Caption for above photograph, Sight and Sound magazine, January 1950, page 12:
ROBERT KRASKER: 37 years old, Australian born, he is one of the most brilliant cameramen in Britain to-day. He began work as assistant in the Paramount studios in Paris, and later became head of the RKO-British camera department. Since the war he has photographed Henry V, Odd Man Out, Brief Encounter, Uncle Silas and The Third Man. In black-and-white his style is almost immediately distinctive, with its delicately low-keyed, often romantic images; but that he is not merely a mannerist, his beautiful control of colour in Henry V showed, and the simpler, plainer black-and-white technique he is using for State Secret will show again. As well as being one of the most accomplished British cameramen, Krasker is also one of the most untemperamental and modest.
Sight and Sound magazine, January 1950, pages 10-12, ‘Film in the Making: State Secret’:
Further text extracts:
The cameraman on State Secret is Robert Krasker (who photographed Odd Man Out and The Third Man). The chase-shot (opposite) is recognizably Krasker in lighting and composition, but on the whole State Secret offers few opportunities for the ingenious low-key effects which have distinguished his work with Reed in particular; he is employing for the most part an unemphatic, straight-forward style, and finds the picture an exercise in plainer high-key photography. In the studio, I watched the scene of an official Vosnian reception being shot; the set is a banqueting hall, where Government presentations are being made—medals to various dignitaries and an award to the American doctor for his achievements in medical science. (A scene reminiscent of Hitchcock in its combination of ordinariness and undercurrents of tension—the presentation is actually a trick to get the doctor in the hall.)
The Robert Krasker Project 