American Cinematographer - March 2003 - 83

Opposite page:
the film-noir

In

classic Double

Indemnity, hot
Phyllis

dame

P\RM\(j SPAC

Dietrichson

(Barbara

Stanwyck) lures
insurance sales¬
man

Walter Neff

(Fred MacMurry)
into

a

murder

plot. Working
from

a

first-rate

script filled with
snappy dialogue,
Seitz used moody
lighting to under¬
score

the anti-

hero's dilemma.

This page:

MacMurray
blocks out
scene

a

with the

production's
crew.

The Lost Weekend

There).

was

Hollywood's first serious film about
alcoholism

and

demonstrated

photographic techniques that

were
unorthodox in 1945. And Sunset

Boulevard remains
mate

one

insider films about

"A half-century later, it's
its time," declares

of the ulti¬

Hollywood.
still ahead of

film historian Sam

Staggs in his recent book Close-up on

fA8SrPcohSpheoitahvm0iCeofgnstzse..

ocurftesy

Phot s

Sunset Boulevard.

By the time Seitz joined
Wilder, he had nearly 30 years of

experience
contrast,

as a

cinematographer. In

Wilder, who died at age 95

in March 2002, was

directing his
Hollywood feature. (The
Major and the Minor had come first.)
In 1909, the 16-year-old Seitz began
working as a lab technician at
Essanay in Chicago. Within a few
years he was processing film and
shooting titles for the St. Louis
Motion Picture Company. When he
second

moved

to

its Santa Paula, California,

branch in 1914, he

promoted to
cinematographer. Two years later he
joined the American Film Company
was

in Santa Barbara, where he

shot films

for director

Henry King. His work
eventually caught the eye of Metro
director Rex Ingram, and in 1920
Seitz and Ingram began a long,
productive association. They made
12 silents, including The Prisoner of
Zenda and The Four Horsemen ofthe
Apocalypse. The latter made Rudolph
Seitz's

as

on

techni¬

the matte

shot, which he first used in Ingram's

Trifling Women (1922), and 3-D
films that could be viewed without

sensation, thanks in part

smoldering portraits of the

films he made with Wilder. Each has

a

devilish lover.
In the sound era,

several

Seitz also worked

cal innovations such

glasses. By the time he died in 1979,
at age 85, he had 18 patents to his
credit, including those for the matte
shot and for a method of altering the
film format within a single film.
Seitz's versatility as a cine¬
matographer is well displayed in the

Valentino
to

Conquering Hero). Throughout his
career,

a

Seitz shot

Shirley Temple movies, creat¬
ing more mythic film images, such as
the radiantly lit close-ups in Curly
Top. He photographed 20 Alan Ladd
films and worked repeatedly with
directors John Farrow (notably on
The Big Clock) and Preston Sturges
(Sullivans Travels, The Miracle of
Morgan's Creek and Hail the

distinctive look, and each conveys a

strong sense

of place. "I always try to

dramatize the locale of

a

story

photographically," Seitz told AC in
1950. Of course,

of the films

the environments

were

also achieved

through the art direction; Hans
Dreier supervised Ernst Fegte on
Hal Pereira

on

Indemnity, Earl Hedrick

on

John Meehan

on

Five Graves to Cairo,

Double

Lost Weekend and

American

Cinematographer 79
American Cinematographer - March 2003

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