Jack Cardiff, cinematographer
b. 18/9/1914; d. 22/4/2009
“Vicky Page is unable to dance tonight, or any other night,” Anton Walbrook announces emotionally at the end of The Red Shoes (1948). Nor will the film’s veteran cinematographer, Jack Cardiff, who died at the age of 94. Astonishingly this was only his third feature as lighting cameraman, after Michael Powell had plucked him from second-unit obscurity to shoot A Matter of Life and Death in 1946, which led on to an Oscar for Black Narcissus (1947).
The following decade would see Cardiff work with many of the world’s greatest directors in dizzying succession, creating images in sumptuous, tactile Technicolor that have proved among the most durable in cinema’s fragile history. A new restoration of The Red Shoes premiered in Cannes in 2009, funded through Martin Scorsese’s World Cinema Foundation, and there’s little doubt that most of the audience will once again succumb to its spell. Jack claimed that much of his inspiration came from looking at paintings, and denied any technical wizardry. But the evidence of a lifetime’s creativity, which included some fine direction and superb portrait photography, suggests otherwise. He was a master, whose engaging modesty in his autobiography Magic Hour and numerous appearances drew many towards the classic cinema that he helped create.
Ian Christie
(First published in adapted form in Sight & Sound June 2009)
The Red Shoes