American Cinematographer - September 2007 - (Page 60)

Baroque Visions Calling in daylight and The Martyrdom at night on two separate square canvases. I believe the idea was that when he put them together, he would have the story of the journey from day to night in the life and death of a human being. A sense of death certainly pervades his late work. Storaro: The most serious event in his life took place in Rome, when he dirtied his hands with the murder of Ranuccio Tommassoni during a knife fight. With a death sentence hanging over him, he left Rome under the protection of the Colonna family and went to Naples, then to Malta, where he was made a knight, thanks to the pope. From the time of his flight, he lived with a sense of imminent death. The only painting he created from memory is Magdalene in Ecstasy, and when he made it he had in mind Lena, the woman he left in Rome when he fled. Magdalene has an obvious belly, as if she is pregnant. When he was asked about having children, Caravaggio always said, ‘I don’t want to bring orphans into the world.’ He knew his life would be brief. Perhaps this painting expresses his longing for fatherhood. Resurrection of Lazarus, painted in Messina, represents another fundamental passage in his life. I believe he identified with Lazarus and felt within himself the possibility of rebirth, of a return to Rome and the possibility of finding Lena. Lazarus is illuminated by a ray of sunlight, this time from the left, a sunrise. If we analyze the sequence of the paintings we’ve discussed, Caravaggio’s journey appears to be a backward one: it starts with sunset, then the sun is at its zenith, and then it ends with dawn. In psychological terms, it seems almost as if Caravaggio moved from a relationship with his father to one with his mother and then to his own birth. I have always thought that creativity is therapy, and with Resurrection of The crew prepares to film a scene in which natural daylight mingles with firelight in the kitchen. this extraordinary work. This was the revelation for portraying The Calling, the choice between the human and the divine. In the symbolism of light, which I have studied through the years, the rays at sunset represent the death of the father. I do not know whether Caravaggio wanted to direct a thought or a prayer to his father, or if it was inspired by the death of his father, but The Calling is the only painting in which he depicts a ray of sun coming from the right, and therefore at sunset. For his next painting, Madonna and Child With St. Anne, he once again needed to symbolize the divine, and he decided to make a hole in the roof of the garret where he lived to have a genuine beam of sunlight. In this case, however, the sun is almost at its zenith, and the beam does not fully illuminate the Madonna figure, who appears in front of it. What other types of lighting instruments did you use on the show? Storaro: The lights I use on location and in the studio were designed for me by my former gaffer, Filippo Cafolla, and built by the company Iride. These multi-fixture units comprise frames containing anywhere from one to 16 Par-64 globes in different configurations. I also use Jumbos, larger units that are similar to aircraft landing lights and contain eight or 16 globes; or the Concordes, which contain seven, 16, 24 or 31 globes. I’ve been using these types of lights since 1982. In my first conversations with the director, Angelo Longoni, he suggested that all of our lighting should be similar to the way light is presented in Caravaggio’s paintings. After thinking about that, I suggested we light most scenes with Caravaggio to look natural, using sunlight or period sources like candles or firelight, and then, for scenes depicting how Caravaggio saw things, we would use soft light or artificial lantern light to make it look and feel a bit different. We show the audience what he sees when he closes a window to make the studio dark, fixes the lantern in relation to his model, and positions the mirror from his point of view as he prepares to paint. How did you try to approximate Caravaggio’s mindset? Storaro: I tried to put myself in his head and figure out how his artistry developed. Once he turned to artificial light, he was no longer locked into the journey of the sun, and that freed him to write with light. It looks like he painted The 60 September 2007

Table of Contents Feed for the Digital Edition of American Cinematographer - September 2007

Contents Editor’s Note Global Village DVD Playback Production Slate Bourne Again Cultural Immersion Baroque Visions Once Upon a Time in Bucharest Short Takes Post Focus Filmmakers’ Forum New Products & Services Points East International Marketplace Classified Ads Ad Index ASC Membership Roster Clubhouse News Wrap Shot

American Cinematographer - September 2007

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