The nightmare sequence, for which Minnelli expressly drafted Alton, is a visual tour de force; however, MGM was normally known for its polished look, so Alton invested most of the film with the light-hearted radiance of winsome, poignant comedy. Lighting setups often shifted abruptly in mid-shot, from noon to midnight or from blue to red. Having applied noir to the French Revolution in The Black Book, Alton used the style to great effect in Anthony Mann's admirable first Western, Devil's Doorway. So I lost my balance. I didn't know anything about gobos. Reflective surfaces — glass-topped tables or puddles in the street — figure prominently in T-Men, and help to make the point that the honest agents are still a gang, just like their targets. The man explained, "These are motion pictures, pictures that move." "But when I'd take most any director aside and ask him to sit down with me, he'd look at me as if I were crazy. At 18, he set sail for New York to live with a prosperous uncle, and to take up studies in photochemistry. In Combo, a deaf man being murdered sees the gunfire. That's all I did! The films weren't always that good, but the images were captivating. Quick View. The lighting was equally intricate. Albert Dekker stars in this fantastic b-movie from 1947. They called me back the next day to work. He continued to read voraciously and took up oil painting; he crafted over 100 small canvasses and then gave them all away. Alton wrote Painting with Light (1949), one of the first books written by a working studio cinematographer. Los Angeles Film Critics Association Awards, "John Alton: Cinematography's Outlier, Part One", https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=John_Alton&oldid=998034377, Best Cinematographer Academy Award winners, Wikipedia articles with SUDOC identifiers, Wikipedia articles with WORLDCATID identifiers, Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License. Film-noir has played a gigantic role in enticing Leon Lewis into studying film, and who better to write a book about than “the most influential noir cinematographer” John Alton. It was this kind of mastery that inspired writer Philip Kemp to submit that; In the case of a picture like Black Book, it's tempting to imagine Mann acting as "ground control" (managing script, actors, crew and post-production) while extreme stylists Alton and Menzies concocted their spells for the actual images. This film-noir piece, told in semi-documentary style, follows police on the hunt for a resourceful criminal who shoots and kills a cop. - John Alton No other individual defines the foreboding film style known as noir more than John Alton, the Academy Award®-winning cinematographer (An American in Paris) who established his reputation as one of the movie industry's finest by plying his unique talents in the arena of B-movies. Precise physical details, essential to any mystery story, also lend to this dramatic conflict. Though he defined and diagrammed the essentials of cinematography in his book, he remained mute as to specifically how he had achieved his signature shots. "Nobody knew it, though. I don't even know where I left the books!". Born in a castle in 1901, in a village on the Austrian border of Hungary, Alton lived to a ripe old age before dying on June 2, 1996 in Santa Monica. Perhaps it was for the best that Alton didn't get boxed into making just A-level films. Of course, the low-key acting is matched by lowkey lighting; though strict in its simplicity, Alton's lighting expresses surprising depth. In his spare time, he devoured music and books, and absorbed as much as he could of the art flourishing in museums and galleries, on movie screens, and on the streets. Despite the vast technical advances achieved within the motion picture industry much of the content is still pertinent. But Alton maintained that he, Menzies and Mann all worked as equals in a creative troika, tending their respective pastures for a common purpose. [When I first read it], I was shooting films in Chicago. He Walked by Night also helped to inspire the Dragnet television series. The initial pairing of Anthony Mann and John Alton resulted in this classic noir actioner, with a pair of dedicated Treasury agents (Dennis O'Keefe, Alfred Ryder) assigned to infiltrate a … ', "They put me in a dressing room, stuck me in a uniform, and put me next to Marion Davies, a big star at that time. In his swift lighting designs, he would establish a shot with only three lights, and then subtract one and then another. Alton next took charge of the camera department at Joinville Studios in Paris. In the March 1979 PFA calendar, filmmaker Dennis Jakob wrote, “Why do we feature John Alton? Critic Andrew Sarris called it; Bold, even lurid, in its color schemes and effects, the entire film resembles a Thirties-style pulp fiction illustration, but somehow its pyrotechnics lack the emotional punch of the cinematographer's black-and-white noirs. There's a meaning, and it establishes a mood.' In The Amazing Mr. X, Turhan Bey plays a charismatic psychic who preys on dowagers. Since 1930, Alton had been a contributor to International Photographer, so Painting was the fruition of both Alton's studio work and his journalism. Noted Alton, "The most interesting things in the world happen at night. The Scar), and Raw Deal. The primary concern of those he branded "producers who don't produce" was to ensure that all the shots were in the can. Some people knew that there was something going on [in my pictures], but not what. Read reviews and buy John Alton Film Noir Collection (Blu-ray) at Target. But the real glue that holds this set together comes from cinematographer John Alton, who photographed all three movies. Alton's influential legacy was not always so celebrated, however; in fact, his achievements nearly slipped into oblivion before being rediscovered in the past several years. Directors: Alfred L. Werker, Anthony Mann | Stars: Richard Basehart, Scott Brady, Roy Roberts, Whit Bissell. The story's wedding is all the more enchanting because it survives some harrowing detours, such as a series of unexpected late-night phone calls. Raw Deal (Anthony Mann, 1948) B lessed with D.P. Yet again, an agent infiltrates a mob. From catwalks, up high. Indeed it is in the shadowy realm of film noir that he is best known. 851968007071. He proposed such innovations as an all-purpose conglomeration of lights arranged in a circular fashion, based on an apparatus (which he dubbed a "streamlight") that he had seen at the UFA Studio in Germany. "You'd better stay here. That lucky lad was John Alton, a cinematographer whose art has been lauded at recent film festivals in Vienna, Japan, Argentina, Telluride, and San Francisco, as well as in retrospectives at the American Museum of the Moving Image and the Pacific Film Archives. These widely circulated retrospectives helped increase awareness of Alton nationwide. From the moment they "cross the line," the agents communicate only through low-key glances. Movies / TV: Suspense-Film Noir: 851968007064 "Theirs is an art of knowing what to reveal and what to conceal. John Alton Film Noir Collection available in DVD Ship This Item — Qualifies for Free Shipping Buy Online, Pick up in Store is currently unavailable, but this item may be available for in-store purchase. Schrader stressed visual style. Majestic images of man in nature, worthy of Ansel Adams, alternate with scenes so dark that at one point practically all that can be seen of Robert Taylor is his cheekbone and a glint of shirt buttons. As the story begins, worldly Claire Trevor helps her hard-case lover (Dennis O'Keefe) escape from prison. Add to Wishlist. Alton also photographed many color movies including Slightly Scarlet (a color film noir). When the article appeared, film criticism was divided largely between the schools of auteur theory and social value. John Alton, whose cinematography helped define film noir and who later shared an Academy Award for ''An American in Paris,'' died on June 2 … Three years later, the Berkeley-based Pacific Film Archives (PFA) scoured film depots and vaults for rare prints of the lesser-known films Alton had made at such long-defunct studios as Eagle-Lion, Monogram and Republic, and booked them with his more famous noirs. ... Film Noir … During the rest of the Fifties, Alton averaged about three pictures a year, and he even tried his hand at 3-D filmmaking. The mood had to be done with lighting. The narrative revelation of Gantry's worthlessness is underscored through "concealed lighting." Reviews. Though their attempts to interview him were thwarted (unbeknownst to Alton), the finished film — which included many striking examples of his work — lured the great cameraman out of his long exile. Alton admitted, "When I got an assignment, I read the script — or the book and the script — and then I went out to the art museums, even to Paris sometimes, to see what the masters had done. I didn't realize that the big-time cameramen spent as much time taking things off as they did putting them on. Add to Wishlist. These films were offbeat dramas in which dark and light, good and evil, were touched by the finger of Fate and switched roles. Whereas Alton previously had to justify this "expressionistic chiaroscuro" to producers, his work on T-Men went over like gangbusters with the public, who flocked to the film in droves. I wanted to give them quality. So when the time came for shooting, I was ready. Get it today with Same Day Delivery, Order Pickup or Drive Up. In this case, the criminals are French Revolutionaries engaged in a plot to replace Robespierre with a more politically moderate candidate. He also advanced the somewhat controversial idea of obtaining depth by placing the brightest light in the background, farthest from the camera. He'd say, 'I've never sat down with a cameraman to talk about these things. Of particular interest to lighting buffs are the seance scenes lit by a crystal ball — which even include shots from the ball's perspective. As he himself once noted; After T-Men, Alton lent his touch to a dozen more pictures which, as a body of work, formed the apotheosis of the film noir style. The very term "film noir" was, in fact, an afterthought — a French term derived from the expression "roman noir" ("dark novel") which describes English Gothic fiction of the 19th Century. They noticed that one scene was like this, one scene was like that. He moved to France with Ernst Lubitsch to film backgrounds for The Student Prince in Old Heidelberg (1927) and ended up staying for one year heading the camera department of Paramount Pictures's Joinville Studios. John Alton Film Noir Collection (T-Men / Raw Deal / He Walked by Night) - The ClassicFlix Restorations on Blu-ray In an effort to avoid paying Joe the $50,000 he owes him, Coyle arranges an escape in the hopes the con will be killed in the break-out. He was soon trekking across Europe and Asia, where he shot short subjects and foreign-language features. Alton photographed some of the most famous films noir of the classic period. The scene seems routine until one notices a small statuette of Abraham Lincoln that casts an exaggerated, ink-black shadow; the shadow undercut the traditional centrality of the speaking figure, and also provided a visual pun, implying that government agents were "shadowing" mobsters. Thus began a collaboration that would define a high-water mark of pictorial storytelling; Alton and Mann worked together like guns and ammo. Write a Review (0 reviews) Write a review and get bonus points. Over the years, he remained a figure of mystery, even when critical recognition finally began to come his way. In 1972, director Paul Schrader critically championed the form in his essay "Notes on Film Noir" in Film Comment. It doesn't make any difference if that figure talks or sings; it's still a picture, and the picture will always be the basis of the movies. "Naturalism," or "realism," refers to an experience such as a walk on foggy night that fills one with a certain sense of awe. As a cameraman, Alton preferred to plan his shots so that they would convey a film's shifting moods. He had already resigned from the ASC in 1944. Votes: 5,074 Comparing him to such predecessors as Fritz Arno Wagner and Karl Freund, ASC; Schrader observed that Alton transformed Expressionist techniques to a new generation that craved realism. [2] He moved to France with Ernst Lubitsch to film backgrounds for The Student Prince in Old Heidelberg (1927) and ended up staying for one year heading the camera department of Paramount Pictures's Joinville Studios. John Alton’s Wellesian deep focus and chiaroscuro lighting, which create a fraught tension between foreground and background planes, Anthony Mann’s Raw Deal is the apex of noir style, offering up electric visions of sin, salvation, and sexual mania. Studios ], but the real glue that holds this set together comes from John! From active work in the 1920s, later becoming a cameraman the.. 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