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DIARY BERLIN • LOSANGELES • MILAN • FOYER • CANNES • TOKYO • LONDON PAGE7
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These were still golden days at the Beeb when a Civil Service-like security and an astonishing range of opportunities still ruled for employees. Pierce-Roberts eventu- ally became Brian Tufano’s assis- tant and, as he recalls, “it was a good system. If you were consid- ered to be a senior assistant and smallish jobs came along then they’d make you an acting camera- man which meant more money and more experience.”
The big-break came one morning when he was working on location at a London museum in
the middle of a Nationwide televi- sion assignment: “The phone went
at 11 o’clock and I was told ‘we
want you to go to Euston station to meet Tony Garnett then you’re to go and do Days Of Hope with Ken Loach for 14 weeks. The train leaves at three o’clock. If anyone argues with you, including the director, have them ring Alisdair Milne,” [the BBC’s head of programmes].
After this auspicious start (Pierce-Roberts shot two of the four films in Loach’s political epic), he went on to win those BAFTAS in suc- cessive years for Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy and Caught On A Train. Now, realising that however good he was he would always be at the mercy of the BBC’s strange often arbitrary crewing system, and also realising that it was cinema rather than the small-screen (the BBC had at the time of going to a full colour service decid- ed to do everything on 16mm for cost reasons) which truly fascinated him, he finally quit the Corporation for freelance insecurity.
After an initial hiccup on Excalibur - “I was only on it for three or four weeks so we’ll draw a veil
THEARTOFTONYPIERCE-ROBERTS
over that” - the work came slowly but steadily until the time he was chosen to succeed Walter Lassally as Merchant-Ivory’s new - and subse- quently, most regular - cinematogra- pher. The film was A Room With A View, “chicken feed to the producers Goldcrest who were more concerned at the time with bigger projects like The Mission, Revolution and Absolute Beginners. The point was they left us alone to get on with it.”
It has proved an immensely fruitful partnership, notably on fur- ther award winners like Howards End and The Remains Of The Day. Pierce- Roberts explains: “I’m really allowed to contribute as much as I can. Jim [Ivory] is the complete opposite of, say, John Boorman who has a viewfinder and everyone else runs after him with a tape measure. John picks the shots explicitly and that’s it. Jim doesn’t do that at all; to a large extent he’ll leave that to me while he runs off to deal with the actors and sets.
“Mind you, that’s slightly changed now because Jim has got
into the video assist business. It’s a shame in a way because there isn’t quite the same immediacy about it. So I regard it as a very mixed bless- ing. It tends to take the initiative away from people like cameramen because they’re often agonising over a bit of a scene, without prop- erly seeing the whole picture.
“Also, half the time the pic- ture’s so bad on the video you can’t make a proper decision on it. At least when you’re looking through the camera you do get a good image whatever the lighting conditions.”
Video assist was perhaps the least of Pierce-Roberts’ problems on Surviving Picasso, Merchant-Ivory’s account of the rampant dotage of a
great artist. “We had, of course, no co- operation from the Picasso people so I had to make it quite dark because we simply couldn’t show too much.
“I think that probably worked rather well in the sculpture scenes where you were aware of them but not too aware. In the case of the canvases, we either had to show someone’s else painting or else be behind it so you couldn’t actually see the picture.
“It’s only,” this master of motion picture ‘painting’ reflects, somewhat sadly, “when you see that much- talked-about scene with Matisse’s work when you realise how much you miss by not seeing Picasso’s art properly.” ■ QUENTIN FALK
Photos above left: Emma Thompson in Howards End; above right: Simon Callow in a pastoral scene from A Room With A View (BFI Stills)