Masters of Light. Dennis Schaefer

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СКАЧАТЬ Hollender is also a great cameraman; Alonzo is very good too. Also Butler is very good too and Conrad Hall. There are a lot of great cameramen here.

      Can you comment on the way American directors work as opposed to their European counterparts?

      The Americans use much more film; they use thousands of feet of film and get much more coverage. They cover everything from every possible angle; they do many more takes of a scene. There are many more scenes that are never used. In Europe—and when I say “in Europe,” my experience is very limited, I am always faithful to the directors I work with and that is Truffaut, Rohmer and Barbet Schroeder—anyway, they don’t shoot too much film. They don’t do much coverage. It only takes Rohmer eight days to edit his films. Eight days! All Rohmer does is, since there is no coverage at all, splice one sequence after another and so the film is almost done. So that the rough cut and the final cut are very similar. All they do is cut a little here and a little there. So that you can say the film is really all there in the rough cut. So when I say eight days, I mean eight days for the rough cut.

      Whereas here, with Days of Heaven, it has been about three different movies; they edited it one way, then they reedited it again another way and then they cut scenes and added still other scenes. It’s totally different here. On Goin’ South, Jack Nicholson had three editors working simultaneously on the film. One would be editing the gunfight, one would be editing the love scene and one would be editing something else, all at the same time. We don’t do it that way and so our films are perhaps more personal and more individual. Which doesn’t mean that Malick or Nicholson or Monte Hellman aren’t individuals, they are. I admire them for their ability to do their own thing in spite of all the obstacles. It’s amazing. When you think of the past and the enormous pressure of the producers and studios and when you see that every John Ford picture had a signature, had a style, it’s just amazing. How did they do it?

      What about the actors and actresses here? Do you think part of the reason for shooting a lot is on their account?

      The American actors are much more energetic than the Europeans. They go through many hardships. In Days of Heaven, Richard Gere fell 15 times on an icy river for 15 takes without much protection; I really admire that. He did it himself and he never protested it at any time. Nicholson does the same thing too.

      American directors shoot too much, I think. I don’t think it’s necessary, at least not to that extreme. Sometimes producers want them to do it because if you don’t shoot enough they think they will not have a good film.

      

      But then again, the cheapest thing you have to work with is film; that’s your smallest expense on a film.

      But then, on the other hand, you have a tremendous amount of film. And it takes more time for editing; you have too many choices, you have too many angles. With many of the films that I’ve seen in America, I have the impression that they’re always cutting for no reason; it’s just because they have another shot of it. The films have the tendency to all look alike because they all go through the same method of shooting. It comes out as if it were made by computers. A computer could actually make a movie; it could see how many camera positions you can have for the scene; ask the computer and it will tell you.

      Then by having all these choices, the editors also chop up the film too much. You have to have a close-up here and an insert there, a long shot here, an establishing shot there and it becomes too mechanical. It becomes just a mechanism and it has no personality, the film has no style. I believe in limitations and discipline.

      Possibly the Truffauts and the Rohmers are more secure in their visions; they know exactly how they want it?

      I believe the director should know in advance and not afterwards on the editing table. He should edit his film in his head already. In Hollywood, that’s the way it used to be a long time ago. But of course all these things are theories; and some people with other theories might get a good film. Good films get made in every possible way and sometimes under great pressure.

      We understand that the last film you made with Rohmer, Perceval, was quite different from your previous work. In what way?

      The film was totally made in the studio and Rohmer did not want a realistic look at all. So that’s totally breaking with my tradition. And, I must say, at the beginning, I was totally lost. In the first two weeks, I had to do many retakes because it was really very bad and I didn’t know where I was going. I had to relearn everything again; because Rohmer wanted a look that was not realistic, not naturalistic. He wanted it purposely to look artificial. Having been a realist all my life, it was really quite hard. On the sound stage, we had a whole cyclorama with castles made of plywood, trees made with plastic, painted grass and backgrounds. It had to be reconstructed light. And also Rohmer did not want something that would have direction of light because he was getting his inspiration from the miniatures of the Middle Ages; and the miniatures had no shadows, they only had color and form; there was no direction of light and no perspective. So we had to have light but, at the same time, with no direction and it couldn’t be flat either. So I used arc light and it was really hard.

      Also, you know, people have not been working in the studios lately, especially in Europe, so studio lighting has almost become some kind of lost art. It’s a secret that was buried with the people who used to do it; it hasn’t been passed on. Of course, they were working in black-and-white and we are working in color, so even if you research the old books, it doesn’t totally work the same.

      So it was very exciting and anguishing too because I was afraid of really goofing it.

      

      It was a big challenge?

      Yes, that’s right. Unfortunately the film hasn’t been a big commercial success in America.

      Would you say that it was your most difficult film?

      Yes, I would say that this is the most difficult film I’ve made. Because even my first film, La Collectioneuse, like all first films, was very difficult but still there were points of reference. But Perceval, it was total invention.

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      John Alonzo

      “There’s no such thing as just flipping right into becoming a cameraman. For me it was the quality of what I could do plus being there at the right time and being tenacious about it.”

      As much as anyone can be, John Alonzo is a student of film. As he grew up in Mexico and later Dallas, Texas, movies were his source of entertainment; he sometimes saw two or three films a day. Although, at the time, he wasn’t viewing films for the sake of cinematography, they certainly played a large part in forming cinematic ideas and concepts that he would later develop in his work.

      He first came to Los Angeles to host a children’s show on local television which featured Señor Turtle, a character he had created for a show in Dallas. Señor Turtle found the going considerably tougher in Los Angeles. When the show was cancelled after a short run, Señor Turtle retired and Alonzo turned to acting. In between acting jobs, he earned a few extra dollars by doing publicity photos of other actors. Soon acting was taking a back seat to photography; Alonzo began to devote a great deal of his time to studying the cinematographer’s role. Among his favorite classic Hollywood cameramen were Walter Strenge, Floyd Crosby, Winton Hoch and James Wong Howe.

      It was, in fact, the late Howe, or “The Chinaman” as Alonzo affectionately refers to him, who gave him his big break. Howe was shooting Seconds for John Frankenheimer and Hollywood production was in such an upswing that Howe was having trouble keeping a camera operator on the film. Alonzo, who had been shooting documentaries СКАЧАТЬ