American Cinematographer - March 1990 - 29

ist. Trumbull had

just

Oscar for his work

on

counters

won an
Close En¬

of the Third Kind. He

envisioned

an

ultimate theatrical

mumbled

something about trust¬
ing him - the sun would be in
the right place at the right time.
He made it sound easy," said

experience which touched people

Beale.

in ways

con¬
ventional movies never could.
After much research,
Trumbull settled on 65mm pro¬
duction at 60 frames per second

That was Cardiff being
Cardiff. He started this very

and 70mm print film projected at
60 fps for theatrical display. The

if

that television and

are augmented with six
channels of Dolby sound. Trum¬
bull also designed a special thea¬
ter which provides everyone in
the audience with an unob¬

images

structed view.

Images fill a floor-

to-ceiling, wall-to-wall

screen.

There is no flicker (sometimes
detectable with film projected at
24 fps.) There is just one seamless

moving image, bigger than life.
The pictures are pristine and col¬
ors are richly saturated.
Showscan staked its first
claim in special venue theaters at
destination parks because that's
where the interest was. The first
nine Showscan films were short
features with titillating imagery
and sound, but little or no dra¬
matic content.
But the story is changing.
Consider the battlefield sequence
in Call From Space. Cardiff shot
the scene in one long take with a
CP65

on a Chapman
rolling over several
hundred yards of dolly track.
"It took a full day to set
up the shot," said co-producer
and Showscan Productions presi¬
camera

crane,

dent Peter Beale. "We had many
extras and a lot of painstaking

special effects work, particularly
the explosions which had to be
precisely planned and executed.
It was like choreographing a bal¬
let. Everyone always had to be in
the right place. With someone
like Jack Cardiff, you can plan
and make shots like this and do
them in one take."
And you also get extra
touches like the dramatically
backlit shot of Napoleon, which
caps a

perfectly executed visual

perspective of the battlefield
scene. "I asked Jack how he was
going to create that effect, and he

complex shot in the morning, and
finished right on schedule as the
sun moved behind Napoleon as
Jack Cardiff? Didn't he
shoot Rambo II? Sure, but go back
a little further, like about 35 years,
when someone
asked Natalie
Kalmus what
she thought
was the best
all-time color
movie?
In
those days that
meant Techni¬
color. She an¬
swered with¬

It is

stayed around the studio
running errands, and generally
making himself useful. One day,
called him over to a
and told him to twist the
lens from one mark to another
when he was signalled to do so.

Later, Cardiff asked what he had
followed focus, kid."
At the age of

14, Cardiff
working steadily on film
crews
just in

was

different
sensation entirely.
The imagery is so
intense that the

time for the

nadir of silent

and
hand-cranked
movies

cameras.

It

quired

re¬

more
rock¬

characters seem

than

to be alive.

steady hand
and an ability
to

credence. She wasn't just the wife
of Technicolor founder Dr. Her¬
bert Kalmus. Natalie Kalmus was
the heart and soul behind Tech¬
nicolor during its peak years.
On the other hand, many

people believe that Black
Narcissus has no equal when the
topic is beautiful Technicolor im¬
agery. That picture is about five
nuns
overcoming trials and tribu¬
lations to build an orphanage in
a
mythical mountain country.
denominator

was

Cardiff, who shot both films only
a
year apart, just after the end of

a

turn

the

crank at a consistent speed. You
also needed a sense of drama and
the eye-hand coordination which
could make it pay off. "For ex¬

ample, when there was a fight
sequence you slowed the crank¬
ing down just enough to extend
the action," he explained.
"I worked with

some

very good directors, including
Alfred Hitchcock before he left

England to work in the United
States," Cardiff recalled. Around
1936, he came home from the
studio one day and his mother
said there was a call for him to
return to work. Cardiff was an¬

World War II. He won an Oscar
for his work on Black Narcissus.
When Cardiff shot Black

gry. It had been a long day. But
he went back to the studio and
discovered that a half a dozen

Narcissus and The Red Shoes, he

camera

already a 30-year veteran in
the film industry, and he was one
of a very small handful of masters
of the Technicolor process. Car¬
diff was born in Yarmouth, Eng¬

was

land, in 1914. His parents were
vaudeville performers who acted
in movies between live shows.
Cardiff became an actor to put a

little extra bread

on

the table. He

appeared in his first film in 1918
at the age of four. He also starred
in several films.

By the mid-1920s, he was

March 1990

Henry Gibson, Lynn
Kim and Michu.

camera

hesitation,

common

Balloon prepares
for take-off with

someone

a

The Red Shoes. Her opinion carries

The

He

Opposite Page:

done, and the answer was, "You

on cue.

out

pretty much washed up as a child
actor. He was physically too big.

operators were being
interviewed, and one of them
was
going to be selected to learn
about
ies.

making Technicolor mov¬

"Two or three operators
had already been interviewed by
a committee of studio executives,
and they said they were asked

technical and frightening
questions," he said.
Ray Rennahan, ASC,

very

was

coming to England to shoot

Wings of the Morning, starring
Henry Fonda and Annabella, and
American

Cinematographer

27
American Cinematographer - March 1990

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