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LEARNING
LEARNING
CURVE
CURVE
An interview with Ernest Vincze BSC
behind the camera
THE
THE
I t is more than 20 years since Ernie Vincze last worked for Merchant Ivory Productions.
But watching his close and con- stantly thoughtful collaboration with the director and actors this past winter in a steamy
rural backwater of Trinidad, it seemed almost as if he’d never been away.
The Hungarian-born cinematogra- pher has, even on his own rather dis- arming admission, tended to be sec- ond choice for MIP. That was certain- ly the case when he was first sum- moned for service by James Ivory and Ismail Merchant on the New York- based Roseland in 1977. Three years later he was back in the same fold for Jane Austen In Manhattan.
Now, two decades on and thanks to another case of unavailability, Vincze, 60 next year, found himself in the Caribbean some 2000 miles south east of the Big Apple acting as direc- tor Merchant’s creative right hand on The Mystic Masseur, MIP’s 39th pro- duction and the first-ever film adapta- tion of a VS Naipaul novel. A twist on
the expression “third-time lucky” - not just for Vincze but also for those lucky enough to work with this gifted craftsman - comes to mind.
For himself as well as the stu- dents he teaches at the National Film & Television School - where he is now official Head of Cinematography after a looser association with the NFTS ever since it first started up 30 years
ago – he’s adamant that the “learning curve” never stops.
Twice a BAFTA nominee (Kennedy, A Very British Coup) as well as a recent recipient of the BKSTS Fellowship – “in recognition of his work for the Industry and the Society” - Vincze is, perhaps not unnaturally, a great believer in film education.
His own began back in Budapest where he grew up during the 40s and 50s. Son of a journalist, who also wrote a couple of films, and nephew of a con- ductor-composer, who scored half a dozen movies, Vincze claims he knew he wanted to shoot films by the time he was 14. That was also around the time of the Hungarian Revolution and his family’s contribution to the strug- gle was not only to help hide fighters in their attic but also to provide tem- porary sanctuary for Russian soldiers who wanted to defect to the West.
His free time was mostly spent either at the Film Museum, which was a kind of archive showcase for films, including non-political features from
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Photos main: Ernest Vincze on location in Trinidad shooting The Mystic Masseur and inset above; Om Puri and Ayesha Dharker in The Mystic Masseur