Haskell Wexler, R.I.P.

Haskell Wexler (1922-2015)

Photo ©Tom Hyland

Haskell Wexler, one of the 20th century's most talented and influential cinematographers, passed away on Monday at the age of 93. His son Jeff, told CNN that his father died peacefully in his sleep.

I met Wexler once, at a special evening at the Chicago International Film Festival in 2011; I wrote about that memorable occasion in this post. At 89, Wexler was engaging, direct and humorous; let's hope we're all that lively if and when we get to that age.

I've always been someone attracted to visuals; it's this sensation that gives a sense of wonder and magic to films, in my opinion. When a director of photography can create the proper mood with lighting as well as depth of field (no matter how shallow or deep) it adds to the emotional power of the movie. I can list numerous examples, but few accomplished this feat as well as Wexler.

He started out working on documentary films in the 1950s, eventually finding success in Hollywood, with one of his first notable accomplishments being the cinematographer for Elia Kazan's America America in 1963. It was only a few years later in 1966 that Wexler's work would be honored for his black and white photography for Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf, directed by Mike Nichols. While Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton delivered searing performances, and Nichols directed with great urgency, it is impossible not to credit Wexler's work as any less important in this marvelous film. At times gritty, at times dreamy, at times stark, but always beautifully honest, Wexler's photography perfectly captured the raw nature of this work; he justly received an Academy Award for his contribution.

Wexler would work in color for most of his career; I especially loved his efforts on In the Heat of the Night (1967), directed by Norman Jewison. This particular scene, pictured above, has always been one of my favorites as far as photography, as the colors here are relatively cool, lending a tranquil setting to this moment. This serenity will soon be at odds with the characters in this scene, as Sidney Poitier, the detective, slaps the elderly gentleman for his bold statements; it's a jarring moment, one about racism that doesn't scream as such, thanks in large part to Jewison's staging as well as Wexler's lighting.

Wexler would win a second Academy Award for his color photography on Bound For Glory (1976), director Hal Ashby's at times laid back, at times stirring tribute to folksinger and activist Woody Guthrie. The setting of this film is the depression of the 1930s, and the spirit of the film owes much to John Steinbeck's The Grapes of Wrath, especially in the desolation of the land as well as the honesty and good spirit of the impoverished farmers and their families as they struggle with their everyday fate. The visuals are stunning, from a recreation of an apocalyptic dust storm that fills the screen to several scenes of Guthrie and others riding on top of trains, often to hide from the authorities. The color pallete that Wexler worked with in this film was based on earth tones, with dark browns and muted yellows; you feel at once transported to that era and its forlorn realization. 

Wexler would use Steadicam, invented by Garrett Brown, in this film for a scene in a labor camp; it is a tracking shot that lasts about three minutes, taking Guthrie (and the viewer) through a heartbreaking tour of the conditions the migrant workers must endure. While Steadicam is a mainstay in filmmaking these days, be it a multi-million dollar epic or a moderate budget independent production, this use in Bound For Glory was the very first in a Hollywood film. 

I was so impressed with Wexler's images in Bound For Glory that I wrote a separate post about it a few years ago (link here). Roger Ebert also pad tribute to Wexler's work on this film when he wrote, "there are images in Hal Ashby's Bound For Glory so striking or so beautiful I doubt I'll ever forget them." (Ebert's full review can be found here.)

Haskell Wexler was also a director, most notably on Medium Cool (1969), a documentary about the turmoil in the streets of Chicago during the troubled 1968 Democratic National Convention. This was his most successful film as helmsman; he would also become involved in Latin American politics with documentaries such as Brazil: A Report on Torture (1971) and Latino (1985). Activism was part of his DNA; Wexler would also direct films about the Occupy protests in 2011 in both Los Angeles and Chicago (his hometown); he was also instrumental in changing work laws in Hollywood after a fellow director of photography fell asleep while driving home after a 20-hour day on the set. Wexler's 2006 film Who Needs Sleep? would tell the story of his colleague.

While I was continually impressed by Haskell Wexler's work behind the camera, I was also fascinated by the man. A striking portrait of the man emerged in the film Tell Them Who You Are (2004), directed by his son Mark; here was a riveting look at how Haskell carried himself in his everyday existence, perfecting his craft, but also looking out to make the world a better place. His socialist politics were at odds with his son, giving this film an unforgettable human element, but it is the elder Wexler's strong personality and unshakeable belief in justice for all that stayed with me as I watched this film.

Yes, I'll always remember Haskell Wexler for the images he created on screen, but his faith in his fellow man will also stir my memories of this remarkable individual.

                                 

An Evening with Haskell Wexler - Chicago International Film Festival

Haskell Wexler (Photo ©Tom Hyland)

It isn't often one gets to meet a legend, but that's exactly what took place when I joined several dozen other cinema enthusiasts at the Chicago International Film Festival this past Thursday, as we gathered to listen to Haskell Wexler talk about his lengthy career in film. 

For those readers not familiar with his name, Wexler has made a name for himself first and foremost as one of the greatest cinematographers to ever work in Hollywood. A two-time Academy Award winner (Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf, 1966 and Bound For Glory, 1976), he was named as one of the ten most influential cinematographers of all time by the members of the International Cinematographers Guild. Wexler has also made a name for himself as a director, most notably for Medium Cool, shot during the riots at the 1968 Democratic Convention in Chicago. Finally, he has been a political acitivist for decades, rallying out against government policies he believed were wrong. 

Wexler was born in Chicago in 1922, so this was a fitting return home for this great craftsman. The audience consisted of film lovers such as I who have followed his work for decades as well as many beginning filmmakers from nearby Columbia College; these students in their 20s, know Wexler from his work, but are too young to recall the times in which he embraced his craft. Wexler also acknowledged a few in the crowd from Francis Parker school, which he attended as a teen.

The evening stated with a montage of film clips, from a little seen documentary called The Bus, about the 1963 civil rights march on Washington, D.C to One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest (he shot most of the film, but was replaced before completion) to Latino, a 1985 film he directed. Several other short film clips were also shown at various moments, interspersed with Wexler's responses to questions from the audience.

One audience member asked Wexler if he preferred working on feature films or documentaries. While he replied that it all depended on the project, he did say that "With a documentary, you are closer to being its creator." This immediately led into his thoughts on the current protests being held in several cities across the country (Occupy Wall Street). "Why do we live in a sense of denial? We don't want to respond to things." Wexler mentioned "the human connection," adding, "We all want the same things and we are human."

The Thomas Crown Affair

Wexler talked about specific technique in his films, from the camera spinning around Steve McQueen and Faye Dunaway after the chess game in The Thomas Crown Affair (the camera was on a circular track that ringed the two actors) to photographing Liz Taylor in Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf ("I made Liz Taylor look pretty good for the part.") to his use of the Steadicam in 1976s Bound for Glory, which was the first ever implementation of that technology in a feature film.

He also recalled some wonderful stories about Hollywood. When he won his first Oscar for Virginia Woolf, he thought to himself as he was walking to the stage that this might be the only time he could speak to millions of people. This was in the spring of 1967 as the hippie movement and anti Vietnam war protests were just starting to make their marks. Wexler in his acceptance speech said, "I hope we can use our art for peace and love." Sounds innocent enough, but he mentioned that soon afterwards, several members of the Academy asked him why he used those "revolutionary" words at the ceremony. Apparently, Wexler opined, those two words are dangerous to a lot of people!

He also told the story of how actress Louise Fletcher on the set of Cuckoo's Nest, wanted to know why Haskell had talked about "her fat face." Wexler was puzzled and told Fletcher that he had never said "her fat face" and besides, how could she hear him as he was across the set at the time, speaking quietly to an assistant.

"I read lips," was Fletcher's response; indeed she does as her parents were both deaf (upon winning the Oscar as Best Actress for this film, she thanked her parents in sign language). Wexler told her, "I said 'your flat face.'", a reference to flat lighting, when all of her face is equally lit. This story brought down the house!

Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf

At 89, Haskell Wexler is full of life, humor, wit and plenty of opinions. Toward the end of the evening, one young filmmaking student asked him what advice he would give to someone who is getting started in the business. Wexler first told him that he should have another source of income, but then gave a more direct answer, saying, "You have to have a life. Don't just watch other people's movies and television shows." He also told the students that at the end of the day, this is a business. "You have to shoot what they tell you to shoot." He added one final point; "Good shooters just don't go out and get what they want. I want what I get."

One final insight into Haskell Wexler's life from this wonderful evening. Commenting on his outspoken political beliefs as well as his choice of films on which he has worked, he commented, "I don't really know my motives. Sometimes I blame it on my mother. My mother told me to be a nice guy."

The Visual Power of "Bound For Glory"

Hal Ashby’s Bound for Glory (1976) could have been alternatively titled Bound for Greatness, given the excellence of its storytelling and the power of its images in its first hour and a half. Despite losing strength in the latter stages of the film when it focuses more on standard biopic situations, the film has a raw beauty that sets it apart from most other historical biographies of that decade or since.

Clearly inspired by John Ford’s stellar adaptation of The Grapes of Wrath (1940), Ashby borrows certain images (the flimsy trucks overloaded with chairs and blankets, the unsightly labor camps) to tell the story of famed folk singer Woody Guthrie as he migrates from Texas to California in Depression era 1936. Certainly the subject matter almost demands these comparisons, yet Ashby and his brilliant cinematographer Haskell Wexler combine to present a singular, powerful, stunning visual approach.

As might be expected, earth tones dominate the color pallete of this film; browns, dull yellows and muddled reds are a constant reminder of the harshness of Texas and the California landscapes. Most of the colors are desaturated and the haze of unbearably hot afternoons is highlighted. The sky in the early scenes in Texas is never blue, but rather a washed out whitish yellow. At one point, Woody makes his way home through a massive dust storm in his home town of Pampa and the screen is dominated by flashes of yellow, pale blue and grays, giving the town an eerie, desolate look (the dust storm is one of the film's most powerful images and is the work of special visual effects genius Albert Whitlock). When Woody next enters the barber shop and has to wipe dust off one of the chairs, it’s a nice touch that tells us that the barber (and many of the townspeople) have given up.

It is in the following scenes as Woody leaves his family to head to California that Ashby's and Wexler’s visuals truly take over, elevating this film to another level. Soon after he catches a ride out of town, we see him trying to hitchhike on the open highway. One beautiful image occurs after a chair falls off a passing truck. We then immediately see Woody in an extreme long shot sitting in that chair on the side of the road, playing his harmonica. There are no cars, no other humans, not even any birds in the shot. It’s a nice visual that emphasizes the loneliness of his journey.



Woody then meets up with a few vagrants who are waiting in the weeds, trying to catch a freight train. During his journey, he meets up with one particular vagrant named Slim and we follow their journey riding the rails. There is one spectacular shot in which the camera is mounted on top of the train as we see Woody and Slim sitting on top of a boxcar as the scenery passes by in the background. It’s a single shot that last for just over two and a half minutes and it’s dazzling not only for its unusual view of these two atop the train, but also for its simplicity. The shot lasts long enough for the train to pass through a tunnel, so that little by little the screen becomes black. Our eyes follows the light in the frame as it becomes smaller and smaller until it disappears and there is only black. But then immediately, the screen is light again as the train reemerges from the tunnel. I don’t know if Wexler planned for this visual trick of watching the light shape become smaller and smaller (as the train is gently rounding a curve, the light moves from the front left of the screen to the rear right), but I’m taken in by this image every time I watch this particular scene.

Bound for Glory is also the film credited with the first use of Steadicam, invented by Garrett Brown. This particular shot has the cameraman tracking Woody as he walks throught the migrant camp one morning as the laborers wait to hear if they will be chosen for work that day. Lasting just over two minutes, the shot has a dreamy, mysterious quality to it and while many directors have used Stedicam in the thirty-plus years since this film, it’s difficult to imagine a more beautifully filmed scene.

Throughout the film, there are images worthy of a great landscape painter. There’s one of Woody sleeping by the side of a road as a car winds by and later there’s a shot of Woody and his musician/labor organizer friend Ozark Bule performing a song amidst fields where laborers are harvesting and their children play. We see the children in the foreground of the shot and their parents hard at work in the distant foreground, as the formal geometry of the rows of crops isolates the workers.

The last 40 minutes of the film deals with the turmoil Woody faces once he agrees to appear in various radio programs. As he is becoming more outspoken in his feelings of sympathy for the migrants and urges them to form unions, his reputation as an activist spreads, worrying the sponsors of his program. He must give the station manager a list of approved songs and this situation drives much of the last part of the film. It’s definitely an important conflict in Woody’s life, but it pales in importance to the struggles of Woody and others getting to California and then finding work once they arrive.

The scenes set at the radio station clearly do not have the visual power of the ones set on the road to California. But there is still one powerful sequence left, as Woody, fed up with his predicament in the studio, decides to get back on the rails so he can touch the people. As he boards a freight train, he stands up in an empty boxcar, silhouetted against the setting sun behind him. It’s clearly a mythic image, but one that is appropriate at this moment.

The scene that follows is quite haunting, as he sings his protest song, “Pastures of Plenty” to a group of migrants who are standing in the rain, if only to be close to this man, whom many now consider something of a savior. As Ashby pans the camera off of Woody we see the quiet, solemn faces of the workers, whose hats and bonnets are misshapen by the rain. One woman holds a washbasin upside down over her head to fend off the precipitation. It’s a brief, but memorable visual.

What we are left with then is a film that captures greatness for much of its running time. If Bound for Glory is not quite the masterpiece it might have been, it is stirring evidence of the compelling nature of the power of images. Certainly Haskell Wexler had much to do with that; he not only won an Oscar for his cinematography here, but was also given the first screen credit of the film. Ashby and he realized what the visuals could bring to this story and succeeded magnificently in making this film a remarkable experience.