American Cinematographer - June 2001 - 98

Images for the Ages
12-year-old

(Giuseppe

Renato

Sulfaro); like the other boys, he

initially admires Malena and fanta¬
sizes about her from

a

distance. The

complicated
disappears
into the abyss of war and is
presumed dead.
story becomes more

when Malena's husband

Soon, the local

women are

spreading poisonous gossip about
the reclusive Malena. She is forced to

leave her

teaching job and subse¬
quently dates German soldiers.

When the Germans

are

driven

out

of

Sicily and the Americans soldiers
arrive, the locals shave Malena's head
and force her

story doesn't
This page:

Watching Malena
(Monica Bellucci)
take leisurely
strolls around
town is a
favorite pasttime
for local boys in
the World War II
drama Malena.

Opposite page:
Cinematographer
Lajos Koltai, ASC
earned his first

Academy Award
nomination for

his work

on

the

film, his second
collaboration
with director

Giuseppe
Tornatore.

British troops

Lajos Koltai, ASC

One

Malena

in the background.
big battle sequence takes place
on a hillside by a river. We set the
Akela up at the top of a hill and
dropped it down one side to the
waiting troops. Then we'd crane back
up with the American troops who
were attacking the British. You see
the scene from their perspective, with
the camera moving with Martin and
the soldiers as he runs up the hill and
into the British troops."
Emmerich frequently used
smoke for ambience in battle

scenes,

and Deschanel notes there

were

sometimes inconsistencies in the way
it drifted. For instance,

he'd be shoot¬

with smoke in which
firing their guns, and
pretty soon there would be a cloud of
black smoke from the guns, which
would affect the exposure level. "We
ing

a scene

troops were

used

a

remote-control device that

Howard Preston manufactures to
make instant changes

in T-stops with

transmission," he says.
"We call it Elvis, but it's called FI&E.

microwave

rigged so my assistant could
instantly change the stop."
It

was

Deschanel

concludes,

"We

didn't

glamorize the revolution.
People do horrible things in war. We
tried to explore what drove them
while also making an entertaining
and exciting film."
-

96 June 2001

Bob Fisher

for

Lajos
Koltai, ASC when his cinematogra¬
phy peers in the Academy of Motion
true

came

Picture Arts and Sciences nominated

Malena for
a

student

an

Oscar. He recalls

at

the Drama and Film

being

School in

Budapest some 35 years
when Vilmos Zsigmond, ASC
would send Gyorgy Hies, head of the
cinema department, a monthly copy
of American Cinematographer. "We
were all
very eager to read about the
cinematographers in Hollywood and
the films they were making," he
recalls. "I remember feeling very
proud when I saw Vilmos's picture
on the cover. People told me I was
wasting my time worrying about
such things. [They said] I would
ago,

never

have those three letters, ASC,

after my name."
Malena is

a

sensitive

and

the relation¬
ship between a woman and an
adolescent boy who are brought
together by circumstance. The story
begins in 1940 and is set in a village
in Sicily. Malena (Monica Bellucci)
is an enigmatic schoolteacher who
draws a crowd of leering teenagers
during her languorous strolls
through the village but is oblivious
to the attention. One of the boys is
sensuous

story about

of

town. But

Writer/director
Tornatore

A dream

out

the

end there.
(Cinema

Giuseppe
Paradiso)

adapted Malena from a story by
Luciano Vincenzoni. The film is
Koltai's second collaboration with

following the 1998 film
Legend of 1900. The cinematog¬
rapher read the script only about a
month before production was slated
to begin in Siracusa, a village in Sicily.
Tornatore,
The

He met with Tornatore in Rome,

but

the director still hadn't cast Renato,

and he wasn't

ready to talk about his
producer Mario
Cotone encouraged Koltai to draw
on his understanding of Tornatore's
sensibilities to craft a plan for visual¬
izing the story.

visual ideas. Line

Koltai visited Siracusa with

production designer Francesco
Frigeri to scout locations. He
brought a lot of still pictures back to
Budapest and began planning how
he was going to shoot the film. By
then,

a

decision had been made to

frame the story in the

2.35:1

anamor-

phic format. Panavision's Phil Radin
assured Koltai that he could assemble

anamorphic lens package on rela¬
tively short notice. "We wanted to
frame this story on a wide screen, so
we could show the scope of the
village and distance Malena from the
boys as she is approaching them,"
Koltai says. "I preferred the character
that you get with anamorphic lenses
an

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American Cinematographer - June 2001

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