American Cinematographer - November 1998 - 76

Great Relationships
flies

of the Mount Rushmore

of control.

out

During the ensuing 14 years,
Burks photographed 11 more of
Hitchcock's best-known essays in
suspense. On all of these projects, his
operative cameraman was Leonard J.
South, ASC. Both

men

became close

friends of the Hitchcock

family. The

other Hitchcock-Burks collabora¬
tions

I Confess

are

(1953), Dial M For

Murder (1954, 3-D, Warner Color)
Rear

Window, (1954, Technicolor),

To Catch

Thief (1955, VistaVision,

a

Technicolor), The Trouble With
Harry (1955, VistaVision, Techni¬
color), The Man Who Knew Too
Much (1956, VistaVision, Techni¬
color), The Wrong Man (1957),

Vertigo (1958, VistaVision, Techni¬
color), North by Northwest (1958,
VistaVision, Technicolor), The Birds
(1963, Technicolor), and Mamie
(1964, Technicolor).
I

Confess, filmed in practical
settings in Quebec, was a departure
for Hitchcock, who preferred to work
in the studio whenever possible.
Parts of The Man Who Knew Too

Much

were

photographed

in

the world's film scholars, who credit
the Swedish duo with expanding (or,

take over the world, was
surely the wildest picture of all.

parameters of the medium. The

sculptures.

our

friends try to

The collaboration ended

on

May 13, 1968, when Burks and his
wife, Elysabeth, died in a fire at their
home. Hitchcock and South

devastated.

were

South

photographed
Family Plot (1976), the last Hitchcock
picture. The director died on April
29,1980. In 51 years as a director, he
completed 53 features.
Burks
received
Academy

of Rear Window. (Color and blackand-white pictures were judged sepa¬

rately at that time.) He later won an
Oscar for the color photography of
To Catch a Thief, a magnificent
example of VistaVision technique. In
25 years as a director of photography,
Burks made 55 features.
Hitchcock never won an Acad¬
emy Award for directing, even
though he was probably the world's

famous director and he

most

was

Academy's Irving G. Thalberg

made in Natural Vision, the best 3-D

Memorial Award in 1968 for "a

of that time, and was free
gimmickry that marred
most 3-D productions. The scene in
which Grace Kelly stabbed Anthony
Dawson with her scissors proved to
be highly effective. Burks provided
outstanding VistaVision photogra¬
phy for five Hitchcock productions

consistently high quality of motion
picture production," as well as a Life

of the

from 1955
For

to 1958.

stunning shot in
Vertigo, Hitchcock wanted to capture
one

James Stewart's terror
down the inside of

as
a

on

its side, and then

combining a lens

forward while the

dollied back. In North

and

an

honorary doctorate from

USC. France made him

a

Chevalier

of the

Legion of Honor, a Comman¬
a
Knight
of the Legion of Honor of the Cine¬
matheque Francais. In 1980, the year
of his death, he was knighted by the
Queen of England.
der of Arts and Letters and

-

G.T.

tall church

by changing perspective
during the scene. The heretofore
unheard-of feat was accomplished by
building a scale model that would lie
zoom

Achievement Award from the AFI

he looked

tower

camera was

by Northwest,
Cary Grant and Eva Marie Saint had
to climb all over a soundstage replica

in Swedish theater circles, and
as a

motion

picture

Nykvist,

images of Strangers on a
photography

Train and for the color

the

the last pictures

career

made his debut

and-white

Murder

among

magnitude of their achievements
cannot be understated; the pair's
work together helped to redefine
motion pictures as an art form,
opening up limitless vistas of visual
creativity, intellectual insight and raw
emotional impact.
Bergman began his artistic

director with the 1945 feature Crisis.

nominated five times. He did receive

was

accurately, exploding) the

more

Award nominations for the black-

Marrakesh and London. Dial M For

process

74 November 1998

feathered

The Birds, in which

native of Stockholm who
at the city's Municipal
School for Photographers, first
worked with Bergman in 1953 on
Sawdust and Tinsel (a.k.a. The Naked
Night), sharing cinematographic
duties with Goran Strindberg and
Hilding Bladh (who had trained
both Nykvist and Strindberg).
Nykvist's partnership with the great
director began in earnest on the clas¬
sic 1959 film The Virgin Spring and
subsequently produced such masterworks

Nykvist, ASC

Ingmar Bergman
Spanning three decades, the
between

director

Ingmar Bergman and cinematogra¬
pher Sven Nykvist ranks as one of the
greatest teamings in cinematic
history. The two men's names are
irrevocably linked in the minds of

Through

a

Glass Darkly

Awards for both Cries and

and

Whispers

Fanny and Alexander.
A

consummate

film artist,

Bergman held high standards for his
As he noted in the semi¬

cameramen.

text

me, two

and

collaboration

as

(1961), Winter Light (1962), The
Silence (1963), Persona (1966), The
Hour of the Wolf (1968), The Passion
of Anna (1970), Cries and Whispers
(1972), The Magic Flute (1973),
Scenes from a Marriage (1973), Face
to Face (1976), Autumn Sonata
(1978), The Serpent's Egg (1978) and
Fanny and Alexander (1983). The
cinematographer earned Academy

nal
Sven

a

had studied

are

Bergman on Bergman, "For
things about a cameraman

fundamental. The first is that he

shall

be

technically

absolutely

perfect, and at the same time firstclass on lighting. The second [is] that
he must be first-class at operating his
own camera.

I don't want any camera

operators on my films. The camera¬
man

and I

come

to an

agreement
American Cinematographer - November 1998

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