CAMERAMAN: THE LIFE AND WORK OF JACK CARDIFF (2010) B/W & C widescreen 86m dir: Craig McCall

w/Jack Cardiff, Martin Scorsese, Kirk Douglas, Lauren Bacall, Charlton Heston, Kim Hunter, John Mills, Alan Parker, Thelma Schoonmaker, Freddie Francis, Raffaella Di Laurentiis, Richard O. Fleischer, Peter Yates, Kathleen Byron, Christopher Challis, Kevin McClory, Ian Christie, Moira Shearer, Michel Ciment, Peter Handford, Michael Powell

Ty Burr's review of the film in The Boston Globe: "There’s a lovely and telling anecdote about halfway into Cameraman: The Life and Work of Jack Cardiff that says a lot about making movies — the art and craft of it, but also the fun of pulling rabbits out of hats. Director Michael Powell approaches Cardiff on the set of 1946’s A Matter of Life and Death and asks for a misty opening shot. The cinematographer walks to his camera, breathes on the lens, and — voila — a foggy day.

"Cardiff was the greatest color cameraman who ever lived. It’s not arguable, not once you’ve seen his films with Powell, especially Black Narcissus (1947) and The Red Shoes (1948), both of which turn the chemistry of Technicolor into astonishingly vibrant fever dreams of repression and release. But Cardiff was also a working filmmaker whose CV was absurdly long — 87 years from his first credit to his last — and puckishly varied. He directed 13 films, some good (1960’s Sons and Lovers) and some less so (1974’s The Mutations). He worked in London and in Hollywood. For Hitchcock and John Huston. He shot art. He shot Rambo: First Blood Part II.

"And he lived to the ripe old age of 94, dying in 2009, by which point Cardiff had collected an honorary Oscar and been followed around for over a decade by Cameraman director Craig McCall. The documentary itself isn’t a work of art but it doesn’t need to be — it just needs to frame Cardiff’s art for our appreciation and it does so handily. There are the requisite stellar talking heads: Martin Scorsese, Lauren Bacall, a post-stroke Kirk Douglas, and Black Narcissus actress Kathleen Byron on how her psychotic Sister Ruth gained power through the cameraman’s lens ('He gave me half my performance with the lighting’).

"The movie clips are luscious, as you’d expect, and Cardiff’s own 'home movies,' shot on various movie sets with a 16mm camera, catch the gods during downtime. But the film’s ace in the hole is its own subject, who tells tales and offers insights like the gracious, engaged fellow he was. A serious Sunday painter, Cardiff was the first to bring the techniques of the great artists to the cinema — he based the lighting in Narcissus on Vermeer — and he relished working with pros at the top of their game. That included Marlene Dietrich, who knew so well how to light her face that she could have been a cinematographer herself.

"Cameraman is at its best when dealing with its subject’s brilliant heyday during the 1940s and ’50s, and it inevitably loses a little steam with the lesser movies of later years. The same can’t be said of Cardiff, whose momentum and cheer never flagged. 'Hopefully, one of these days I’ll just drop dead on a film set,' he says in Cameraman, and while that wish didn’t come true, it wasn’t for lack of trying."

From the January 2012 issue of the TCM viewer's guide, Now Playing: "Winner of a 2001 honorary Academy Award as the 'master of light and color,' British-born Jack Cardiff is universally considered one of the all-time great cinematographers and also distinguished himself as a director. Known particularly for his ravishing color images, which he acknowledged as having been influenced by the work of master painters, Cardiff had earlier won an Oscar for his cinematography on Black Narcissus (1947).

"Our tribute to this extraordinary film artist includes the TCM premiere of the documentary Cameraman: The Life and Work of Jack Cardiff (2010). Craig McCall's passionate, long-in-production documentary features quotes and anecdotes from Martin Scorsese, Charlton Heston, Lauren Bacall, Kirk Douglas and Moira Shearer, as well as Cardiff himself and many of his other colleagues.

"Cardiff (1914-2009) enjoyed a film career that spanned nine decades, beginning with work as a child actor in silent films and progressing to camera assistant before he became operator on the first British Technicolor film, Wings of the Morning (1937), a horseracing epic starring Henry Fonda.

"Cardiff's career took a quantum leap when he worked as cinematographer for writers/directors/producers Michael Powell and Emeric Pressberger on such masterworks as The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp (1943), A Matter of Life and Death (1947) and The Red Shoes (1948). Later he lent his exquisite color palette to the films of such directors as Alfred Hitchcock (Under Capricorn, 1949, a TCM premiere), Albert Lewin (Pandora and the Flying Dutchman, 1951) and Laurence Olivier (The Prince and the Showgirl, 1957).

"Cardiff made his debut as a director of feature films with the thriller Intent to Kill (1958, also a TCM premiere), followed by such other movies as The Lion (1962, a TCM premiere), Young Cassidy (1965) and Dark of the Sun (1968), eventually earning an Oscar nomination for Best Director."