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In 2001 Jack Cardiff (1914-2009) became the first director of photography in the history of the Academy Awards to win an Honorary Oscar. But the first time he clasped the famous statuette in his hand was a half-century earlier when his Technicolor camera-work was awarded for Powell and Pressburger's "Black Narcissus".Cardiff is not as well known as he should be, despite 80 years behind the camera and being key in bringing color to film. Color was inevitable, but he showed the world how to make it look good and made Technicolor a household name.I love that the director was able to track down Martin Scorsese. Scorsese always has stories to share and knows more about film history than just about anyone -- is there a more passionate fan? I could hear him ramble for hours on the minutiae everyone else overlooks.This is also great for Cardiff's anecdotes on Orson Welles and the stolen mink coat, John Wayne as a cowboy and Kirk Douglas as a perfect stuntman. This is a man who worked with everybody and made them all look so good.

Made shortly before his death Cameraman: the life and work of Jack Cardiff is an excellent bio on Cardiff and due to his long career the history of color film as well. Working into his nineties the highly lucid and spry octogenarian covers a lot of ground with emphasis on his collaboration with the the team of Powell and Pressburger at Archer studios which produced two of the finest color works in film history Black Narcissus and The Red Shoes. There of course were decades of others that also shined from Archer and beyond with The African Queen, Pandora and the Flyiong Dutchman, War and Peace and The Vikings and Cameraman shows healthy snippets from each.Amiable and self effacing Cardiff himself makes for a wonderful guide mixing anecdotes and methods free of ego and judgment. This doc is a must for film historians as well as anyone that has ever been under the spell of celluloid magic.

What a talented, honest, and generous man Jack Cardiff was. Talented not just because as a camerman or a director he worked on so many successful films but because it was his work that made them memorable. He's honest because in this hour-and-a-half biographical tribute he confesses his weaknesses and never brags. He began knowing nothing about technicolor except what he learned from studying painting. And how would he like to end his career? He'd like to "drop dead on the set." Generous because he credits his co-workers, though he's willing to refer generally to certain "strains." He knows nothing of CGIs but he doesn't put them down, as some curmudgeons might. His presentation of self is easy going, laid back, quietly ironic.This cinematic study gave me a greater appreciation of the use of lighting and shadows, of colors, and of the technical aspects of shooting a film -- all of which I may forget tomorrow.But -- well, look at this. There is a startling scene in "The Red Shoes" in which Leonide Massine in a garish costume leaps in from offscreen and lands next to the still and reflective figure of Moira Shearer. It's not just scary. It's spooky. And here's how photographer Cardiff shot the scene. Massine leaps in at the usual 24 frames per second. At the top of his leap, for a fraction of a second, Cardiff speeds up to 48 frames per second, before returning to the 24 fps standard. That overcranking of the camera slows the leap down for a moment at its zenith, so that Massine's slightly demonic figure seems to pause and hang in the air before dropping to the floor. It's barely noticeable but it adds to the impact of the movement.Cardiff grew old and wound up directing shorts and a couple of crummy B movies, but it didn't seem to depress him much because he loved his work, taking whatever came his way. (He died at 94.) And he continued his painting. Some were originals but many were precise copies of studies by people like Degas and Renoir, whose work he enjoyed but couldn't afford to buy. Pretty sensible when you come to think about it.Anyway, I'll pretty much skip over the "educational" value of the documentary because, after all, that's its main function, isn't it? As it turned out, I learned some things about things I thought I already knew things about. Chiaroscuro can have more than one light, source, for instance. Cardiff illustrates this point in showing us a beautiful photographic portrait he took of the flawless Audrey Hepburn. And Marlene Dietrich -- every film freak knows that she was fussy about how she was lighted, having brought certain obsessions with her from von Sternberg. I knew she had a "good" profile but never dreamed that she insisted the overhead light be at an angle of 45 degrees from her facial place in order to disguise what she thought was a tiny but unsightly bump in her nose. And it never occurred to me -- nor would I have cared if I did know -- that she insisted her make up man draw a wight line from her eyebrows to her nostrils to make her nose seem straighter.What a remarkable man.

British cinematographer Jack Cardiff, who made a name for himself with his splashy camera-work on the classic Powell & Pressburger films "A Matter of Life and Death", "Black Narcissus", and "The Red Shoes", recounts the cinematic milestones of his long career. Transitioning from British cinema to Hollywood filmmaking in the 1950s, Cardiff went on to work with such diverse directors as Alfred Hitchcock, Henry Hathaway, King Vidor, and John Huston. The film clips are well used, and the celebrity fans (such as Martin Scorsese) and co-workers who comment are interesting, though the second half of this documentary (after Cardiff moved from director of photography to the director's chair) is left a bit sketchy. Receiving an Academy Award nomination as Best Director for 1960's "Sons and Lovers", Cardiff admits this was the peak of his professional career...and yet we are left uncertain why such a talented and respected man didn't receive better assignments in later years. Still, finishing off with Cardiff's recent honorary Oscar celebration for the bulk of his work was a nice touch, proving that wisdom and talent go hand in hand--and age doesn't necessarily diminish either.