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These days Chris Challis is enjoying life far from the madding crowd, retired in deepest Dorset. He has earned that right, of course, having contributed with some distinction to a golden period in British film. Perhaps best known for his association with Powell-Pressburger, Challis - who will turn 80 next March - looks back on his career with a cheerful combination of pleasure and a charming incredulity.
Like so many of his peers he gives the impression that his career came about through a series of happy acci- dents, yet he quite obviously displayed a potent combination of talent, confi- dence and sheer bloody mindedness in a career that spanned nearly 50 years.
Without these three key ingredi- ents, even Challis would agree he might have withered under the pres- sures applied on Michael Powell’s set. Meeting the great director for the first time after the war, Challis was assigned to work second unit on A Matter of Life & Death before being asked, at short notice, to operate for Jack Cardiff.
“That was where my trial of strength with Mickey Powell occurred,” he recalls with a grin. “There’s a scene with the high court in Heaven and we had a crane shot which started in long shot and then came down to finish on a tight three shot. It was quite a diffi- cult shot, cranes were pretty primi- tive in those days, but I lined it up
starting off high and finishing almost at ground level. We did a couple of takes, then finally I said it was fine. Mickey came over and looked through the camera, and asked if that was the way I intended finishing it. I said it was. He asked why I had done it that way, and I said because I thought it was a good composition.
“He said: ‘Oh don’t give me all those washed out old theories about composition!’, and I said: ‘well you come and do the next bloody shot yourself then!’. With that I got off the crane. From that moment, through the next 20 years, we never had another quarrel.”
In that time Challis operated for Cardiff again on Black Narcissus and
The Red Shoes, at the same time making his own tentative first steps as a lighting cameraman. But he came into his own when he succeed- ed Jack Cardiff as Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger’s camera- man of choice, shooting classics for them as The Small Back Room, Gone to Earth, The Battle of the River Plate and The Tales of Hoffman.
“The Tales of Hoffman is my favourite of any of the pictures I did, I think,” Challis adds thoughtfully. “I did all of those effects in the camera, or with lighting. It was very theatrical, and great fun to do. But so many of those films were good because we had to be a little more inventive. They can do anything now, because it’s all
done electronically and is terribly easy. I enjoyed the fact that each new film posed different challenges.”
Of course each new director had a different approach too, some taking a less that thorough interest in the lighting of their movies. The filmmak- ers that Challis evidently enjoyed col- laborating with however were the men who knew exactly what they wanted.
“People like Michael Powell, Billy Wilder, Stanley Donen and Joe Losey,” he adds. “To them the look of the film was an important part of the telling of the story, whereas with oth- ers it wasn’t at all.”
After the productive period with Powell-Pressburger came to an end, Challis admits he initially found it
REFLECTIONS
REFLECTIONS
An interview with Christopher Challis BSC
Photos: top left; Eli Wallach and Chris Challis on the set of The Victors; bottom left: Kay Kendall gives Kenneth More‘s Genevieve a push; right: The Red Shoes. (Courtesy BFI Stills & Posters)
EXPOSURE • 16 & 17