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BAFTA Nomination
S
RECREATING EVIL
“The Reala 500D and the Eterna 500T have this incredible range and flexibility. I’m into creating a mood, an atmosphere, but I never over-light. These stocks really helped me incred- ibly because they are so forgiving. They let me be creative, let me be exactly the cook I want to be.” ■
Photo above: A courtroom scene from See No Evil;
from top right:
Maxine Peake as Myra Hindley, Sean Harris as Ian Brady and See No Evil DP Lukas Strebel
ee No Evil – The Moors Murders, originated by Lukas Strebel SCS on 16mm Fujicolor Eterna 500T 8673, Eterna 250D 8663 and Reala 500D 86923, has
been nominated this year for a BAFTA in the Drama Serial category.
Starring Sean Harris and Maxine Peake as Ian Brady and Myra Hindley, See No Evil, which aired on ITV1, was direct- ed by Chris Menaul from a screenplay by Neil McKay.
It was the third project on which Strebel had been associated with the same writer and, the Swiss-born cine- matographer told EXPOSURE, was “the best of the lot.”
In Memoriam
He talked about the shooting, including at the grim venue of the murders themselves, Saddleworth Moor. “We shot in the winter when sometimes it was already getting dark at 3pm. There were times when I even pushed it one stop, which was great. I was happy to have some grain; I want- ed it to be gritty and real. I didn’t want it slick at all”.
Strebel elected to shoot the studio day interiors on daylight knowing that his HMI lights would offer sufficient colour contrast for other light sources in the scenes. “We shot a lot in the studio,” he added, “including ,most of the interi- ors. That way, we had total control.
MASTER OF THE ART
REMEMBERING ONE OF THE GREAT BRITISH CINEMATOGRAPHERS, FREDDIE FRANCIS BSC
A
t an age when he might have been easily forgiven for choosing the quiet life, Freddie Francis was persuad- ed back behind a camera only
to discover he was actually two years older than his 79-year-old star.
Straight Story, about a grizzled Iowan (played by Richard Farnsworth) who decided to cross the States on his lawn-mower, reunited him in 1999 for the third time - after The Elephant Man and Dune - with American director David Lynch.
It proved to be the final credit - and what a good one - for Francis, who recently died following a stroke last December, in his 90th year.
The trophy-lined cabinet in his comfortable home west of London was testament to an amazing career in black-and-white and colour cinematog- raphy, conveniently book-ended by Academy Awards for Sons And Lovers and Glory. There were also five awards from the BSC, including Lifetime Achievement in 1997.
Credits like Saturday Night & Sunday Morning, The Innocents, The French Lieutenant’s Woman and Scorsese’s remake of Cape Fear also account for some of the other glitter- ing awards on display. Asked to name his own favourite among his many films, it was always a toss-up between Sons And Lovers and The Innocents.
However, the former got the final nod because “the photography was just right for the subject.”
Nominated four times by BAFTA, who also accorded him a Tribute evening in 2004, Francis effectively began his own colourful career odyssey (which also encompassed much later a string of directorial credits) as a clap- per boy at the old BIP Studios, Elstree in 1936. He had secured his entrée to the camera department run by one Bill Haggett - “whom one never saw without a hammer in his hand” - via a master carpenter who used to bet with Francis’s street bookmaker father in North London.
Before that, apart from an uncle who dabbled in amateur photography and some Islington neighbours’ children who grew up to be Sally Gray and Jean Simmons, Francis had no connection with filmmaking until the day he first went on set as a stillsman’s apprentice.
But once he’d properly graduated to the camera crew there was no look- ing back. He made his DP debut (along with one of his bit players Michael Caine) in 1956 on A Hill In Korea. In fact the modest British war film sig- nalled the start of a stint which would mark out Francis as perhaps the world’s finest exponent of mono- chrome cinematography.
Between his Oscars there was, of course, another entire career as a
director of mostly cheap-and-cheerful psychological thriller and horror movies for the likes of Hammer and Amicus. Francis moved over to direct- ing for purely mercenary reasons - “I did it because one got more money as a director.”
The end result probably pleases die-hard buffs of titles like The Evil Of Frankenstein, Dracula Has Risen From The Grave, Paranoiac, Nightmare and Dr Terror’s House of Horrors more than Francis who admits more to quantity than quality. He sums them up best like this: “I got a certain amount of enjoyment out of knowing that each of them was better than the script. That doesn’t mean they were good. Just that they were better than the script.”
His return to lighting after a gap of 15 years with The Elephant Man in 1980 also had the ring of pragmatism: “I suddenly realised the films I was directing, though often successful, weren’t being seen by the people who could further my career. Yet I must say that if I’d only done those films, I would still say I’d had a good life.”
And yet when more than 10 years after that he found himself alongside director Martin Scorsese on the megadollar Hollywood remake of Cape Fear with Robert De Niro, Jessica Lange and Nick Nolte, what did Marty want to chat about between takes? Freddie’s old horror movies, of course. ■ QUENTIN FALK
“My favourite film? Sons And Lovers because the photography was just right for the subject.”
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