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the West, or at a picture house dedi- cated to newsreels and travelogues from all over the world – including, yes, good old Look At Life.
Hungary has a tradition of exporting great cinematographers, most notably, perhaps, Vilmos Zsigmond and Laszlo Kovacs - both graduates of the capital’s prestigious Academy for Theatre and Film Art - who soon found a new life in Hollywood after fleeing their home- land in 1956. After leaving school at 18, Vincze still had no thoughts yet for directions West.
Rejected by the Academy, he went instead straight into the then fledgling TV network starting in the camera maintenance room. Two days later he was sent out to assist on a newsreel and a week after that was working on a full length documentary. “Singing the praises of collective farming,” he recalled. As one would.
Within months he was working electronic cameras in both the studio and on outside broadcasts covering
everything from live theatre to sports events. The news broadcast studio is where he began lighting, “making the newsreader presentable for the nation,” he smiled.
In 1964, four years after he had begun to carve out his future career, the West finally beckoned. It began as a month-long visit to London which eventually stretched on and on as he
kept extending his visa. Inheriting the Anglophile genes from
his family elders, he quickly became besotted with the English way life. By staying on longer than was permissible, he had also, under Hungarian law, commit- ted, technically, a “pun- ishable crime”. If he returned home now, he knew he wouldn’t be allowed out again for at least three years.
When he finally decided to stay put here, it wasn’t even really a question of defection or “asylum seeking.” Eventually “bored with me” (in his words) fol- lowing endless letters to and fro, the Home Office simply granted him a work permit. His family fully supported him and the only negative effect of his move was that he wasn’t able to return to Hungary for 10 years.
For the next four or
five months he combined night por- tering, sticking stamps and washing up with a dizzy round of the compa- nies in and around Wardour Street.
At Reflex Films in Meard Street they asked him if he knew this partic- ular camera – an Éclair NPR. He lied and said “yes” and they told him “good” and to turn up on assignment at 7.30am the next morning. The same afternoon he returned to Reflex told them the truth and spent the rest of the day learning how to load it, change lenses and maintain it.
“My first job was an interview with the Times editor in front of the newspaper building, and after that I never seemed to stop working. Perhaps the word went round that there was this brilliant new camera assistant in town,” he laughed. His next job was working with Chris Menges on an ATV documentary
about Rada and with Menges, as well as the likes of Charles Stewart and Mike Dodds, he quickly became one of the Swinging Sixties’ pioneering fly- on-the-wall cameramen.
Vincze was under fire in Vietnam, stoned in Israel, shot at in Palestine, caught up in the Soweto riots and at Steve Biko’s funeral. There were the artsy stories too, and, in between, the camera- men would always meet up to discuss life and swap yarns at The Ship pub.
When, in the early 70s, Menges passed on a new no-budget period fea- ture called Winstanley, Vincze rang the film-makers Kevin Brownlow and Andrew Mollo to ask them if they’d consider him as director of photogra- phy. An earthy, atmospheric account of 17th century English commune life during the Cromwell years, the film was not just “a wonderful experience” but also a very useful future “calling card”. Jim Ivory saw Winstanley at the
New York Film Festival and hired him for Roseland on the basis of it - and a recommendation by MIP regular Walter Lassally. If it was Merchant Ivory which got Vincze’s feature career properly up and running then it was director Jim Goddard who was proba- bly responsible for setting him on the right road in classy television drama with the ITV gangland series Fox.
“Jim asked me to do Fox proba- bly because my name was well known
Photos top: Roseland; above left: additional rain provided by Producer Andrew Mollo (on ladder) and Ernest Vincze behind the camera on Winstanley; above centre: Anthony Page and Ernest Vincze; above right: Martin Sheen and Blair Brown in Kennedy (courtesy BFI Stills & Posters)
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