Everything I ever needed was in the movies.

I ceased taking monochrome pictures in 1977, though every now and then you still can catch me hitting the monochrome button in Lightroom.

But that’s not monochrome photography.

While the simplicity of seeing imposed by a monochrome palette makes anyone a better color photographer, I no longer take pictures thinking in black and white. My black may be red, my white blue, but I simply do not take black and white pictures.

Color is more challenging and, done right, more satisfying. Black and white, in a way, is cheating. Take out enough variables and anyone can do it. Not that all modern color is good. Anyone can paint a late Rothko or Motherwell. Fine work, true, but the genius of seeing and the skill to convert the vision to canvas are hardly abundantly on display here.

But when it was all I did, I loved black and white. No serious work in color was being shown by anyone in 1960 and that changed little through 1977. The pioneers, as ever, were the great fashion magazines, but the establishment critics saw to it that their art was disregarded. Shame. You could miss an awful lot of Parkinson, Clarke or Penn that way.

While my love of black and white was doubtless furthered by all those great books in the Kensington Public Library on Hornton Street, what really flipped the switch for me happened a good deal earlier when I first saw Carol Reed’s ‘The Third Man’ (1949) on our home TV which, of course, was black and white, like the movie. I was already familiar with those expressionist masterpieces ‘Metropolis’ and ‘M’ by Fritz Lang, but this was on a far more approachable plane. It did not need much imagination to grasp Graham Greene’s plot or to be awed by the acting of Orson Welles and Joseph Cotten. But what really gripped you was Robert Krasker’s photography, and rather than go on about it, I’m attaching nine favorite images from the movie. Krasker’s use of tilted perspective to convey an unwordly, wide angle look, is tremendous.

It’s not really clear on the small screen, but the next image shows the dying Harry Lime (Welles) poking his fingers up though the sewer grating as he tries to escape the good guys:

The camera cuts to his face. Sheer genius.

See what I mean? Krasker got the Oscar that year. There was no competition.

On a trip to Vienna in June, 2024, my son WInston searched out the original location and his photograph even replicates Krasker’s crazy tilt. Mercifully the ugly gratings have gone, but little else has changed 75 years later:

Some of the best still photography is in movies

Once I realized that the carpal tunnel problems I was having, meaning wrist pain when working my hands hard, were not going to go away, I sold all my woodworking equipment and set about converting the woodworking shop to a home theater, with the following result:

Completed in time for last Christmas, I have maintained my commitment to watching a movie a night ever since and must say I have rarely had so much fun. 1,000 watts of surround sound and a 100” screen are not that difficult to enjoy!

So with some one hundred movies added to the growing collection at home, I stopped to think what was it that I enjoyed most on the big screen, forcing a narrowing down to just three movies.

Easy.

Luchino Visconti’s ˜Death in Venice” (1971)
Sergio Leone’s ˜Once Upon a Time in the West” (1968)

and

Walter Hill’s ˜Streets of Fire” (1984)

On reflection, the common thread running through these films includes a surpassingly simple plot (writer goes to die in Venice and becomes infatuated with a young boy, gunman seeks revenge, tough guy rescues former flame from kidnappers), magnificent music (Gustav Mahler, Ennio Morricone, Ry Cooder and Jim Steinman) and stupendous settings (Venice, the great American West, 50s Chicago).

But the surpassing attribute of all three is easily identified and is the primary reason I am so attracted to these masterpieces.

Stunning still photography.

Still photography? In a movie?

Death in Venice is little more than a series of stills, making up a movie. Lush beyond belief, it’s what makes Visconti such a favorite at the old abode.

Once Upon a Time in the West emulates the Visconti style, or maybe I should say that Visconti emulates Leone, the western having been made first. Some close-ups last for minutes (minutes!) on the screen.

But Walter Hill’s Streets of Fire is the most photographically arresting of the three. Set in a permanently dark, wet Chicago, mostly under the elevated subway (the “El” in local parlance), it’s all neon, reflections, brooding atmosphere.

To illustrate, here are some stills from the great cimematographer Andrew Laszlo:

The bad guy makes his first appearance in the music hall, intending to kidnap the star heroine:

Outside the police station, the good guy is seen driving by in his hot rod:

Abstract expressionism at its best:

The good guy returns, ever the loner, after rescuing the girl:

A wonderful shot of the diner around which much of the action centers, seen through the support struts of the El incredibly atmospheric:

Before the final confrontation between the forces of good and evil, Hill pulls off an overhead tracking shot which equals that incredible one in ˜Once Upon a Time in the West” where the camera rises way above Claudia Cardinale’s head to show the new western town being built. Here Hill may not have the advantage of Morricone’s soaring score, yet he does something magical from a photographer’s perspective. He starts with a shot of the bad guy holding up an air horn to summon his evil team:

Then, as the camera rises, he switches focus to the evil hordes assembling in the background, the change in focus transforming the bad guy’s face into a death mask:

The movie has a nice symmetry to it, ending where it started with the heroine giving a driving performance of a rock number in the broken down hall. Both are by Jim Steinman – the fabulous ‘Nowhere Fast’ to open and the even better ‘Tonight is What it Means to be Young’ to close this masterpiece of a movie:

And there’s that neon again, the background to her singing reminding one of nothing so much as a work by the futurist Marinetti.

As for the ending lyrics, beat this:

Let the revels begin
Let the fire be started
We’re dancing for the restless
and the broken-hearted
Let the revels begin
Let the fire be started
We’re dancing for the desperate
and the broken-hearted

Say a prayer in the darkness for the magic to come
No matter what it seems
Tonight is what it means to be young
Before you know it it’s gone
Tonight is what it means to be young
Before you know it it’s gone.

Finally, the picture of the heroine on stage with a foreground of clapping hands, a scene which might as well have been lifted from one of Hitler’s Nuremburg rallies in the late 1930s:

The only thing wrong with this movie is that there is so much of this kind of thing that much is easily missed on a first viewing, but I cannot think of a better reason for an aficionado of film to rush out and install a home theater.

As for photographers, it’s simply a must.

Update December, 2017:

Streets of Fire is finally available on BluRay. Amazon has it.

Three great films about photography

Hollywood, for the most part, has not served still photographers well and there is little of note when it comes to portraying the profession. By the way, have you ever wondered why we refer to photography and prostitution as professions, when either can be practiced with a bare minimum of education? These are trades, not professions, though each doubtless includes some real artists in its ranks.

However, three films come to mind which not only do photography justice, but are also shining examples of great film making within their respective genres of comedy, drama and musical.

First comedy. John Waters’s ˜Pecker”(1998) is, well, a typical John Waters movie. Something to offend everyone and hilariously funny for all but the thinnest skinned. This comedy portrays a teenager who is accidentally vaulted to stardom for his snapshots and somehow manages to survive the experience. No great substance here, but an absolute hoot to watch. Filmed, of course in Baltimore, which is the director’s home town.

Next drama, and here we are talking of a very great film indeed, made by the splendidly named Michelangelo Antonioni – a name to conjure with. “Blow Up”, dating from 1966 and purportedly modeled on the working-class-photographer-who-made-it-big David Bailey, the anti-hero, played expertly by David Hemmings, thinks he has photographed a body in a public park. Or has he? Full of mystery and great acting, filmed in a 1960s London largely devoid of people, the film has a haunted air. It’s a fascinating piece of history that bears repeated viewing and denies the audience simple solutions or a nice ending.

But I have saved the best for last. A delightful confection with Fred Astaire and Audrey Hepburn. ˜Funny Face” was made by Stanley Donen in 1957, which seems a long time ago. Add the wonderful Kay Thompson and you have a prescription for champagne. French champagne (is there any other kind?) as the whole thing largely takes place in that most beautiful of cities, Paris. Mercifully, Parisians take up negligible screen time.

Fashion magazine photographer Astaire, modeled on Richard Avedon who advised on the movie, is invariably draped with Rolleiflexes, though almost all the pictures he takes are made on a huge field camera. Even the action shots. Not that hard to believe when you realize the shutter lag on this monster is far less than that on most modern digital wonders.

Kay Thompson’s opening number, ˜Think Pink” is simply a show stopper. Diana Vreeland at Vogue was never this much fun.

And, of course Audrey Hepburn. Like her or hate her.

Astaire being Astaire manages to dance and sing between photo opportunities and Hepburn almost keeps up with him.

Let’s see, what else?

Well, did I mention the Givenchy gowns? Or George Gershwin’s music?

Should you ever get jaded with the process of taking pictures, just pull out this movie and watch the sequence in Paris where Astaire snaps Hepburn in a variety of posed settings, each snap appearing immediately on the screen once taken. When the cape swirls about her head and she squeals “Take the picture. Take the picture.” you are reminded of the sheer joy and excitement of photography. Just like the time that first black and white print appeared in the developer tray in your darkroom.

Impossible to think that any self respecting photographer would not have this magnificent movie on a shelf at home.