Awards presented March 20, 1948
The nominees were ...
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(Color)
... when they should have been ...
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And the Oscar went to ...
Green's work on Great Expectations is splendid, from the moody evocation of the misty moors to the shadow-haunted interiors of Miss Havisham's decaying mansion, and he and Jack Cardiff became the first British cinematographers to take the Oscars in both cinematography categories. It's worth noting, too, that the two films that won Oscars for cinematography also won for art direction, suggesting that these two visual categories are intrinsically linked. This was, surprisingly, the only nomination and win for Green, who had begun as a camera operator in the 1930s and moved into the director of photography chair during the war. He collaborated again with director David Lean the following year on Oliver Twist. In the mid-1950s he switched from cinematographer to director, heading up such notable films as The Mark, A Patch of Blue, and The Magus.
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| Jack Cardiff |
The son of music hall performers, Cardiff grew up in show business, appearing in films as a child. He became fascinated with photography and art, and in 1936 became a camera operator, having impressed the Technicolor people with his knowledge of the use of color in fine art. He was a camera operator on the first British Technicolor film, Wings of the Morning, in 1937, and in 1946 graduated to cinematographer on Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger's Stairway to Heaven (known in Britain as A Matter of Life and Death). The film featured both color and black-and-white sequences, although the monochrome sequences, which take place in the afterlife, were actually filmed in Technicolor and then only partially developed. Black Narcissus, another Powell-Pressburger film, followed, and Cardiff showed off his familiarity with the composition of classic painting in this richly designed (art director Alfred Junge also won the Oscar) and lighted film, which has been called one of the most beautiful movies ever made. It was Cardiff's only competitive Oscar win, but the Academy presented him with an honorary Oscar in 2001. Like his fellow 1947 Oscar winner, Guy Green, Cardiff turned director -- though without giving up his work as cinematographer -- and was nominated for directing Sons and Lovers in 1960.
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| Cardiff's lighting helps create the illusion that Black Narcissus was filmed on location and not in a sound stage. |
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| The influence of painters such as Vermeer is felt in scenes such as this one with Deborah Kerr and Flora Robson |
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| Sabu as the young general in Black Narcissus |
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| Kathleen Byron as Sister Ruth |
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| Kerr as Sister Clodagh |
... when it should have gone to ...
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| James Wong Howe filming Artie Dorell and John Garfield in Body and Soul |
Guy Green's Oscar for Great Expectations was well-deserved, but the Academy's failure to nominate James Wong Howe for his innovative work on Body and Soul is baffling. To give the fight sequences in the film a realism that was unprecedented, Howe put on roller skates and entered the ring with John Garfield and the other fighters. Hand-held and Steadicam work has become standard, so that Howe's action cinematography has lost some of its impact on contemporary viewers, but his ability to use light and shadow to enhance mood throughout the film is just as impressive. Every subsequent boxing film -- including Michael Chapman's cinematography for Raging Bull -- owes a debt to Howe.
