American Cinematographer - December 1999 - 100

A Brief History of British Cinematography
Among these pioneers were
cinematographers who would
bring a new sensibility to the lighting
of color productions in the late '60s.
BSC fellows David Watkin and Billy

enced

like Slocombe,

cameramen

two

Taylor, Morris and Denys Coop,

Williams

Transport Films before
moving into features, and both were

"Swinging Sixties," epitomized
by intense and claustrophobic
dramas such as This Sporting Life,
The Servant, Repulsion and The Hill.
These pictures stood in sharp

interested in

contrast to

had

both

for

worked

British

achieving

a

naturalistic

aesthetic

BSC. The result was
to

a

dark underside

the

the colorful international

using soft lighting and
diffusion techniques. Watkins style

glamour of the James Bond movies
photographed by Ted Moore, BSC

evolved on some very high-profile
productions, including The Charge of
the Light Brigade, Catch-22 and The

Man for All

Devils, while Williams honed his

saw an

skills

on

Women in Love and

Sunday

Bloody Sunday.
The '60s also

saw

other inter¬

esting trends and developments, and
the last few years prior to the demise
of black-and-white saw a dazzling
array of creativity. In addition to the
new

realism, there
of

notable

expressionistic
black-and-white by experi¬

experiments in
uses

were

more

(who earned

an

Oscar in 1966 for A

Seasons).

The late 1960s and '70s also
increase in

big-budget inter¬
assignments for British
cameramen. Stanley Kubrick's deci¬
sion to work exclusively in Britain led
to productive relationships with
Geoffrey Unsworth, BSC on 2001: A
Space Odyssey, and John Alcott, BSC
on A Clockwork Orange (see histori¬
cal in AC Oct. '99, page 52), Barry
Lyndon and The Shining, all of which
feature innovative cinematography.
national

The 1970s saw a slump in U.K.
production, but British cine¬
matographers were still in great
demand on major Hollywoodfinanced productions in Europe and
North America. Among the most
distinguished contributors were
Morris (Fiddler on the Roof, The Wiz),
Unsworth (Cabaret, Superman),
film

Slocombe

(Rollerball,

The Great

Gatsby), Taylor (The Omen, Star
Wars), and John Coquillon, BSC (Pat
Garrett & Billy the Kid).
The decline of British produc¬
tion had

a

direct effect

on

career-

development patterns. Up until the
'50s,

camera

trainees learned their

craft in the studios,

working their
from clapper/loader to focus
puller to operator before making the
big move to director of photography.
way up

The closure of studios necessitated

alternative forms of training,

such as
documentary filmmaking. Beginning in the '60s, tech-

television and

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attaches directly to the sides of the

body making one rigid piece.
By triangulating to these pickup
points, a lightweight yet totally rigid
structure, not unlike a geodesic

camera

dome, is created in minutes.

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American Cinematographer - December 1999

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of American Cinematographer - December 1999
