Cameraman: The Life and Work of Jack Cardiff Page #6

films were still entertainment.

No, today they're entertainment too.

But at that time they were coming out

of the old Hollywood system.

There were Westerns,

they were genre films,

and Technicolor was used

for heightening the genre.

In the '40s and '50s, colour was still

relegated to films as a special element,

rather than what happened

in the late '60s and the early '70s

where all films became colour.

Jack was suggested

by the producer of the picture,

who also happened to be the star.

That's Kirk Douglas.

The shooting was very difficult.

It seemed to be raining all the time.

And once, in exasperation,

I asked one of the young

Norwegian kids,

"Hey, does it rain all the time here? "

He said, "I don't know.

I'm only 18 years old."

I suggested to Dick,

"Why don't we shoot in the rain?

"Because these Vikings

are tough guys, you know,

"and they would be out in all weathers."

Dick agreed

and Kirk Douglas was overjoyed,

because it means that we could shoot,

wouldn't lose so much money.

But as people know in the film business,

ordinary rain doesn't photograph.

So we had to supplement it

with hoses coming down.

The local villagers thought

we were out of our minds.

It was already raining and

we were adding rain to it.

But it worked very well.

Kirk Douglas,

he liked doing his own stunts.

In fact, he was a very good...

He had a good sense of timing and all

the things that are good in a stunt man.

- He does the shot walking on the oars.

- That's right.

He fell in once or twice

but he soon got the hang of it.

But that was considered a must,

that he had to fall off,

cos he was too perfect, in fact.

When he climbs up the wall of

the castle, after having thrown the axe,

he climbed himself.

With Jack's ingenuity,

we were able to do

some pretty remarkable shots.

And looking at the film now, I'm really

astounded at how well they turned out,

knowing how they were made,

which is really with spit and cardboard

and some rubber bands,

and it worked great.

Jack and I were very worried,

how are we gonna make this scene,

where you have all the Viking ships

going into a fog bank and disappearing.

And it's essential to the story

that you have that scene.

And Jack solved the problem with us.

He said, "If we could just get

a patch of fog,

"where the ships go

into the patch of fog,

"that's all I really need,

and I'll make up the rest of the fog,

"I'll make my own filter,

"and paint it, a white filter,

"which we'll just put up in front

of the camera and leave a square,

"where the real fog is."

And that's what we did.

And it's absolutely convincing.

It's a fantastic shot.

Every time I see it, I get a chill,

knowing how it was made,

but also the beauty of the shot.

Jack, certainly, looking at his work,

and having worked with him,

is probably the greatest

colour photographer that ever lived.

Turner, well, I mean,

he was the perfect cameraman.

If he'd been alive today,

he would have been probably

the best cameraman in the world.

I mean the way that he got dramatic

emphasis by over-lighting things

which takes courage,

with a cameraman, anyway,

but he had plenty of courage,

you can see that.

I mean, that church is burnt out

but it's so dramatic.

I wouldn't start to dare to compare

myself to what Turner did,

but I learnt a lot of lessons from Turner.

You should go out and do something

that's different and bold,

and that's the whole essence

of photography, in a sense.

We wanted an extreme long shot,

with a wide-angle lens,

of the duel in the snow,

and these two guys

facing each other, long shot.

But, of course, long shot,

we saw the spot rails,

so I had this idea of putting a piece

of glass in front of the camera,

about six feet away.

I painted the glass,

in other words, the same colour.

Then behind my shoulder I put

a little lamp that shone into the glass

Iike a reflection of the sun.

But the first attempt I made,

I was using the sprayer,

and I overdid it, and the paint

was running down the glass,

and Dino de Laurentis the producer

came on the set and said,

"Cardiff, what do you do?

Wasting time! What do you do? "

I said, "I'm painting the glass,"

and he said...

He was furious and walked off the stage.

But later, it was a very effective shot

and he was showing it to everybody.

Of all the love stories

France has given to the world,

this is the one to live in your memory.

I had a call from New York

from Josh Logan.

He said, "Jack, I want

you to photograph 'Fanny'."

I loved the film.

It was great fun working with

Maurice Chevalier and Leslie Caron.

One of the most

beautifully photographed pictures

of this whole canon

would be "Pandora

And The Flying Dutchman"...

When do you want to marry me, Steve?

...which was produced

and directed by Albert Lewin,

who'd had a big success

with "The Picture Of Dorian Gray".

"Pandora And The Flying

Dutchman" was a unique film.

It had fantasy and exotic locations.

I am predisposed to that,

mainly because of where I come from.

Neo-realism I had right around me.

If I wanted to go to a movie, I wanted

to see something more fantastical.

With one bloody blow,

I killed all that I loved on God's earth.

It was so romantic,

you know, it was so romantic.

It took you to another world.

There was something

about the way it looked

which put in my mind

Powell and Pressburger.

Faith is a lie

and God himself is chaos!

Silence!

It had the magical quality of Ava

Gardner as almost a mystical figure,

a mystical sexuality.

Hello?

She said, "Jack, I'm pleased

you're gonna photograph me,

"but you have to watch when I have my

periods, because I don't look so good."

I said, "I'll look after that."

That was the first thing she said to me.

Al Lewin used to do take after take, not

that he really wanted to do another take,

but he just wanted to keep going

so he could gaze into Ava's face.

And in a way that's true.

I've changed so since I've known you.

He said, "I want you to go

to Wallace Heaton's in Bond Street

"and buy yourself a 16mm camera."

Which I have here, and it's just about

the cheapest one you can get.

And I took it out to Africa

on "African Queen".

Well, I've taken it on many films.

A little to starboard, Miss!

No, no, the other way!

John Huston had the idea

of doing the whole thing in Africa,

and he said

it was going to be so easy.

Huston went out there and said he didn't

like that location, it was too pretty.

He disappeared for a couple of weeks

and we wondered what had happened,

whether he'd been eaten by crocodiles,

but he then sent a telegram

saying he'd found the perfect place

in the Belgian Congo.

It was right in nowhere land.

It was called Biondo, this place,

and it was beyond anywhere.

It was two days' Jeep ride

from Stanleyville.

He was not always thrilled

with the choice of locations

because if there was

an impossible location to be found,

John Huston was the man to find it.

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