`Visions Of Light': A Documentary Revel In Cinematography

Just when you think there's nothing new under the movie sun, along comes an eye-opener like "Visions of Light: The Art of Cinematography."

If you're a film buff, of course, you're familiar with most of what's in this movie: the trippy night-combat sequence in "Apocalypse Now," the dreamy opening of "Blue Velvet," the personalized view of the Crucifixion in "The Last Temptation of Christ," the pastoral "magic hour" scenes in "Days of Heaven."

But it's the purpose of "Visions of Light" to make us take another look, nudged along by interviews with the people who shot these films. The 90-minute documentary, which opens tomorrow at the Neptune, is likely to be a revelation even for those who think they understand the collaborative process of creating a feature-length narrative.

"We hope it makes you look at films in a new way," said the movie's writer and co-director, Todd McCarthy, speaking by phone from his office at Variety. As the show-biz newspaper's chief film critic, he's covered movies and filmmakers for years, but researching this project surprised him.

"I've done hundreds of interviews with film people over the years, but I found that as a group cinematographers were the most articulate about their work, film history, the work of the great veterans and their influence. And they were up on contemporary films as well. They're able to speak so well about their work and illuminate the job of the director."

He was especially impressed with Vittorio Storaro, who filmed a two-hour interview discussing his work with Bernardo Bertolucci and Francis Ford Coppola, and Nestor Almendros, "who gave just a brilliant history of the cinema." Almendros, who won an Oscar for "Days of Heaven," died last year. "Visions of Light" is dedicated to him.

"The sad part of this is that by rights this film should have been made 10 or 15 years ago, when the pioneers were still alive," said McCarthy. "Many of them lived long lives. This is not a sedentary job. You have to keep up and keep thinking, being inventive and creative."

The film tends to be chronological, but it doesn't follow a strict pattern.

"Certain things couldn't be ignored: silent films, the coming of sound, the German influence, color, wide screen," he said. "Key cinematographers had to be talked about, and we looked for film and tape on them, but nothing's around. The only thing we found was the footage of James Wong Howe (who died in 1976), so we had to have contemporary cinematographers talking about the old-timers."

McCarthy interviewed 40 cinematographers and ended up with 26 of them in "Visions of Light," which uses more than 100 film clips to illustrate their discussions of lighting, camera placement, technical tricks, working with actors and directors. The clips were sometimes harder to obtain than the interviews.

There were no usable American prints left of Storaro and Bertolucci's "The Conformist" (1970), so McCarthy and his co-directors, Arnold Glassman and Stuart Samuels, had to dig up original materials in Italy. Because of rights problems, "The Naked City" (1948) officially existed only in 16mm prints, so they found a private collector who had a 35mm print.

Columbia Pictures claimed that "In Cold Blood" (1967) was never filmed in a wide-screen process. One of the most revealing moments in "Visions of Light" is an interview with Conrad Hall, who talks about how he accidentally created an effect that can only be appreciated if the film is shown in its original rectangular shape.

"It took us months to convince Columbia it was in Scope," said McCarthy. "They had a TV print (panned and scanned) and had to go way back to find the original materials." The one clip that mostly clearly demonstrates the damage done by color fading is from Columbia's "Picnic" (1955), photographed by the legendary Howe.

"`Picnic' doesn't look perfect anymore; it's starting to go," said McCarthy. "We scoured the earth to come up with some of this stuff, and we did the best we could."

Women may wonder why they're under-represented, even though Nancy Schreiber photographed the interviews in "Visions of Light," and two young cinematographers, Sandi Sissel and Lisa Rinzler, are interviewed.

"Cinematography was an old boys' club until the late 1960s," said McCarthy. "It's really the last area in film for women. Since `Visions of Light' was completed, Nancy's done `Chain of Desire,' Lisa shot `Guncrazy' and Sandi's done tons of documentaries and she's pushing into features."

McCarthy is now working on a book about Howard Hawks and a documentary about Hitchcock. Like Kevin Brownlow's "The Unknown Chaplin," the latter will make use of much previously unseen footage, including home movies, Tippi Hedren's screen tests and material dealing with an earlier, rawer version of "Frenzy" (1972) that Hitchcock abandoned in 1967.

"There's no money yet," said McCarthy. But if "Visions of Light" continues the success it has had at the Cannes, Telluride and Toronto film festivals, and during a remarkably popular theatrical run earlier this month in Los Angeles, funds for the Hitchcock project may materialize. The next big market is New York City, where "Visions of Light" opens next week.