Jack Cardiff

[ordinal]

www.regan-gallery.com



Celebrating over 80 years of Oscar-winning cinematographer and director Jack Cardiff, The Regan Gallery presents 17 fine art prints of leading ladies from the 1950's, including Marilyn Monroe, Audrey Hepburn and Sophia Loren.



Shot over fifty years ago, this is the very first time Jack’s portraits have been exhibited, and signed prints by Jack are available to purchase.



www.regan-gallery.com

[Steve Crook]

Not quite the first time ever, maybe the first time in England - they were exhibited at the Regan gallery in Cardiff (Wales) last November.



Steve

[Hackett]

18th September 2004 Happy Birthday to Jack Cardiff 90 years young and still working. I wonder who might have a few words to say about his past works? (Steve).

[Steve Crook]

HACKETT:

18th September 2004 Happy Birthday to Jack Cardiff 90 years young and still working. I wonder who might have a few words to say about his past works? (Steve).

We sent our best wishes to him on his birthday. He's a lovely bloke. I've met him quite a few times now. He'll be at Canterbury on Sun 10th Oct to introduce Black Narcissus.



To see his skills as a cinematographer, just look at A Matter of Life and Death (1946), Black Narcissus (1947), The Red Shoes (1948), The African Queen (1951) and various others.



As a director I'd suggest Sons and Lovers (1960), Young Cassidy (1965) and Girl on a Motorcycle (1968).



He won the Oscar for his work on Black Narcissus and got a special Oscar at the 2001 awards.



He's worked with just about everyone in Sexy Beast and has a fund of amazing stories.



His autobiography, "Magic Hour: The Life of a Cameraman" and "Conversations with Jack Cardiff" by Justin Bowyer are both very good books.



Steve

[deckard]

Heartily agreed! It still amazes me when I think of all that wonderful scenery in "Black Narcissus" were black & white pictures coloured in with pastels, how did he ever do it!

[Steve Crook]

deckard:

Heartily agreed! It still amazes me when I think of all that wonderful scenery in "Black Narcissus" were black & white pictures coloured in with pastels, how did he ever do it!

It's much quoted - but that was only the views seen through the windows of the "Palace of Women". Straight shots of just the mountains or that vertiginous drop below the bell tower were painted in full colour.



The view down from the bell tower was by Peter Ellenshaw who went on to do some great work for Disney.



Jack Cardiff worked very closely with designer Alfred Junge. As Jack was an artist in his own right and had studied all the old masters they could both work well together and ignore what Natalie Kalmus of Technicolor demanded they do. Whenever there was an argument with Technicolor, and there were many, Powell always backed up his team.



Steve

[JamesM]

And not just any old Disney films, he worked on the Black Hole, perhaps the darkest Disney live action film ever.

[Wetherby Pond]

Originally posted by Steve Crook@Sep 20 2004, 04:00 PM

He's worked with just about everyone in Sexy Beast and has a fund of amazing stories.

This is wonderful - much better than the cor rection in the Alan Clarke thread (go here if you want to know what on earth I'm talking about) because it actually makes grammatical sense - even if it's untrue!

[Steve Crook]

Originally posted by Wetherby Pond@Aug 20 2005, 02:46 PM



This is wonderful - much better than the correction in the Alan Clarke thread (go here if you want to know what on earth I'm talking about) because it actually makes grammatical sense - even if it's untrue!

And in this case it's Jack himself who is still a Sexy Beast.

He was at the NFT today where Thelma Schoonmaker came over to talk about Michael Powell.



Interesting bug (or auto-edit). Something is converting every occurence of T.h.e...B.u.s.i.n.e.s.s (without the dots) into Sexy Beast



Steve

[Wetherby Pond]

Originally posted by Steve Crook@Aug 21 2005, 05:23 AM

Interesting bug (or auto-edit). Something is converting every occurence of T.h.e...B.u.s.i.n.e.s.s

It's definitely deliberate - almost certainly a side-effect of all the recent spamming we've been having about a certain Nick Love film that's due to open quite soon.



Very sensibly, someone has decided to wreck future attempts by ensuring that the title is always reproduced as Sexy Beast (the film which the Sight & Sound review used as a stick to beat Love's film with), though it's had some amusing side-effects.

[harryfielder]

Hi folks,

I got to work with Jack on a film called Mutations 1973 with the not yet Dr Who Tom Baker....I remember he has two sons, one was Rodney who did some extra work in films and tv.



Jack directed this film out of Bray studios....



Aitch,

[smudge]

Originally posted by harryfielder@Aug 23 2005, 04:09 PM

Hi folks,

I got to work with Jack on a film called Mutations 1973 with the not yet Dr Who Tom Baker....I remember he has two sons, one was Rodney who did some extra work in films and tv.



Jack directed this film out of Bray studios....



Aitch,

His other son, Luke (?), went into film & TV photography Aitch...



Any particular memories of Bray at that time ?



It was a fair while after the Hammer organisation had decamped to Elstree. The Hammer years are well-documented, but not so much really afterwards, between then and Rocky Horror/Gerry Anderson's arrival.



You wuld have been there a year or so before Rocky, on MUTATIONS ?



SMUDGE

[Steve Crook]

Originally posted by smudge@Aug 23 2005, 05:53 PM

His other son, Luke (?), went into film & TV photography Aitch...

Although Luke Cardiff filmed The Prince, the Showgirl and Me (2004) which was all about the making of The Prince and the Showgirl (1957) (which Jack filmed), I don't know that Luke is related to Jack.



I thought Jack's sons were John, Rodney, Peter and Mason



Steve

[smudge]

Originally posted by Steve Crook@Aug 23 2005, 10:03 PM

Although Luke Cardiff filmed The Prince, the Showgirl and Me (2004) which was all about the making of The Prince and the Showgirl (1957) (which Jack filmed), I don't know that Luke is related to Jack.



I thought Jack's sons were John, Rodney, Peter and Mason



Steve

Thanks Steve -



I had obviously been misinformed, wherever I picked that 'fact' up from...



SMUDGE

[JamesM]

Within a month of Harry talking about his work on The Mutations, a DVD came out of the film, complete with a full commentary by Jack Cardiff himself.



Amazon.com: The Freakmaker: Donald Pleasence,Tom Baker,Brad Harris,Julie Ege,Michael Dunn,Scott Antony,Jill Haworth,Olga Anthony,Lisa Collings,Joan Scott (II),Toby Lennon,John Wireford,Eithne Dunne,Tony Mayne,Molly Tweedlie,Kathy Kitchen (II),Fran Fu



I never knew about this until now. It is released by a company called Subversive Cinema.

[rskershaw]

I always had a soft spot for 'Young Cassidy'.

[Freddie Freeloader]

So here I am, loitering on Wardour street, when I overhear a conversation regarding the final stages of Post Production on a documentary about The Venerable One.



Is this old news ?

Am I less hip and well-informed than when I woke up this morning?



Is there anybody out there who may be able to shed light (preferably during the golden hour)* on this project?



Anybody...?



There must be somebody who knows about this...









* or magic hour, for that matter...

[Steve Crook]

So here I am, loitering on Wardour street, when I overhear a conversation regarding the final stages of Post Production on a documentary about The Venerable One.



Is this old news ?

Am I less hip and well-informed than when I woke up this morning?



Is there anybody out there who may be able to shed light (preferably during the golden hour)* on this project?



Anybody...?



There must be somebody who knows about this...









* or magic hour, for that matter...

Two parts of it have already been released.

"The Colour Merchant" is on the Carlton DVD of A Matter of Life and Death

"Painting with Light" is on the Criterion DVD of Black Narcissus

Both of them have also appeared on other DVDs



When I met Craig McCall at Cannes (looking splendid in his kilt) he said that he still intended to finish it, as soon as he could get the money and the time



Steve

[Freddie Freeloader]

When I met Craig McCall at Cannes (looking splendid in his kilt) he said that he still intended to finish it, as soon as he could get the money and the time



Steve

It sounds like things are moving ahead then, if the conversation I eavesdropped on was anything to go by.

[DB7]

Jack Cardiff – hallucinations on celluloid



The Technicolor technician visited the London Film School, a bedrock of anarchic creativity, in 1968 and set a keen student on his way. Don Boyd has never forgotten his masterclass

* Don Boyd

* guardian.co.uk, Thursday 6 May 2010 22.55 BST





Hallucinogenic photography ... Marianne Faithfull in Jack Cardiff's Girl On a Motorcycle.

I first met the great cinematographer and director Jack Cardiff when he came to the London Film School in 1968 to show his film The Girl on a Motorcycle, which starred Marianne Faithfull. I was a student there, and he presented a mesmeric lecture, which in simple, unpretentious terms explained the complexities of that film's almost hallucinogenic colour photography. He also talked about the lessons he had learned from the great painters about colour and light, lessons which had come from spending hours at the National Gallery.



In October 1968 the London Film School was a bedrock of anarchic creativity. Many of the students were engaged in the political flotsam and jetsam of the time – the Vietnam war being the most obvious target for dissent – but social changes were rife and revolution was in the air. Ironically, the films that students made then rarely reflected any of the politics of that era. The emphasis of film education was predominantly on film technique. What balanced this perverse anomaly was the influence of the teaching faculty.



By the end of the 1960s, the financial infrastructure that had supported a healthy British film industry was falling apart and many great directors, editors, cinematographers and art directors were out of work. And so, to our enormous advantage, their sanctuary was the only film school in Britain at the time – a ramshackle old converted warehouse in Covent Garden. For example, I was taught by Charles Crichton, whose films – The Lavender Hill Mob, The Titfield Thunderbolt, Hue and Cry – advertised his anarchic wit and extraordinary technical skills. His speciality was film editing, which in his day involved the craft skills that led on to a career as a director. By contrast, cinematography, which requires artistic sensibilities and considerable technical expertise in a range of arenas, was rarely the equivalent catalyst for a directorial career. And so when Jack, an Oscar-winning cinematographer, arrived to talk to us about a film he had directed, we treated him like a superstar.



Jack Cardiff had been trained at a variety of prewar studios where sumptuous visual stylisation and set design were key components in their output. His prodigious talent had been spotted by executives at Technicolor, who harnessed him to develop colour photography, then in its infancy as a cinematic medium. In 1936, he had shot material at the coronation of George VI and he photographed the first fully fledged Technicolor film – a Henry Fonda vehicle called Wings of the Morning. But it was his subsequent work with Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger on The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp, A Matter of Life and Death, Black Narcissus and The Red Shoes that defined his supreme artistic legacy: command of lighting; exquisite, daring camera movements; innovative techniques in special effects with painted glass; seamless, subtle manipulation of camera speed; and, crucially, an editorial eye that served the dramatic ambitions of the scenario.



Thirty-five years after that encounter, I persuaded this maestro to visit the very same film school, and with similar clarity, he explained his inspirational theories to a new generation of filmmakers: "On a film set, I am God," he said with a twinkle in his octogenarian eye. "I decide where the sun rises and sets. I put the moon where it suits me. Without my light nothing can exist. You must do that too. Play God!" When he left, our ears still ringing with his stories about Hitchcock, Huston, The African Queen and Katharine Hepburn et alia, I had tears in my eyes.



His last, shy request: might he expect a small fee to cover his travel expenses from Essex? I hounded the accounts department to pay him the paltry allowance for visiting geniuses.