American Cinematographer - December 1999 - 94

A Brief History of British Cinematography
Seeking

a

classic visual

style for
Raiders of the
Lost

Ark,

director Steven

Spielberg (at
camera

in white

shorts, opposite

producer
George Lucas)
selected
veteran
cameraman

Douglas
Slocombe, BSC
(next to
Spielberg) to
shoot the

rousing 1981
adventure yarn.
Here, the group
prepares a
scene on the
Hawaiian island
of Kauai.

Though
Slocombe had
some initial
doubts about

doing

an

action

film, the film's
clever script
and Spielberg's
enthusiasm

quickly
him

won
The

over.

the March 1999 issue).

Despite the ill
feeling towards foreigners in British

of both

European and American cinematog¬

British cinema: Thunder Rock, A

fertile

Canterbury Tale, I Know Where I'm
Going, Brief Encounter, Dead of
Night, Odd Man Out, They Made Me
a
Fugitive, Great Expectations, Oliver

studios,

Temple of
Doom

(1984)

and Indiana
Jones and the
Last Crusade

(1989).

the

presence

raphers helped to create

a
creative environment in which

a new

generation of British technicians
would learn their craft.
At the outbreak of World War

would later

Jones and the

Man.

returned home, while many
Continentals found their

first

of the
move¬

and their ability to work,
subjected to restrictions. This gave
British technicians the chance they
had been waiting for, and many
seized the opportunity to blossom.
Some who were inspired by working
with top foreign cinematographers
(e.g. Krasker, Green, Erwin Hillier,
BSC and Wilkie Cooper, BSC),
contributed to the development of a
bold new approach to black-andwhite cinematography. Their work
was complemented by the creative
contributions of emigre cameramen
ments,

as

Perinal, Greenbaum and

Heller, who continued to play impor¬
tant

roles in British

filmmaking.

The dominant aesthetic that

emerged was a high-contrast, low-key
style which combined the artistic
subtleties of Germanic technique and
the bold chiaroscuro of American

most

Twist, The Fallen Idol and The Third

II, most of the Americans in Britain

such

90 December 1999

some

visually arresting and
atmospheric examples of 1940s

cameraman

sign on for two
sequels: Indiana

"film noir." The results include

of the

Equally fine was Hamlet, the
major British experiment in
deep focus, shot by Desmond
Dickinson, BSC.
The latter half of the 1940s

also

saw

some

major Technicolor

achievements, particularly by Jack
Cardiff on Stairway to Heaven, Black
Narcissus, The Red Shoes and The

African Queen. Cardiff was one of the
first employees of Technicolor's
British operation (established in
1936), and worked on Wings of the
Morning, the first British Technicolor
production. The bulk of the first
batch of color productions tended to
have imperial or exotic themes: The

color

feature

productions was
very interesting
films were made during this period,
including The Life and Death of
Colonel Blimp, Henry V and This
Happy Breed. However, the real
breakthrough came during the post¬
war
period with Cardiff's work.
Refusing to be bound by convention,
he pioneered the subtle use of colored
lighting and low-key effects, pushing
against the limits of what was deemed
acceptable
practice
by
the
Technicolor company, who preferred
films to be brightly and uniformly lit
to allow the colors to have full impact.
Cardiff's audacity allowed other
experiments: BSC members Guy
Green and Douglas Slocombe both
produced low-key atmospheric work
restricted, but

some

in color

the costume dramas

on

Blanche

Lovers,

Fury and Saraband for Dead
respectively.

Meanwhile, Oswald Morris
infuriated Technicolor with his use of
diffusion and smoke

mute

the

The Four Feathers, Sixty
Glorious Years, The Mikado, The Thief

of Bagdad. Alexander Korda had

Morris and Huston continued their

made

experimentation on Moby Dick,
using a combination of washed-out

Drum,

a

major investment in British

Technicolor, and five of the first eight
British Technicolor features were
Korda

productions.
During the war, the number of

in

Moulin

to

colors

Huston's biopic

color

Rouge,

John

of Toulouse-Lautrec.

printed with a black-and-white

negative to lend the images a hard
edge and strong blacks - an attempt
American Cinematographer - December 1999

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