Peter Sova
Director:

Selected

as

the festival's

opening-night film, Feast of July is the
emotionally wrenching tale of an English
country family that is ripped apart when
it decides to take in a young woman who
has been impregnated and abandoned by
a rakish young man. After producing a
stillborn child during a long trek across
wind-swept moors in the winter of 1883,
Bella Ford (Embeth Davidtz) arrives in
Addisford, the town where her lover,
Arch Wilson (Greg Wise), had said that
he lived. She soon discovers that he has
lied to her, but settles in with the Wain-

wrights,

an accommodating couple
whose three grown sons vie for Bella's

a

series of surrealistic mis¬

Philip Ogaard.

Passnostalgic look
at one family's uproarious holiday gettogether. Like the best films of Woody

affections. After a prolonged courtship,
Bella decides to marry the youngest son,
Con (Ben Chaplin), but the couple's happy

Allen, the film mixes mirth and wisdom

Bella's ex-lover

A hilarious Israeli entry,

Fever, offered

a wry,

photographed by Amnon Zalait.
For racier tastes, the festival
offered the indescribable New Love in

the

equal

measures;

it marks the feature

debut of director Shemi Zarhin, and was

a deliriously postmodern mixture
of S & M and slapstick from Japan. Trac¬

Tokyo,

ing the adventures of a would-be actress
earns her living as a cruel but
queenly dominatrix, this highly unusual
picture juxtaposes beautifully lit scenes
of campy kink with the shaggy-dog ad¬
ventures of an aspiring troupe of thespiwho

ans.

The brainchild of director Banmei

Takahashi, who began his career by

helming a series of "pink films" (soft¬
core erotica), this one-of-a-kind picture
benefits from some truly striking cinema¬
tography by Naoki Kayano.
During the course of the festi¬
val, ACs envoys were able to meet with

Director

chance to create the world described in

script. "I'd seen films with beautiful
English countryside in them, and I'd seen
films with industrial squalor, but I'd
never seen the two juxtaposed in quite
the way they are in this story," he says.
"The people in the film live in these
cramped little houses on cobbled streets
with smoky factories at the end, yet
they're within a few minutes' walk of
unspoiled countryside. I liked that visual
tension. I wanted the film to look rich, but
I didn't want it to look pretty. I was after

of realism, which a lot of English
films don't have; a lot of them are too
'chocolate box' for me. I really wanted to
avoid that sort of look."
a sense

Feast of July

marks Menaul's
foray into features after an award¬

the makers of several other notable films

first

whose visual

winning

styles deserved special
notice, often for very different reasons.

What follows are short visits with the
creators of five films that are well worth

seeking out.

16

engagement turns into a nightmare when

suddenly reappears.
Christopher Menaul
says that he was drawn to the project
primarily because it afforded him the

in

American

-

S.P.

Cinematographer

wide

screen to

play

The filmmakers chose to shoot
in

Super 35 to lend the story sweep, but
heighten the sense of claustro¬
phobia in the tiny interiors. "Composing

also to

for 2.35:1 in those small spaces was very
difficult," Menaul concedes. "We tended
to sit back and use long lenses in order

things."
preparation for the nineshoot, the filmmakers sought out

to compress

In

week

locations that were within reasonable
distance of each other, while avoiding

the Midlands, cornfields in Wales, a port
in Devon, a river in Shropshire, and a

rector Marius Holst, the film benefits
from the rich, understated photography

over

a

with."

modern vistas. In the end, they man¬
aged to combine the industrial streets of

haps during his summer vacation. An ab¬
sorbing feature debut by 30-year-old di¬

of

freshing to have

any

pleasures was the Norwegian film Cross
My Heart and Hope to Die, a trenchant
coming-of-age tale about a young boy
who endures

modestly budgeted, so we didn't
have to deal with the pressures that
you'd get with a big-budget studio pic¬
ture. And after 20 years spent trying to
cram action into a small frame, it was re¬

was

career

in British television, dur¬

ing which he helmed such acclaimed
projects as 1991 's Prime Suspect. "In
many ways, this project was easier than
working in television," he reveals. "It

December 1995

prison exterior in Oxford. The film's im¬
pressively authentic interiors were de¬
signed by Christopher Robilliard.
To bring the look together,
Menaul enlisted the aid of cinematogra¬
pher Peter Sova, whose resume includes
four films with Barry Levinson (Diner, Tin
Men, Good Morning, Vietnam and Jimmy
Hollywood) as well as HBO's Fatherland
with Menaul (which earned Sova an
Emmy nomination). "We shot in Super 35
because I wanted to keep some of the
depth for the interiors," says Menaul.
"Because we were often using longer
lenses, I didn't want things to become
too flat. When we shot the landscapes,
we had more freedom to open up the
imagery, which of course relates to the
theme of the film."
Sova used Kodak's 5298 for his

interiors,

though he was a bit con¬
seeing grain after the op¬
"The darkish backgrounds

even

cerned about
tical process.

had in this film took

care of that," he
"Plus, I always overexposed by
about three-quarters of a stop to get a

we

notes.

good negative." For exteriors, he used
5248, but he resorted to 5293 for one
low-lit scene in the woods, during which
two of the brothers engage

in hand-to-

hand combat with farming tools. Sova's
camera of choice was a Panavision Plati¬
num

outfitted with Primo lenses. "I think

bit more contrast with the
Primos," he submits. "It's a bit easy to
slip into pretty photography when
you're shooting with long lenses, so I
went to extra trouble to give the film

you get a

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Stephn

byPhot
American Cinematographer - December 1995

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