JDIFF: Report on 'Cameraman: The Life and Work of Jack Cardiff'
DIR/PRO: Craig McCall • PRO: Karen Murphy, Christine O’Reilly • ED: Dan Roberts • Featuring: Jack Cardiff, Martin Scorsese, Charlton Heston, Richard Fleischer, Kirk Douglas.
Screen Cinema, 2:00pm, Saturday, February 19th 2010
Cinematographers are the unsung heroes of filmmaking. While directors are consistently praised for their vision and insight few pay attention to the primary conduit between the director’s mind and the audience. Jack Cardiff was an exceptional facilitator in this regard.
Over an extremely long and varied career Cardiff put his visual stamp on numerous projects, his lighting innovations alone proving influential to this day, he was there at cinema’s infancy and his steady hand and aesthetic eye led to some of Film’s most arresting imagery over projects which veered widely in tone and content. The film itself establishes the spectrum of Powell and Pressburgers The Red Shoes (1948) to Rambo: First Blood Part 2‘ 1985) and this seems a fine enough indication that in Cardiff’s world genre barriers did not exist. His vision could come to play on any sort of job and even when naturally all the films couldn’t be great, his flair would shine through. Flops and misfires may be in his filmography but damn if they didn’t always look good.
With a warm introduction by its director Craig McCall the film draws you back into the past in a very watchable way, icons darting in and out of his fascinating chronology. I will admit that his name would have meant nothing to me before this weekend but the amount of films he’s played a part in that I enjoy is astounding. Thoroughly ensconced in the Hollywood industry since he was a child actor he saw the rise and fall of silent cinema as it then matured into colour and it is through his innovations in the world of Technicolor that he will be best remembered.
Cardiff is the biggest presence here, the documentary having great access to him and lets him tell his story in a very naturalistic sense. There’s no heavy handed story here and refreshingly no agenda past making the point that here was a man, who while blessed with the insight of an artist, was also a worker dedicated to a job every day. It chronicles how outside passions such as painting and photography came into play on that job and a particular highlight is in seeing the gorgeous portraits he did of a number of the world’s most beautiful women, including Audrey Hepburn, Marilyn Monroe, and Sophia Loren.
Anecdotes are told, many quite humorous about a variety of people, directors, actors and those involved with the production side of things but never does the film wander too far away from Jack’s own tale. It would be easy to stray down a back alley of Lauren Bacall stories or Hitchcockian asides but Jack is the star and his quiet dignity throughout his career is the focus and he remains an engaging and warm presence throughout, his love for the work never dimming even as he graduated into directing.
He did eventually return to cinematography and kept working up until his final year. A very self effacing man, he was however steely enough to deal with the many vibrant and difficult personalities Hollywood would throw up alongside him. It was the quiet confidence of the craftsman, and his craft is seen throughout with many clips of some truly sumptuous examples of his work, from the dark brooding Pandora and The Flying Dutchman to the visual humidity and oppressive outside atmosphere of Bogie classic The African Queen. While Cameraman would work as a master class of Film History it also holds allure to the casual fan just as much as the seasoned cinephile. Craig McCall, the director, has found the balance between accessibility and being informative, with the movie never feeling like a lecture. Instead it’s a celebration of a man who created some of cinemas most ravishing and enduring images.
Featuring contributions from Lauren Bacall, Kirk Douglas (tellingly battling through the symptoms of his stroke out of loyalty for a man he deemed a true artist) and Charlton Heston amongst others. The most heard voice however is that of Cardiff disciple Martin Scorsese and one can sense the great admiration Marty has for Jack.
An interesting and witty Q and A session with McCall and Jack’s son told us much including Jack’s long held but ultimately unrealised desire to film an adaptation of Joyce’s Ulysses. The idea that this project was initially all set to go with Peter Sellers in the role of Leopold Bloom but eventually became the casualty of a studio regime change is maddening for what might have been. However we must all be thankful for what the man did indeed leave behind, a body of work rife with stunning colour and indelible cinematic moments. Rest in peace Jack, your legacy is secured.
Emmet O’Brien
I was at this screening! Great stuff. It’s strange that Audrey is on the poster though..