Cameraman: The Life and Work of Jack Cardiff Page #4

I don't know what...

The colour itself became

the emotion of the picture.

The atmosphere that was

created around me was fantastic.

I was most inspired by it.

I mean, I thought I was just going out

looking a bit malevolent.

But when I saw it on the screen, I was

amazed at this great blare of music

and this incredible face with the wet hair.

He gave me half of my performance

with the lighting.

When Arthur Rank...

he took it to California,

showed it in Hollywood,

it got the most wonderful

technical praise.

The art direction got two Oscars.

Jack Cardiff's photography

got another Oscar.

The whole communication

of the film, what it tries to communicate,

is combined through costume,

the positioning of people in the frame,

the movement of people

within the frame,

sometimes the movement

of the frame itself, light, shadow, colour,

and cutting, all to music.

All designed specifically to music.

Then they took it and went further

with it with "The Red Shoes" ballet.

The last day but one

of "Black Narcissus",

Michael Powell said to me,

"What do you think about ballet? "

I said, "Not much, all these sissies

prancing about, I don't think much of it."

And he was amused

rather than horrified.

He said, "Jack, you'd better get to like

ballet, because this is your next film.

"I've got tickets for you to go practically

every night." I thought, "Oh, my God!"

Very shortly, of course, I became

absolutely wrapped up in ballet

and I loved it.

Actually, Miss Page,

I want more, much more.

I want to create, to make something big

out of something little.

The theme

of "The Red Shoes", of course, is that...

Michael was saying that if you want to

be on the cutting edge of your art form,

you have to be prepared

to pay the consequences,

because you're challenging everybody

when you start breaking conventions,

and you have to be aware that

some people may be able to attack you

and bring you down when you do this.

Why do you want to dance?

Why do you want to live?

I don't know exactly why, but I must.

That's my answer too.

Some ballet enthusiasts feel

that it's not the best shooting of ballet.

The best shooting of ballet, to be literal

about it, would be from head to toe,

Fred Astaire had in his contract

that you had to keep photographing him

from head to toe.

But they changed that completely.

They paid no attention to that.

They made a film about what goes on

inside the dancer's head.

It's how the dancer, he or she,

sees themselves, while they're dancing.

So you get the spirit of the dance,

you get the spirit of it,

and I applied that later

to the boxing scenes in "Raging Bull".

What they hear, what they see.

What they hear and what they see,

very important.

Michael Powell had courage.

He would risk, he would take a risk,

a big chance to do something,

which might seem crazy

but it usually came off.

The camera devices

are welded to the material.

They're welded

to the emotion of the film.

They are for the purpose

of impacting the audience.

I think because Jack had vision,

you know,

about what he was going to do,

he didn't feel curbed

by the restrictions of that time.

I had the idea of increasing

the speed of the camera very rapidly,

that as he jumped,

I went from 24 frames to 48 frames

for about less than a second.

So it went up, and as it got up

it was going much faster,

which slowed him down imperceptibly,

and he seemed to linger in the air

on the top of the jump.

They were coming up

with great ways to use the camera,

and when you see how big that thing

was, how they did it, I don't know.

I mean, they did call it the "enchanted

cottage", cos it was so huge.

How they moved that thing around,

I don't know. It was amazing.

- Can you imagine?

- Things have changed.

It was enormous, and you didn't have

much room to get the lights round it.

That's the famous

Technicolor camera. Jack, me.

The camera flying in and out as though

from the point of view of a dancer.

Would be a hand-held shot these days,

but the camera is on a sort of bungee

slung from a chain in the roof.

You begin to see, I must

say, flourishes, where the camera cut,

or a piece of composition

for the length of the shot,

that you begin to realise that

he's using the lens like brush strokes.

It becomes like moving paintings.

You know, it's a painting he's made.

Along with Hein Heckroth, Michael and

Emeric Pressburger, there's no doubt.

But it's a painting, paintings that moved,

extraordinarily moved,

not only moved visually but emotionally

and psychologically also.

There was something so audacious

about "Red Shoes",

and something that was so utterly, um...

unique, different from any film

being made at the time.

Qu'est-ce que tu as?

Mon petit.

Et ou vas-tu?

Mon petit!

No!

The lessons of those films have never

left me. I still keep drawing upon them.

It's had a huge influence. Particularly

on Scorsese and Brian de Palma.

De Palma. De Palma, easily.

The expressionism.

It's about expressing colour,

it's expressing, you know, the glint

of a knife and the colour of the blood.

It's all there with Brian.

Look at "Scarface".

And Lucas and Coppola.

And then of course you have

Francis all the time. "Godfather".

Clearly in "One From The Heart".

It's about passion, I think.

You could feel these people were

really, really dedicated and involved.

When it was cut,

it was shown to Mr. Rank.

Usually if a film isn't very good,

you know,

they might sort of put on a little bit

of an act, and say, "Most interesting,"

and, you know, and say, "Well done,"

or something and walk out.

But on this occasion

they walked out, they got up,

and they walked out without

saying a word to Michael Powell.

They just ignored him,

just walked straight out,

because they were convinced

that it was a disastrous film.

J Arthur Rank thought they'd gone mad

and said, "This is terrible, we have

to stop this kind of film-making.

"From now on, we will tell them what to

make", and Michael said, "You won't."

It was a very sad end

to a great, great period of film-making.

I mean,

they're seminal films, you know,

but they're a particular aesthetic.

It's the kind of aesthetic

that actually will be great art.

- And then it will be kitsch...

- Yes.

...and then it'll be art again.

I've signed all over England

and America too,

and I just lost count.

- I'll put happy birthday.

- Yeah, that would be very good.

I'm outside the studio gates once,

I'd just come back from seeing

Marilyn Monroe and Laurence Olivier,

and as they came through the gates

they're all screaming.

I went by and they said, "Who's that? "

and somebody said, "He's just nobody."

- So how did you feel?

- Well, just like a nobody.

After working

with Powell and Pressburger,

Jack had a remarkable career,

because in quite a short space of time,

in less than ten years,

he worked with many of

the greatest film-makers in the world.

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