Best Cinematography, 1929-30

Awards presented November 5, 1930
(Films released from August 1, 1929 through July 31, 1930 were eligible.)

The nominees were ... 

• William Daniels, Anna Christie 
• Arthur Edeson, All Quiet on the Western Front 
• Gaetano Gaudio, Harry Perry, Hell's Angels 
• Victor Milner, The Love Parade 
• Joseph T. Rucker, Willard Van Der Veer, With Byrd at the South Pole 

... and the Oscar went to ...  
Joseph T. Rucker, Willard Van Der Veer, With Byrd at the South Pole. The hardships encountered by newsreel cameraman Rucker and documentary shooter Van Der Veer on their journey to the South Pole with Adm. Richard Byrd, and the extraordinary images they brought back, swayed Academy voters. But unlike the other nominees, they were not under the constraints of synchronized sound. Did they show sufficient versatility to warrant the Oscar?   

... when it should have gone to ... 

Arthur Edeson

All Quiet on the Western Front

All Quiet on the Western Front 

All Quiet on the Western Front  

Edeson was a veteran silent film cinematographer, and he kept right on going well into the sound era, finding ingenious ways to hide the microphones when sound equipment was bulky and intrusive. He shot In Old Arizona, one of the first movies to be made on location, in an early widescreen process, and received his first nomination for it. Today, he is probably best known for the film that earned him his third nomination, Casablanca, but he was also responsible for producing the atmosphere of such horror classics as Frankenstein (1931) and The Invisible Man (1933). The stills above demonstrate how he helped All Quiet become a classic, with the well-framed scene of an explosion in combat, the close-up of the frenzied, jingoist teacher exhorting his students to fight for their country, and the haunting double-exposure of ghost soldiers (including the young Lew Ayres) against a backdrop of cemetery crosses.