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MASTER CRAFTSMAN An interview with Douglas Slocombe BSC
T here are some cinematographers who have won more awards and just a few who’ve made more successful films, but surely none can match the variety and span of Douglas Slocombe’s 44-year fea- ture career which began as a reporter-
cameraman for Cavalcanti and ended with Indiana Jones for Spielberg.
In between, Slocombe worked alongside many of the greatest talents that British cinema has pro- duced, initially as resident cameraman at Ealing Studios where he went on to help create some of British cinema’s most fondly remembered films.
In the 60s and 70s he found himself collabo- rating with a new breed of filmmaker, as the likes of Joseph Losey, Bryan Forbes and Ken Russell called upon his services. Then, in the Indian - per- haps we should call it Indiana - summer of an illus- trious career, Steven Spielberg invited him to work on Raiders of the Lost Ark and its sequels.
Testament to an astonishing ability to adapt and keep up with changing tastes and new devel- opments in technology, Slocombe has lost none of his enthusiasm for a career that he graced for so long but, in retirement, misses greatly. “I’m still very healthy,” he explains, “but I’m not sure I could take the hours they work now. Now you’re expected to do a six day week, working late into the night, and I felt a few years ago that I couldn’t guarantee my best any more. I’d hate to let any- body down, so I decided I’d rather retire graceful- ly after Indiana Jones & The Last Crusade.”
One can hardly begrudge him his reward for a long and productive career, but it is character- istic of the man when he admits some regret for not having had the opportunity to work with some of the technology that is becoming avail- able to the modern filmmaker.
It is this talent for reinvention that helped build his career in the first place, and is all
the more remarkable for the fact that he is entirely self taught. Initially a Fleet Street journalist like his father, Slocombe found
greater success in stills photography, before seiz- ing his chance to work with the moving image on the wartime documentary Lights Out In Europe.
It was his work on that film, shooting the rapidly mobilising Nazi army in Danzig on the very outbreak of war, that brought him to the attention of Brazilian born director Alberto Cavalcanti, who was based at Ealing but was also working for the Ministry of Information. “Cav man- aged to get me into working for the Ministry,” Slocombe adds, “and also got me shooting back- ground material for the studio. Towards the end of the war I was given more to do at Ealing Studios itself, and it was then that I started to do things on the studio floor. It was a slow build up, but gradual- ly I was shoe-horned into proper features.”
Yet even this must have been daunting, for while he had developed an instinct for documen- tary filming Slocombe was faced with a new set of problems when it came to lighting a scene for a studio bound drama.
“In documentaries you’re really recording what exists, you have outside sets lit by God. Now I had to suddenly depict on the screen what some scriptwriter had banged out on his typewriter. I had to use the lights to create various moods, but that was fascinating, because as I’d never seen it done I had to work things out for myself. It was really down to observation, going to the National Gallery, seeing the Old Masters and noticing their light effects.”
Typically, it is the ability to solve the seeming- ly intractable problem with a stroke of inspiration that makes him stand out from the crowd. Yet Slocombe himself puts this talent, and the versatil- ity that it creates, down to a more prosaic reason.
“I’ve always had the most terrible memory,” he chuckles, “and oddly enough that has worked in my favour. Whenever a shot came up that was similar to something I had done before, I could
never remember how I’d done it so I approached it with a completely open mind.”
The result gave us some of the finest British films of the period, from the sublimely textured black and white classics Kind Hearts & Coronets and The Man In The White Suit, to the atypical Technicolor Saraband For Dead Lovers and the cosy warmth of The Tit field Thunderbolt . Slocombe’s metier at Ealing ranged from light comedy to gritty realism, always with an eye on the importance of expressive lighting and achiev- ing the maximum potential of his film stocks.
Later still, after 17 years happy service, he went freelance, joining the top directors riding the crest of a British new wave. He was respon- sible for the stark, unromantic look of The L- Shaped Room and for the aggressive imagery of Joseph Losey’s The Servant.
His enthusiasm, willingness to learn and sheer joy at the application of his craft, kept Slocombe in high demand. Which is why, at a time in the late 70s, when he might have otherwise have been thinking of slowing down, he was delighted to receive a call from Steven Spielberg inviting him to shoot location sequences in India for Close Encounters of the Third Kind. Ironically he found himself in competition with that film at the Oscars the following year, for his work on Julia. He lost.
“I always say that if I’d known in advance that was going to happen then I would have messed up my sequence in Close Encounters,” he smiles. “But if I’d done that Spielberg wouldn’t have given me the Indiana Jones films.”
He remains a fan of good filmmaking, and watches as many new films as he can, recognising that the cinematographer often remains the unsung hero of the production. “I think it’s a job that is often taken for granted,” he nods, “but still one is very conscious of the artistry that every
cameraman puts into his work.” Few, how- ever, can have put more into their work than Douglas Slocombe. ■ ANWAR BRETT
The Lavender Hill Mob (1951); Raiders Of The Lost Ark (1981); It Always Rains On Sunday (1947); The Titfield Thunderbolt (1952); Julia (1977); Hue & Cry (1947); Never Say Never Again (1983) (BFI Stills & Posters).
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