Awards presented February 27, 1941
The nominees were ...
(Black-and-White)
- George Barnes, Rebecca
- Gaetano (Tony) Gaudio, The Letter
- Ernest Haller, All This, and Heaven Too
- James Wong Howe, Abe Lincoln in Illinois
- Charles B. Lang Jr., Arise, My Love
- Rudolph Maté, Foreign Correspondent
- Harold Rosson, Boom Town
- Joseph Ruttenberg, Waterloo Bridge
- Gregg Toland, The Long Voyage Home
- Joseph Valentine, Spring Parade
(Color)
- Oliver T. Marsh, Allen Davey, Bitter Sweet
- Arthur Miller, Ray Rennahan, The Blue Bird
- Victor Milner, W. Howard Greene, North West Mounted Police
- Georges Périnal, The Thief of Bagdad
- Leon Shamroy, Ray Rennahan, Down Argentine Way
- Sidney Wagner, William V. Skall, Northwest Passage
And the Oscar went to ...
(Black-and-White)
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| George Barnes |
Barnes was a veteran cinematographer who started out as a still photographer and moved into director of photographer while working with the pioneer director Thomas Ince. During the 1920s he worked on Samuel Goldwyn's films and helped train and launch the career of his fellow nominee Gregg Toland. He was nominated in the first year of the Oscars for two Goldwyn films,
The Devil Dancer and
The Magic Flame, and for Gloria Swanson's
Sadie Thompson. He moved to Warner Bros. in the 1930s, providing some of the proto-noir look of that studio's films, but he also worked for Paramount and MGM. David O. Selznick tapped him for
Rebecca and
Spellbound, which earned him more nominations and his only Oscar. Although a specialist in the textures of light and shadow of black-and-white cinematography, he tried his hand at color as well, earning nominations for
The Spanish Main and Cecil B. DeMille's
Samson and Delilah.
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| Mrs. Danvers (Judith Anderson) shows the new Mrs. DeWinter (Joan Fontaine) Rebecca's boudoir |
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| Barnes's use of filtered light and shadow evoke the darkness that is Mrs. Danvers |
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| Above and below: Angular light sources on Anderson and Fontaine |
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| In this shot taken on the set of Rebecca, even Alfred Hitchcock's cameo appearance benefits from Barnes's use of light. Note the suggestion that the single bulb is illuminating George Sanders in the phone booth, and Hitchcock's fear of the police is suggested by the heavy shadow cast by the bobby. |
(Color)
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| Georges Périnal |
Périnal worked on some of the most celebrated French films of the late 1920s and early '30s, including Jean Cocteau's
Blood of a Poet and René Clair's
Sous les Toits de Paris,
Le Million, and
À Nous la Liberté, before being hired by producer Alexander Korda in 1933. He helped Korda advance the British film industry by shooting such films as
The Private Life of Henry VIII and
Things to Come, and with the advent of war and the fall of France in 1940 centered his career primarily in Great Britain. Périnal had been nominated along with Osmond Borradaile a year earlier for their color cinematography on
The Four Feathers. Borradaile acted as associate photographer on
The Thief of Bagdad.
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| Conrad Veidt as Jaffar in The Thief of Bagdad. Veidt's performance clearly inspired the treatment of the same character in the Disney Aladdin many years later. |
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| Rex Ingram as the Djinn in The Thief of Bagdad |
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| June Desprez as the Princess and John Justin as Ahmad in the Thief of Bagdad. Desprez was not producer Alexander Korda's first choice for the role, but Vivien Leigh foiled his plans by going to the United States to be with Laurence Olivier and star in Gone With the Wind. |
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| Sabu as Abu in the Thief of Bagdad |
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