There is still so much to be discovered about the life and career of the great Australian cinematographer Robert Krasker, BSC and one element that I have yet to learn more about than a mere mention in a “that was the year that was” article in The Age is where he was commissioned to “re-design the street lighting of principal Italian cities”.
Putting screen titles into second place, and picking out only the highlights, 1954 was quite a year for British (and other) picturegoers. Among many things, it saw …
Shakespeare’s great Romeo story (a la Rank-Castellani) credited anonymously in Britain but in America billed as by “Sir Francis Bacon” …
Italy become the second greatest film exporter in the world …
Australian cameraman Robert Krasker (Oscar winner with the Harry Lime picture) get a new kind of accolade for his superlative work on Romeo and Juliet: a lucrative contract to re-design the street lighting of principal Italian cities.
Did The Age’s unnamed “correspondent in London” write that paragraph in jest or was it based on fact?
If factual, which “principal Italian cities”, when was the project undertaken and what kind of budget did Krasker have to work with?
It’s a mystery and one I hope to find out more about, but the roaring silence in contemporary newspapers so far is frustrating, and gives rise to doubts.
Robert Krasker had two opportunities to impress his possible lighting project commissioners in Italy, shooting Renato Castellani’s Romeo and Juliet in 1953 and parts of Senso for Luchino Visconti in the same year.
Both films involved extensive location lighting and may have stimulated the idea in the minds of official observers to get this man who had such a deep and intimate understanding of light to re-design the outdoor lighting in the same or similar cities where he had worked on both films.
I’ll keep researching and perhaps I might eventually find out more.
Given the long history of Italian artists known for their work in one medium being commissioned to create in another, it would not be the first time such a project had been created and given to someone without track record in its exact nature.
Links
- The Robert Krasker Project Filmography – Romeo and Juliet
- The Robert Krasker Project Filmography – Senso
- TIME – Cinema: IN FAIR VERONA, Monday, Dec. 20, 1954 – “… including Cameraman Robert Krasker—who in Henry V matched Shakespeare’s morning language with an early wonder in his light and color … For seven months the cameras pored over the choice beauties of Venice, Verona, Siena, and several smaller cities of the golden age.”
The Robert Krasker Project 