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Was it the process or the practitioner?
Movie buffs have long lamented the passing of three-strip Technicolor, a process praised for its ability to vividly capture natures colors and bring them to the screen in a painterly way. These same movie buffs will cite the films A Matter of Life and Death (a.k.a. Stairway to Heaven, 1946), Black Narcissus (1 947), The Red Shoes (1 948), The Black Rose (1950), Pandora and the Flying Dutchman (1 951 ) and The African Queen (1 951 ) as proof that the magic was in the process, and yet all of those pictures were photographed by the same person: Jack Cardiff, BSC.
Cardiff, a onetime ASC member and, more recently, an Officer in the Order of the British Empire (even the Queen recognized that he had a bit to do with the brilliance of "Glorious Technicolor"), died on Aprii 22 at home in Cambridgeshire, England. He was in his 94th year, and not long out of harness. His last project as a cinematographer was the 2007 documentary The Other Side of the Screen. In a way, his career had come full circle; his earliest credits as a lighting cameraman were travelogues and industrial documentaries in the 1930s.
It would not be fair to say Cardiff was a reluctant cinematographer - he pursued his career with a passion - but his motives for joining the...