Cameraman: The Life and Work of Jack Cardiff Page #2

holding lamps and things.

The ground, which was a paper floor,

was getting wetter and wetter.

And as she got out, she slipped on

the soapy water, and fell with a crash,

and the towels missed her completely,

east and west in the air,

and there was the great Marlene

floundering about on the floor,

stark naked.

He started very early in colour.

Started about when

they started doing colour, I believe.

It's a different medium, really.

You light in a different way,

which, of course, is the cameraman.

The Technicolor people

had come over

to choose one young operator

to be trained in Technicolor,

and they came out shaking

because the technical questions

were absolutely...very, very tough.

So, when it came to my turn,

I said right away,

"I'm afraid on the technical side,

I'm zero,"

and there was a shocked silence,

and they said, "How are you

going to get on in the film business? "

I study painting and light

and lighting buildings and so on,

and they asked me, "Which side

of the face did Rembrandt light? "

I took a chance and said, "This side,

and it'd be reversed in an etching,"

and then I talked about Pieter de Hooch

and his interiors

and the camera obscura and that stuff,

and the next day I learnt

that I had been chosen.

Light comes through the front,

obviously, through the lens,

and there's a prism here, which is

the soul of the Technicolor camera.

Twenty-five per cent of the light

comes straight through the prism

on to the one film in this gate here.

That's the green record.

And then the other...rest of the light,

comes through

and is reflected on to a bipack.

This is a bipack of the blue

and the red records.

And, of course,

the magazine holds three films.

Of course, these things free the

sprockets. They do nothing except that.

But I used to put on this big act and say,

"I think I'll put a bit more green here,

"a little less blue there,"

and they believed it, they thought

I was creating colour with the camera.

The whole camera department

were American

and Jack was the only one

on the camera crew who was English.

And he was the camera operator

on it at Denham.

Here they come.

Donnerhill still in rather a pocket

on Wings Of The Morning.

It was a fascinating new world,

because I was into

the Impressionists at that time,

and I was mad

about the Impressionist painters,

and I thought, "Well, this is it."

The surface of anything

you look at is absorbing some colour rays

and is reflecting the rest.

What it reflects strikes the eye and that's

how we get our impression of colour.

Colour is light and light is colour.

He always liked to experiment.

He liked to apply certain things

which he felt he'd learnt from painting

to cinematography.

As you see, I've always collected a lot

of interesting paintings and drawings.

I learnt a lot about painting...

Well, I'm still learning, let's face it.

And the main idea is I copied

some painters, like I liked that Boucher.

I couldn't afford to buy the real one

and so I copied it,

and that's the way to learn.

A lot of real painters copy

other painters, you know,

because this way they learn from each

other, in a way, it's an interesting thing.

Some people say it's a copy.

Yes, it's a copy.

But it takes a long time to analyse

the painting, to make the copy.

Then I had a big break, because

a German came in to Technicolor,

who was a count, Count von Keller.

He was a great traveller.

He was a sort of...I don't know,

you know, sort of buccaneer, almost.

He was a wonderful character.

Somebody suggested to him,

"When you're on these travels,

why don't you make films?

"Why don't you take along

a Technicolor camera and crew

"and make travel films? "

The work and spirit of

the immortal Lawrence lives to this day,

for Lawrence,

in his quiet unobtrusive way,

imparted to the dwellers

of this wild territory

a sense of law and order

of which they had never dreamed.

Jack is in the middle and I'm

on the right. That's in Palmyra in Syria.

We went to Africa and India

and all over the world

with a Technicolor camera.

The outside walls are richly

carved with incidents from Hindu legend,

so rich that not one panel

resembles any other.

Most people

hadn't been abroad.

And to see places in colour

was marvellous.

He is Nundi the bull.

Nundi the joyous.

Worshipped as an embodiment

of the force of reproduction.

But Jack was

the creative drive behind them.

Nobody else had much idea

about how to set about

making it original and different.

When Vesuvius was on, and

splotches of molten lava were falling,

we had to sort of choose a moment

to dash in and just point the camera.

...while from the lips

of its many gaping mouths, the lava...

I broke the prism

and burnt the tripod legs.

Burnt my shoes, anyway.

But that's another story.

"Western Approaches"

is an extraordinary film,

because it's the first ever

Technicolor documentary

that isn't a travelogue.

- What have you decided to do, sir?

- Make for Ireland.

Prevailing winds in part of

the Gulf Stream should be in our favour.

You had a lifeboat

with 22 merchant seamen in it

and the Technicolor camera, it was

very clumsy and very difficult to work,

and the director and myself

and a few assistants and so on.

And we went out every day in the Irish

Channel, which was absolutely horrible.

This is the "Forces Programme".

Now here's a short recital

of gramophone records.

We're on the home stretch now.

You can tell when you hear the old BBC.

It won't be long now.

For the first time

in living memory,

British film-makers

had a British audience.

People enjoyed seeing British films.

They actually preferred them

in some cases to American films.

They felt they came closer

to the scene of the action.

How could Americans understand

what people in Britain

were going through during the war?

So towards the end of the war, I think

British film-making was really on a high.

At that time,

I had not yet photographed

a feature film in its entirety.

I'd done lots of little pieces and

I'd worked mostly on the second unit,

and I was desperate

to get the big break.

The main character,

played by Roger Livesey,

is trying to deal with his loneliness

by going on safaris

and shooting animals all over the world.

Jack Cardiff was doing the shooting

of that as the second unit cameraman

and my husband came in

and watched him doing it.

I heard a voice say, "Very interesting,"

and there was the great Michael Powell,

and he said, "Would you like

to photograph my next film? "

and I said, "Oh, yes, Mr. Powell,"

and he went,

and I thought, "He's just said that and

he'll forget all about it," but he didn't.

Are you wounded? Repeat,

are you wounded? Are you bailing out?

- What's your name?

- June.

Yes, June, I'm bailing out.

I'm bailing out but there's a catch.

I've got no parachute.

Oh...hello? Hello, Peter?

Do not understand.

Hello? Hello, Peter? Can you hear me?

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