Visions of Light: : The Art of Cinematography (1992)
Grade: 50
"Vision of Light" is a documentary about cinematography. It is well conceived and executed. Many appropriate clips from important and innovative films are shown. There are interviews with many of Hollywood's best cameramen. Different techniques are described and demonstrated. Certainly the documentary is interesting and educational.
Cameramen see films differently than the rest of us. I have seen "Sunrise" (1927) and didn't particularly like the movie, due mostly to direction and character development. But in this documentary, "Sunrise" is a cinema classic, due to its innovative cinematography. Many people could find "Eraserhead" (1976), directed by David Lynch, to be an unwatchable film (admittedly I haven't seen it). >From a cameraman's perspective, however, it is a great project because of the freedom to use bizarre camera techniques. One cameraman says that he would walk out of any movie that consistently uses a certain camera technique, as if the rest of the movie elements aren't relevant.
The advent of sound in the late twenties is treated as a disaster. This reduced the importance of camerawork, and the actors were restricted to the range of their microphones, causing a lot of fixed shots. Advantages of sound, such as naturalistic acting and much deeper dialogue, are ignored because it's not cinematography.
The decline of black and White films is also considered a tragedy. Black and White is a perfect medium for lighting contrasts, which convey mood. The great movies of the 1940s, from "Rebecca" to "The Third Man", would have a different feel had they been filmed in color.
Still, I didn't connect with the documentary. Perhaps I downgrade the importance of cinematography, in favor of script, plot and characters. Some movies, like "2001: A Space Odyssey," have little script and rely almost completely upon visuals to tell the story. "2001" is a great movie, but it isn't covered here, only a clip is shown at the end without narration. Other Kubrick projects, such as "Barry Lyndon" which only used natural lighting, and "A Clockwork Orange" are ignored altogether. Also ignored are Sergio Leone's great spaghetti westerns of the 1960s. Of course, in a 90 minute documentary, only so much territory can be covered.
http://members.tripod.com/~Brian_Koller/movies.html
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