Fact Check: ‘Carol Reed: A Biography’ aka ‘The Man Between: A Biography of Carol Reed’, by Nicholas Wapshott

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Cover, Carol Reed: A Biography, Nicholas Wapshott, Alfred A. Knopf, Inc., New York, 1994, ISBN: 0679402888, also known as The Man Between: A Biography of Carol Reed, Nicholas Wapshott, Chatto & Windus, London, 1990, ISBN: 0701133538.
Pages 184 and 185, The Man Between: A Biography of Carol Reed, Nicholas Wapshott, Chatto & Windus, London, 1990, ISBN: 0701133538, also known as Carol Reed: A Biography, Nicholas Wapshott, Alfred A. Knopf, Inc., New York, 1994, ISBN: 0679402888

“Robert Krasker was the photographer. He had never shot
such a literally dark film before, and he followed Reed’s
descriptions of the atmosphere of gloom which should pervade each scene. Krasker was among the best lighting cameramen working in Britain. An Australian of French and Austrian parents, he had studied art in Paris, abandoned painting in favour of photography and went to Germany to study optics.

This German period of his life not only gave him the foundations of his technical knowledge but also introduced him to the heightened lighting techniques which were practised between 1903 and 1933 in Germany and which came to be known as German Expressionism. This movement introduced psychological shapes and highly artificial sets, as in Robert Wiene’s The Cabinet of Dr Caligari (1919), but its most lasting effect was its dramatic lighting, heavy with long shadows and few light sources.

Krasker returned from Germany to work at Paramount’s
Joinville studios in Paris, working with the American maestro Phil Tannura. In 1931 he left Paris to join Korda’s London Films company at Elstree and worked as assistant cameraman on many of the studio’s hits, including Korda’s own The Private Life of Henry VIII and, a key influence on his lighting and camerawork with Reed, with Georges Périnal on Things to Come. His career took off and he was soon the principal cameraman on two of Leslie Howard’s films, The Gentle Sex and The Lamp Still Burns, then Henry V in colour for Laurence Olivier, the pastel-lit Caesar and Cleopatra for Gabriel Pascal and the highly atmospheric Brief Encounter for David Lean. …”

The Man Between: A Biography of Carol Reed, Nicholas Wapshott, Chatto & Windus, London, 1990, ISBN: 0701133538, also known as Carol Reed: A Biography, Nicholas Wapshott, Alfred A. Knopf, Inc., New York, 1994, ISBN: 0679402888.

Nicholas Wapshott’s Carol Reed: A Biography also known as The Man Between: A Biography of Carol Reed is high on my reading list but I have to secure a copy of my own so have made do with skimming through it on the Internet Archive.

Robert Krasker photographed four films for his Chelsea neighbour Carol Reed and this book covers all of them, Odd Man Out, The Third Man, Trapeze and The Running Man, so it is a must when researching Krasker or Reed.

Krasker’s early life, education and career is where writers tend to get it wrong so I’ve concentrated on that aspect of his background here.

Fact Checks

  • “Krasker was among the best lighting cameramen working in Britain.” – Lighting cameraman was the former term for Director of Photography aka DoP or DP.
  • “An Australian of French and Austrian parents,” – Robert Krasker’s mother Mathilde and Leon Krasker were refugees in Paris from eastern Europe as children and were educated there. Mathilde was born in Czernowitz then in Austria, often referred to as “Little Vienna”, now Czernivtsi in Ukraine. Leon Krasker was born in Tultza, now Tulcea, in the province of Dobroga in Roumania, now Romania. Both his parents were naturalized Australians.
  • ” … he had studied art in Paris, abandoned painting in favour of photography and went to Germany to study optics.” – Robert Krasker credited his early and sustained success as a cinematographer to the education he had received in Dresden under Professor Robert Luther, and his secondary-level schooling then art education in Paris would have educated his eye and capacity for romance languages. His early exposure to a wide range of artistic and cinematic styles stood him in good stead throughout his career.
  • ” In 1931 he left Paris to join Korda’s London Films company at Elstree and worked as assistant cameraman on many of the studio’s hits, …” – Robert Krasker worked on at least 3 films in Paris as Philip Tannura’s translator and camera assistant then in the latter capacity on Service for Ladies, produced and directed by Alexander Korda in England in 1931. Korda invited him to continue working for him with his first projects at London Films being Assistant Camera Operator for Director of Photography Georges Périnal on The Rise of Catherine the Great and The Private Life of Don Juan. From then onwards his position was Camera Operator for Périnal and other directors of photography before becoming the youngest DoP of the era if not of all time in his own right.

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