{"id":112114,"date":"2016-01-05T07:21:06","date_gmt":"2016-01-05T12:21:06","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/?p=112114"},"modified":"2016-01-05T07:45:42","modified_gmt":"2016-01-05T12:45:42","slug":"r-i-p-vilmos-zsigmond-part-ii","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/?p=112114","title":{"rendered":"R.I.P. Vilmos Zsigmond, Part II"},"content":{"rendered":"

Glenn Kenny has a beautiful tribute to the work of this legendary cinematographer<\/a>. Zsigmond not only worked in a flexible way, adjusting his style to the material, he was a personal artist: he shared with us how he saw the world, how much he understood light and what light meant to any given atmosphere (so many people take light for granted), and his ability to morph into the mindset of the director and the story. <\/p>\n

American cinema of the 1970s, with its influential and distinctive diversity of style, helmed by exciting new directors like Hal Ashby, Brian De Palma, Robert Altman, John Boorman, Michael Cimino, Steven Spielberg, was helped along in the look\/feel of the images by two emigre cinematographers, Vilmos Zsigmond and L\u00e1szl\u00f3 Kov\u00e1cs. Both hailed from Hungary. They were friends. The Russians rolled into Budapest in 1956 to crush the revolution against Soviet rule: it was a brutal crackdown, enraging other nation-members of the USSR who thought the the USSR was way out of line. (The crackdown enraged the world, who looked on helplessly. Elvis dedicated his performance of “Peace in the Valley,” in his final appearance on the Ed Sullivan Show<\/i> in 1957 to the people in Hungary, calling for Americans to make donations in support of the Hungarian people. Ed Sullivan listed the address to send donations, and millions of dollars poured in. Recently, because of that support 50 years ago, a park in Budapest was named for Elvis, and he was also granted posthumous Hungarian citizenship<\/a>. Like I keep saying, stating the obvious, Elvis is everywhere<\/a>), Kov\u00e1cs and Zsigmond, two cinematographers, roamed the streets, filming the violent crackdown with an Arriflex camera and the last of their 35-mm film. They smuggled the footage out of the country (footage which would soon be seen around the world, and is still part of our collective – or it should be – understanding of that crackdown). Kov\u00e1cs and Zsigmond transported their footage by train as far as they could go, then jumped off, and walked into Austria on foot. Eventually, they moved to America. They both got their start shooting biker pictures for Roger Corman (an unofficial film school for so many people). A documentary was made about their friendship, and my friend Matt Zoller Seitz reviewed it for The New York Times<\/i>.<\/a><\/p>\n

So let’s rack up the major projects shot by these two emigre-cinematographers from Hungary. <\/p>\n

And let’s take particular note of the fact that they continued working on major projects even after the heyday of the 1970s subsided. And their style adjusted to the story. THIS is artistry, as well as professionalism. Style is sometimes obvious, and style is sometimes invisible, but no less valuable to the story.<\/p>\n

L\u00e1szl\u00f3 Kov\u00e1cs<\/b>
\nEasy Rider<\/i>
\nFive Easy Pieces<\/i>
\nThe Last Movie<\/i>
\nWhat’s Up, Doc?<\/i>
\nThe King of Marvin Gardens<\/i>
\nPaper Moon<\/i>
\nShampoo<\/i>
\nNew York, New York<\/i>
\nParadise Alley<\/i>
\nFrances<\/i>
\nGhostbusters<\/i>
\nMask<\/i>
\nSay Anything<\/i>
\nMy Best Friend’s Wedding<\/i>
\nMiss Congeniality<\/i><\/p>\n

Extraordinary. <\/p>\n

L\u00e1szl\u00f3 Kov\u00e1cs died in 2007.<\/a><\/p>\n

Vilmos Zsigmond<\/b>
\nMcCabe & Mrs. Miller<\/i>
\nDeliverance<\/i>
\nThe Long Goodbye<\/i>
\nScarecrow<\/i>
\nThe Sugarland Express<\/i>
\nClose Encounters of the Third Kind<\/i>
\nThe Deer Hunter<\/i>
\nThe Rose<\/i>
\nHeaven’ Gate<\/i>
\nBlow Out<\/i>
\nReal Genius<\/i>
\nThe Witches of Eastwick<\/i>
\nThe Bonfire of the Vanities<\/i>
\nJersey Girl<\/i>
\nMelinda and Melinda<\/i>
\nBlack Dahlia<\/i>
\nCassandra’s Dream<\/i><\/p>\n

Again: extraordinary.<\/p>\n

Here’s an interesting 1980 Rolling Stone<\/i> interview with Vilmos Zsigmond<\/a>, after he finished shooting the wildly out-of-control ambitious Michael Cimino film of Heaven’s Gate<\/i> (a movie shoot so out-of-control that it brought down one of the oldest production companies in America, United Artists, so out-of-control that an entire book was written about it.) <\/p>\n

One of Vilmos Zsigmond’s last films was Six Dance Lessons in Six Weeks<\/i> (2014), starring Gena Rowlands as an old lady who decides to take dance lessons and realizes that she had given up on having new experiences, and starts to live a bit more adventurously. It’s not a very good film, mainly because the script had not been sufficiently adapted from the theatre-script, but Rowlands is great in it (and it’s fun to see Rita Moreno too as Rowlands’ nosy downstairs neighbor in their Palm Beach old folks’ condo-complex.) The film was clearly shot on a relatively low budget. It takes place mostly in interiors, showing its roots as a theatre production, and it’s pretty uninteresting in terms of the visuals, not a lot of flourishes with the camera. Scenes have a dead quality. I went to a SAG screening of the film, with a QA with Rowlands afterwards<\/a>. They filmed the entire thing in Hungary even though it takes place in Florida (hence, all the interiors), so they needed to light those scenes as THOUGH the rooms looked out on the beach with all that free-wheeling ocean light. There is one scene (and it’s worth it to see the film just for this moment), where Gena Rowlands’ character, an old lady who thought she was done with life, or at least done with new things, sits in a chair in her condo and stares out at the burgeoning red\/gold\/purple of the sunrise. She is so relaxed, so peaceful, and filled with thought, feelings you can’t name. It’s one of the few moments of pure silence in the film, justified just by the fact that we always want to have the time to watch Gena Rowlands thinking about things. <\/p>\n

But part of the magic is how Zsigmond filmed it, and the glow of the light on her face, intense and deep rich golden, the warmth of it, in the moment you can actually feel<\/i> the warmth. I went into the film not knowing anything about the shoot itself, and when it was revealed that they filmed the whole thing in Hungary, that that light was not natural but created in the studio, I was frankly shocked, thinking back to that scene of the light on Rowlands’ face. I didn’t know Six Dance Lessons in Six Weeks<\/i> was filmed in Hungary and I never would have known, because of that LIGHT. I looked for a screenshot of the moment but of course one doesn’t exist because no one saw the movie. <\/p>\n

Zsigmond was working with such artistry even on second-rate material because that’s who he was as a cinematographer. <\/p>\n

Also he’s the kind of guy who knew he had to do right by Gena. And he did.<\/p>\n

R.I.P. to one of the all-time greats. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Glenn Kenny has a beautiful tribute to the work of this legendary cinematographer. Zsigmond not only worked in a flexible way, adjusting his style to the material, he was a personal artist: he shared with us how he saw the … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[4,23],"tags":[2095,195],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/112114"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=112114"}],"version-history":[{"count":14,"href":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/112114\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":112128,"href":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/112114\/revisions\/112128"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=112114"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=112114"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=112114"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}