Jack Cardiff

Jack Cardiff, OBE (18 September 1914 – 22 April 2009) was a British cinematographer, film and television director, and photographer. His career spanned the development of cinema, from silent film, through experiments in Technicolor, to filmmaking half a century later. He is best remembered for his colour cinematography for Powell and Pressburger (A Matter of Life and Death, Black Narcissus, and The Red Shoes) and John Huston (The African Queen). He was also a director: for the film version of Sons and Lovers (1960) he received a Academy Award for Best Director nomination. Quotes American Cinematographer (March 1994) "Jack Cardiff, BSC: An Eye for Color", American Cinematographer (March 1994) [Asked in a job interview with Technicolor how he hoped to be a cinematographer as he was inexperienced] I told them I studied the works of painters [like] Vermeer, the Old Masters and the Impressionists. [...] I could also describe and match how the light fell in a subway, in my house, or on the street at night. They asked a few questions about lighting, and then someone inquired about a face in a Rembrandt painting. I said the light was on the right side of the face. There were only four Technicolor cameras in the country, and they were very valuable. [...] Every night the assistant took the camera to his bedroom so he could keep an eye on it. Every three days he disassembled it, took out the prism, and checked the alignment. There were two gates and three film strips, and tolerances had to be within 8/10,000ths of an inch. [On The Red Shoes (1948)] There are sequences with people jumping from heights in slow-motion that we filmed with a wide-angle lens. There's one shot where a dancer is twisting in mid-air. He appears to float as light as a piece of falling paper. [Shooting The African Queen (1951)] A couple of weeks later, there was another cable, saying he [director John Huston] had found the perfect location in the Belgian Congo. It was a two-mile jeep ride through a savage jungle. The water was absolutely black. We were supposed to sleep in tents in a jungle that was filled with poisonous snakes. I had a 104- or 105-degree temperature, and I wasn't the only one. The doctor said we had to rest and eat better. The company brought in about 50 sheep from Nairobi. When we woke up the next morning, crocodiles had eaten them. Category:1914 births Category:2009 deaths Category:Cinematographers