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.

                                 

Connquering Your Inner Demons

Birdman (or The Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance), the latest film from director Alejandro González Iñárritu, is for anyone who's had to to tackle their inner demons at one point or another in their life (I think that includes just about everybody). At times very funny, at times introspective, the film features an excellent screenplay, first-rate work by the entire ensemble cast as well as imaginative and remarkable direction and cinematography. It's as original a film as I've seen in some time.

The film deals with an actor, Riggan Thompson (Michael Keaton), who is looking to shed his super-hero film image (he was the fictional Birdman in several films more than a decade before this story begins) and take on the Broadway stage. He's adapted a short story by Raymond Carver and is starring and directing in it as well. I love the way the story opens in media res, as we see him in his tiny dressing room, trying to sort out the craziness of a rehearsal, balancing his time and efforts among the other performers as well as his press agent Jake (Zach Galifianikis, in a nicely tuned low-key performance). Even now with his dream project about to take off, reporters still want to ask him about his Birdman days, though Thompson clearly wants to rid his psyche of that period in his life.

The rehearsal and prevue performances are wonderfully handled in a very matter-of-fact style by Iñárritu. His camera tracks and flows across the stage and through the tiny corridors of the theater passageways, giving us a personal feel to what's going on, both for the audience as well as in Thompson's mind. That remarkable camerawork is that of Emmanuel Lubezki, who is one of today's most gifted and imaginative cinematographers (Gravity, The Tree of Life, Children of Men). 

The film is presented as one long take and unless you are properly trained in this, it's very difficult to see any cuts (I only noticed two and hard to look hard for them). The setups for each sequence must have been incredibly painstaking, but the results are spectacular. There's one sequence on stage where we follow Thompson, who walks downstage to address the audience; at the same time his wife in the play is in bed with someone else. The camera moves with Thompson, but effortlessly and without a cut, the next moment, the camera is under the sheets, hovering over the characters in bed. It's just one example of the work turned in by Lubezki on this film; it's not simply a bag of tricks, it's innovative work that seems natural and heightens the emotional turmoil of Thompson's character.

There are several excellent performances, most notably Edward Norton playing a vain, eccentric actor (a parody to some extent of his real-life persona?) and Naomi Watts, as a actress with a sweet naiveté about the acting business; this is among her finest performances. But the star here (literally and figuratively) is Keaton as Riggan Thompson. He just can't seem to get the past out of his mind; indeed we hear the voice of the Birdman character several times in the film telling Riggan that he's a bit crazy to take on his new endeavor, especially given the fact that he's still well recognized for his superhero film roles. Keaton has a balancing act in the film, moving back and forth between the present and the past, trying to convince himself that he's not entirely crazy, and yes, he is a good man who just happened to make a few mistakes along the way in regards to his daughter and wife. It's a roller coster ride of emotions and Keaton delivers in brilliant fashion.

Without giving away too much of the last section of the film, Birdman poses the belief that you can conquer your demons by literally soaring above your problems. It's a message that resonated with me and made this a memorable work. It's the best film for Iñárritu since his captivating Amores Perros (2000). Highly recommended!

The Artistry of Roger Deakins

The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford (2007)

Roger Deakins, Director of Photography

In my recent post on the Coen brothers' True Grit, I asked the question "Is there a more accomplished cinematographer working today?"I then went on to note the low light photography Deakins employed for this story and his desaturation of color in the outdoor scenes that perfectly suits the film's mood.

I also predicted Deakins would receive an Academy Award nomination for his work on True Grit; while hardly a bold estimate on my part, this has happened, making this his ninth Oscar nomination. He also received a nomination for his work on this film from the American Society of Cinematographers; he is one of five up for the society's Outstanding Achievement Award for the past year's films. He has won this award twice in the past for The Shawshank Redemption (1994) and The Man Who Wasn't There (2001). In February, he will be honored by the ASC with their lifetime achievement award.

Think about the films on which Deakins has been employed as Director of Photography and you can't help but recall the amazing visuals. A short list includes several remarkable movies from the Coens, including No Country for Old Men (2007) and 2000's O Brother, Where Art Thou? (he has been the regular cinematographer for the Coens since 1991's Barton Fink) as well as work for other directors including The Shawshank Redemption (1994 for Frank Darabont); Kundun (1997 for Martin Scorsese); A Beautiful Mind (2001 for Ron Howard) and Revolutionary Road (2008 for Sam Mendes).

No Country For Old Men

I've always been interested in cinematography and how these craftsmen work; I am a still photographer and have always been fascinated by visuals. I thought about attending film school at a prestigious university when I was young, but nothing ever came of it. So my expertise on cinematography is somewhat limited, as I have to rely on how the visual look of a film affects the way I react to it. As you would imagine, that reaction is quite strong; only music can match those emotions for me in movies.

Take a look at the image at the beginning of this post, for example. Could this image of Jesse James (Brad Pitt) be more iconic? We know of the near mythical accounts of James' life and instantly, we are given that identity in this one shot. Look at how James in his dark outfit stands tall against the muted browns and greens with an ominous, cloud-filled sky overhead (desaturation is a common visual in Deakins' works - it is on display throughout True Grit). It is as though this man is one against nature, a man who literally rises above nature, giving him a timeless quality, one that defined this man's actions against society. Clearly this image takes what we know about Jesse James and then surpasses those sensations.

Lest you think I am giving Deakins more credit than he deserves when I discuss this particular (or other images in his portfolio) as compared to the film's director, consider this excerpt from an article in the  January, 2011 issue of American Cinematographer magazine:

He (Deakins) has repeatedly stated that composition is the most critical part of the cinematographer’s job. “It’s much more important than lighting,” he toldAC. “The balance of the frame — the way an actor is relating to the space in the frame — is the most important factor in helping the audience feel what the character is thinking.”


This article is an excellent overview of Deakins' experiences as well as how he goes about his craft. I recommend it wholeheartedly; it can be found at this link.

Low light photography is a feature of much of Deakins' work; this is of course, in keeping with the themes explored by the Coens in films such as Barton Fink or True Grit or by Andrew Dominik in The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford (2007). The above photo, from this last film, is part of a brilliantly lit and photographed train robbery sequence that is among the finest moments of Deakins' resumé. You don't have to know exactly how he did it (he used a number of techniques to make the train and surrounding landscape appear brighter than they were during the actual shoot), but it is a mesmerizing visual moment that heightens the drama. While Deakins may have a few tricks up his sleeve (like any accomplished cinematographer), he uses them to aide the look and feel of the film and not to draw attention to his own talent.

Not every film Deakins has worked on has featured low light photography. Look at the above image from Revolutionary Road and note how he has used natural light in this shot (even going so far as to show two unlit overhead kitchen fixtures). Here the bright, sunny hues of this scene serve as an ironic counterpoint to the ever increasing marital problems of the main couple. It's a completely natural look and it's what director Sam Mendes wanted and what Deakins delivered.

For several years now, Deakins has authored his own blog, answering questions (often very technically oriented) about what sort of lens or light he used to achieve an image. Sometimes the answers are less technical, leaning toward his philosophy of lighting and framing a scene. Here is one of my favorite quotes from Deakins, in reply to a budding cinematographer asking him for advice:

"Study light and color - every painting, photograph, and film scene that makes you feel "I want to do that" - figure out how you might replicate it - not just light, but overall tone, saturation, color, and even composition. Look for the meaning or metaphor, look for the "story" in every scene - learn to think like an artist AND a technician."


The Roger Deakins forum can be found at this link. It's a fascinating site, especially for anyone interested in cinematography and Deakins is happy to share some of his secrets (he reveals, for instance, that the memorable scene of Rooster Cogburn giving Mattie a horseback ride under a star-lit sky in True Grit was so difficult to film that it had to be filmed both outdoors as well as on an indoor stage, using a green screen for certain closeups.)

Roger Deakins

Deakins' work has truly been among the very best in films over the past 25 years; I've written about a few of my favorites in this post, but there are many more I simply don't have room to mention, such as the marvelous tonal range of The Shawshank Redemption (various hues of blue, gray and brown) and the stunning black and white photography of The Man Who Wasn't There, which in reality was shot on color film and then printed on black and white stock.

Congratulations, Roger on your Lifetime Achievement Award from the American Society of Cinematographers - well deserved! Now wouldn't it be something if the Academy Awards finally recognized him with an Oscar for his sublime work this past year on True Grit?

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.