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The appointed ren-
dezvous with
Robert Fraisse
was at Les Trois
Obos at the Porte
d’Auteil in West
Paris. After climb-
ing off his motor-
cycle and removing his hel-
met, he sighed, “Ah, this bistro
brings back memories. It has a
lot of history for everyone working in the business forty years ago when only a few people had cars. It was here we all met at 7am to catch the produc- tion buses that took us to locations outside the city.”
Fraisse says he’s probably one of the few directors of photography who didn’t get a Brownie camera at the age of eight and who didn’t make home movies with his friends at 14.
He remembers going to the cinema once a week and after the newsreels (there was no TV in those days) watching the odd ethnographic films from Africa, Asia or the Amazon.
“It was then and there I decided I wanted to travel and become an explorer. Later on, I had to plan my future and chose what field of work I would go into. I knew nothing about the film business, all I knew was that I wanted to work outside, that I wanted to travel, and that I could never work at a desk in an office. I took the
entrance exams for the Louis Lumière [film school] and by some miracle, was accepted.”
Fraisse was in Paris for 48 hours before returning to Germany where he is filming Luther, a biopic of the con- troversial German theologian, starring Joseph Fiennes, Mathieu Carriere, Alfred Molina and Peter Ustinov.
“The period is early 16th century, we are shooting in churches and monasteries, medieval villages and castles. It won’t be easy because you can’t hang any lights in those ancient buildings with the walls covered with valuable old paintings. Everything will be candle-lit or lit by torches - flam- beaux, as we say. It will be challenging but gratifying.
“When you are given good looking sets to work in and beautiful cos- tumes, half of your work is already done. Often on films, it is the camera- man who gets the credit when it is really the outstanding work of the pro-
duction designer/art director and the costume designer that makes him look good.”
Fraisse, whose name is associated with some of the biggest and most complex European productions, was nominated for an Oscar for The Lover, nominated for a BSC and a BAFTA award for Enemy At The Gates and won
the Camerimage Silver Frog for Vatel, while receiving international attention and acclaim for other films like Seven Years In Tibet and Ronin.
Last winter, Fraisse was in Luxembourg shooting a romantic crime- thriller, Tempo. directed for American television by Eric Styles, it stars Melanie Griffiths, Rachel Leigh Cook, Hugh Dancy and Malcolm McDowell.
When asked if he finds it easy to switch between epic productions and a small, quick TV movie, he replies, “Well, I hadn’t shot anything in 18 months! After Enemy At The Gates, I received 10 scripts but turned down seven because they were so stupid. I feel guilty shooting a movie that makes people even more stupid than they already are!”
“I actually prepared three movies that year but each one got put back or cancelled, even though the sets were built and we were all ready to shoot. So, in 2001, I ended up shooting
continued on over
LEARNING
LEARNING
FROM THE PAST
FROM THE PAST
An interview with Robert Fraisse
Photos main: Robert Fraisse; above: Uma Thurman and Tim Roth in the Camerimage Silver Frog winner Vatel
EXPOSURE • 16 & 17