TCM has just run this history of the art of the cinematographers and I am impressed. It tells the story of camerawork through the careers of half a dozen cameramen, from Billy Bitzer through Greg Toland. While it is not a perfect work, continuing the legends of early cinema, it works best in showing the evolution of the craft, Without denigration, it shows, for example, that Greg Toland did not invent deep focus for CITIZEN KANE.
More than that, it exalts the cameraman (and camerawoman) to a rightful place in the collaborative art that is cinema. The idea of the auteur, the single genius -- usually the director -- who is responsible for everything good in a movie, has become the unfortunate standard, with everything that doesn't work blamed on someone else: sometimes an actor that gets too big a head, but more often the despised and anonymous "suits", producers who monkey with the auteur's vision to the movie's woe.
William Wyler, one of the great directors of the studio era, said "It's 90% you get a good script, and maybe 10% actors. There's nothing else in it." If he said that, it simply points out the astonishingly high median of skilled and creative cameramen available to him during this period.... when he worked with the best.
More than that, it exalts the cameraman (and camerawoman) to a rightful place in the collaborative art that is cinema. The idea of the auteur, the single genius -- usually the director -- who is responsible for everything good in a movie, has become the unfortunate standard, with everything that doesn't work blamed on someone else: sometimes an actor that gets too big a head, but more often the despised and anonymous "suits", producers who monkey with the auteur's vision to the movie's woe.
William Wyler, one of the great directors of the studio era, said "It's 90% you get a good script, and maybe 10% actors. There's nothing else in it." If he said that, it simply points out the astonishingly high median of skilled and creative cameramen available to him during this period.... when he worked with the best.