American Cinematographer - February 2008 - (Page 49) that no film can be too personal. The image speaks. Sound amplifies and comments. Size is irrelevant. Perfection is not an aim.” Lassally’s cinematography contributed to Free Cinema’s Momma Don’t Allow (1955), Every Day Except Christmas (1957), We Are the Lambeth Boys (1958) and Refuge England (1959). “Studio films at that time were very conservative and never showed any working-class people at their jobs,” he notes. “So films like ours were very unusual. In fact, hundreds of people were turned away at the first screening [in 1956] because the program sold out. “Free Cinema was later referred to as a movement, though it was never really that,” he continues. “Lindsay Anderson coined the term as an umbrella to cover that initial program, but the only thing the films had in common was that they were produced outside the industry by people who had little or no filmmaking experience.” (The February 1956 program comprised the shorts O Dreamland, directed by Anderson; Momma Don’t Allow, co-directed by Reisz and Richardson; and Together, directed by Lorenza Mazzetti.) “Lindsay, Karel and Tony had ambitions to be feature-film directors but also wanted to show a side of life you didn’t normally see in the cinema, and they found common ground almost by accident,” continues Lassally. “But Free Cinema was a ripple compared to the French New Wave, which launched the careers of dozens of directors.” Advances in filmmaking technology, including the introduction of the Éclair NPR camera and faster film stocks, were important aspects of Free Cinema, but Lassally notes that the filmmaker’s sensibility was more important. “In these days of ubiquitous television coverage of every conceivable subject, it’s hard to imagine how difficult it was Top: Lassally and camera assistant Louis Wolfers film a sync-sound sequence for We Are the Lambeth Boys using a homemade blimp on a handheld Arri. Middle: Director Michael Cacoyannis (foreground, left), Lassally (center, being eyed by the cat) and cast and crew members take a break while filming A Girl in Black. Bottom: Rehearsing a scene for Our Last Spring, director Cacoyannis puts Jenny Russell through her paces as Lassally lines up his shot. American Cinematographer 49
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