Wee Sonny MacGregor

Does anyone know what was David Lean's inspiration for the mirage scene where Omar Sharif appears across the desert? A pal who has seen the Harrison Marks 1961 film "Naked as Nature Intended" reckons that film opens with a similar long and dreamy opening sequence.

Steve Crook

But luckily, Omar keeps his clothes on

Steve

DB7

I thought it was a John Fcrd western.

christoph404

In his autobiography,"Seventy Light Years" cameraman Freddie Young reckons he was the first to film a mirage in the way that he did, he states that David Lean asked him to think about filming a mirage during pre-production meetings, that would have been late 1959 early 1960, Freddie Young worked on the film for two years, I do not beleive Lean or Young got the inspiration from another film. In his book Young says " David wanted me to use 65mm cameras instead of the normal 35mm, because the finer grain of the 70mm film would give the desert scenes superior definition.He also told me he wanted to photograph a mirage. At the time I had no idea how I was to do it"......."I found the solution when I went to Hollywood to select camera equipment. Robert Gottschalk, president of Panavision was showing me around his plant, when I noticed a long 500mm telephoto lens......telephoto lenses, although not as long as this one, have been around since the 1920's and many people have looked at a mirage through binoculars, but I believe this was the first time anyone had photographed one this way. Since then I've seen it done dozens of times...."
Freddie Young "Seventy Light Years- A Life in the Movies"