Jack Cardiff, 1914 - 2009.

By David Hudson on 04/22/2009

[Updated through 4/28]

"Jack Cardiff, the Oscar-winning British cinematographer who began his career in the silent era, has died at the age of 94," reports the Guardian's Xan Brooks. "The man who went by the nickname 'Jack O'Lantern' shot films for Alfred Hitchcock and John Huston and was once hailed as 'the best in the world' by Marilyn Monroe."

"Cardiff, who started his career aged four as an actor, worked [on] the Oscar-winning 'Black Narcissus,' the 40s classic he made with British film-making duo Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger," writes Geoffrey Macnab for Screen. "His other credits with Powell and Pressbuger include 'A Matter of Life and Death' [and] 'The Red Shoes.'"

"Martin Scorsese once described Cardiff, as being able to 'paint with the camera,'" notes the Washington Post's Patricia Sullivan.

The BBC has more - and a collection of stills.

For more of Cardiff's shots, turn to the BFI's tribute.

See also: The site for the documentary, "Persistence of Vision: The Life and Work of Jack Cardiff"; and Maximilian Le Cain in Senses of Cinema (2003).

Updates: From the Siren:

The people at Technicolor, wrote Michael Powell, had usually encountered filmmakers accustomed to black-and-white, people who listened while the Kalmus crew told them what Technicolor could and could not do. The Technicolor folks had a surprise in store from Cardiff, who had worked in the laboratory for years and was "able to tell Technicolor where they could get off."

"Now," said Powell, "they were dealing with painters, which was a very different thing."

"Some years ago the magazine I once edited, Lighting Dimensions, ran a terrific interview with the cinematographer and director, whose career behind the camera spanned generations of cinema," recalls Robert Cashill. "My friend and colleague John Calhoun did his customary outstanding job with the text; what's missing from this web version, besides cleaner copy, are pictures. And in Cardiff's case, images told us so much."

"My friend Lawrie told me that everybody [on 'Black Narcissus'] got up extra early to film a sunrise," remembers David Cairns. "The result was gorgeous, but as everyone was congratulating each other, Powell's voice piped up, 'It's no good. Much too beautiful - no one will ever believe it. We'll have to do it in the studio.' And so they did. Cardiff's imagination and sensitivity, as well as his deliberate decision to emulate the great artists, made him a brilliant, if prickly collaborator with the notoriously difficult Powell."

Dan North quotes from a 2001 interview and adds, "Just because technology changes, it doesn't mean it always gets better. The inside of my mind is lined with pictures shot by Jack Cardiff, and it always will be."

"I think I can say without fear of contradiction that he was the Midas of cinematographers - everything he lit turned to beauty." Glenn Kenny: "I had the privilege of meeting him back in 1987. He was a splendid, lively fellow, and my autographed copy of his memoir 'Magic Hour' - a book that belongs in the library of every self-respecting cinephile--is one of my most prized possessions. God bless him."

Online viewing tip. From Daniel Kasman in The Auteurs' Notebook: "Jack Cardiff photographs one of the greatest single takes in cinema, from this much underappreciated Hitchcock." Time Out New York's Keith Uhlich notes that a "detailed analysis of this sequence can be found here at Reverse Shot.) It's one of Cardiff's finest pieces of work, his camera totally in sync with [Ingrid] Bergman's performance and Hitchcock's direction - as if we are gazing directly into a tortured soul."

Updates, 4/23: "The cinematographer is traditionally one of the most revered professionals on any film set, but Cardiff is one of the very few to achieve a kind of authorial brand-recognition, and this I think must surely stem from his inspired work on those Powell masterpieces," writes the Guardian's Peter Bradshaw. "Cardiff was also famous for working with Ava Gardner, Marilyn Monroe and Sophia Loren and, just as Douglas Sirk was to accumulate a reputation for being a woman's director, so Cardiff acquired a discreet reputation as a woman's cinematographer, treasured by female stars as someone who could light a woman's face intelligently and bring out the facets of her beauty: that now seems like a quaint and almost genteel art, belonging more to the world of portraiture, but it was a part of his creativity and humanity. The cinema has lost a great master."

"The dying craft of motion picture camerawork just died a little further." The Boston Globe's Ty Burr has some gorgeous stills. Glenn Kenny posts more, too.

"My favorite Cardiff film," writes Kimberly Lindbergs, "is 'The Girl on a Motorcycle' (on my list of Favorite Films from 1968), which starred Marianne Faithfull and Alain Delon as two motorcycle obsessed lovers named Rebecca and Daniel. Jack Cardiff directed, photographed and edited the film, and it holds a special place in my heart for numerous reasons. First and foremost is the ingenious casting. Marianne Faithfull and Alain Delon were two of the most beautiful, transgressive and fascinating pop culture icons of the 60s and teaming them up in 'The Girl on a Motorcycle' was a brilliant idea. They're incredibly sexy together in the film and Cardiff did a remarkable job of capturing their youthful beauty as well as the erotic heat generated by his two stars."

"Colleagues have paid tribute," and Murray Wardrop collects their comments for the Telegraph.

"As it would happen, yesterday I was watching director Albert Lewin's 'Pandora and the Flying Dutchman' for a long-term project I'm working on," writes Edward Copeland. "I didn't pay much attention to the credits, but I was immediately struck by the look, which almost reminded me of some of the Powell-Pressburger masterpieces. There was a good reason for that. Jack Cardiff was the DP."

Online viewing tips. "A Matter of Life and Death" is "without a doubt one of the most beautiful, and beautifully made, films ever," writes Bob Westal. "Cardiff's contribution to the film is immense and, as painterly as it is, a part of the narrative. Michael Powell would have accepted no less. And, really, the images speak for themselves. Here (after the credits, at about 1:28), he takes on some unparralelled special effects work and eventually gets on to the cinematographer's greatest and most important challenge: a human face.... For more, Brian Doan has a key clip from 'The Red Shoes' main dance sequence up. Check it out."

Update, 4/24: "He began visiting art museums when he was around 9 and was first captivated by Rembrandt, then Caravaggio, then the Impressionists, whose love affair with light entranced him." Douglas Martin tracks the life in the New York Times.

Update, 4/26: Philip French: "Cardiff was one of the first two cinematographers I became aware of as a teenager (the other was Robert Krasker), so it was a memorable day when, after I'd written a piece on the art and craft of the lighting cameraman for the Observer, he asked for my advice on his memoirs. He was a sprightly 80-year-old then, still working and lecturing, full of stories. There were two sides to him. One was the pipe-smoking, practical man, the other the great romantic, fascinated by the relationship between cinematographer and star, a continuation in an infinitely more complex way of the intimacy between artist and model."

Update, 4/28: Walter Donohue collects a remembrance from Kevin Macdonald and another from Cardiff himself - on meeting Marilyn Monroe.

[Photo: "Persistence of Vision," Modus Operandi Films, 2009]

Tags: Emeric Pressburger, Jack Cardiff, Michael Powell