CINEMATOGRAPHER SHOT RED SHOES
Jack Cardiff, painter, cinematographer, and director, has passed away at the age of 94. Cardiff was the cinematographer on Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger's The Red Shoes, a film that has had a significant influence on Brian De Palma. Cardiff also shot Alfred Hitchcock's Under Capricorn, and several other Powell/Pressburger films, among many many others. An obituary from the BBC discusses the painterly eye Cardiff brought to his film work:
He was a painter himself, and portraits of some of the actors with whom he worked have been exhibited.
In Michael Powell's The Red Shoes, the 18-minute dance sequence by Moira Shearer, filmed by Cardiff, was described by Martin Scorsese as "a moving painting".
"Michael was a great man to work with," Powell once said. "I was the sort of person to suggest a lot of crazy ideas, and he took them seriously."
He worked on another Powell classic, A Matter of Life and Death.