American Cinematographer - March 1997 - 61

script, and Paul's interpretation of

also

it, dictated the look of the film. It's

in terms of

intimate

story with emotion,
sensuality, but it also
revolves around a terminally ill
woman. It's a
European picture
an

warmth and

which we infused with the warmth
and pacing of an American film.
It also has

a

certain timeless

look,

in

keeping with the slightly fairy¬
tale quality of the piece."
The scenic surroundings
of the mythic locale of Travento
(shot in central Italy's hilltop town
of Sermonetta) conjure up this
sense

of timelessness. Travento is

a

village in which the sole physician
makes doting house calls on patients
who

owe

while

him

a

small fortune, all the

complaining that he can't af¬

great format for a director
working with actors,

a

particularly in a comedy. You can
really place people within the
frame in an interesting manner,
and play scenes within the frame
more
successfully."
Weiland echoes those

sen¬

timents, and further praises

the
anamorphic format for helping the
crew
keep to its tight, 42-day shoot¬
ing schedule. Explains the director,
"On

seven-week schedule, one

a

would

normally just be banging
the light in and moving on. The
goal here was to do something on
short schedule and make it look
like a real movie, which Henry
did wonderfully. Anamorphic
a

not

only made this

a

bigger

ford to take his wife to the seaside;
it's a place where the local boys

movie, it also saved time; the

their elders from a
shave in the barber shop to

two

rouse

a

leisurely
deal with

look that

a

would convey both the present
and an unspecified past, the film¬
makers opted for a
limited color palette

screen

a

-

to shoot

photographic approach that

time to

light

are

usually badly lit

carefully choose what we were go¬
ing to use to light each scene.
"The perfect situation for
me is to
put one light in the right
place, doing the right thing," he
maintains. "Even for night scenes,
I like to use as few clearly defined
sources as
possible. It's so much
more
interesting when an actor is
out of the main source, being hit by
light reflecting from elsewhere."
This minimalist lighting
scheme was especially advanta¬
geous when Braham had to mimic
the omnipresent Italian sunlight
for the interior scenes. Due to
Sermonetta's typically harsh illu¬

mination, the region's edifices
(fashioned primarily out of lime¬
stone) are designed specifically to
shade its inhabitants. Braham

ma¬

nipulated the small dark interiors
and powerful window light to es¬
tablish the feeling of a close-knit
old-world community, a place

high¬
light "warm-end"
greens and
Weiland
Braham

us

relies upon a minimal number of
fixtures. "Shots that take me a long

that would
shades

allowed

close-ups at once."
Braham, for his part, pre¬

fers

provincial emergency.
To achieve

wider

no clear visual effect. If a
shot appears to work simply, I
think it is likely to have a good,
clear visual feeling on the screen.
We also needed to work quickly
because of the short schedule, and
because 90 percent of the town was
inaccessible to trucks. We had to

and have

reds,

where modern life exists amid

browns.

cen-

Shooting in the
Italian town of

Sermonetta,
Braham found
that the
architecture
was

designed

with small
windows
intended to

keep out both
the region's
bright sunshine
and oppressive
heat

-

resulting in
strong shafts
penetrating
deep shadows.
He often
recreated this
effect with 6K

Cine-Pars and
other

sources

augmenting
natural

sunlight.

and
also

pushed for the film
to be shot in

an-

amorphic, believing
that the expansive
2.35:1
a

canvas

film

ematic

lends

greater cin¬

a

quality.
Another

reason

for choos¬

ing the widescreen format was the
town of Sermonetta

offers

narrow

itself, which

streets and Ro¬

manesque architecture dating back
to 449 B.C. Notes production de¬

signer Rod McLean, "We decided
to avoid Tuscany, which has been
seen so often on the big screen. We
chose Sermonetta because of its

sturdy, slightly rougher beauty."
Offers Braham, "In a town
like Sermonetta, with its terribly
streets, we could have
ended up with a very claustropho¬
narrow

bic look

quite easily; it was impor¬
to be able to open the film
Also, anamorphic allowed us

tant to

up.
to

use

old

us

the wonderful textures of the

buildings in

our

shots. It's

March 1997

American

Cinematographer

59
American Cinematographer - March 1997

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