Director of Photography Robert Krasker, BSC and Camera Operator John Harris on location in Vietnam for ‘The Quiet American’: it wasn’t always all work and no play

Right to left, Director of Photography Robert Krasker, BSC and Camera Operator John Harris on location in Vietnam for The Quiet American in 1957. Image courtesy of Dr Falk Schwarz from his book Farbige Schatten – Der Kamermann Robert Krasker.

I have been reviewing files of the documents and photographs that I extracted from Dr Falk Schwarz’s out-of-print German-language book about Robert Krasker, BSC titled Farbige Schatten – Der Kameramann Robert Krasker, to work out if I can use them in this website and in my English language translation.

There are some real gems amongst them of which I have not been able to locate better quality copies such as the photograph above that Dr Schwarz notes in his book as being from a “private archive”.

Almost every photograph I have of Robert Krasker is him all seriousness and super-concentration on-set and surrounded by co-workers.

Did anybody make photographs of him simply enjoying life and having fun? His life can’t have been all work and serious illness.

Both versions of The Quiet American have their Australian connections – Australian cinematographer Robert Krasker photographed the first one for American director Joseph L. Mankiewicz and Australian cinematographer Christopher Doyle photographed the second one for Australian director Phillip Noyce.

Links

• Amazon.com – A Thinker’s Damn: Audie Murphy, Vietnam, and The Making of the Quiet American
• Amazon.com – The Quiet American (Penguin Classics Deluxe Edition)
• Senses of Cinema – The Quiet American
• The Observer – Saigon? It’s not too far from Ealing … – “There is excellent location work in Saigon and the Indo-Chinese countryside, admirable monochrome photography by Robert Krasker (who shot Odd Man Out and The Third Man) a superb, very Greeneian performance from Redgrave, and a serious, if ultimately duplicitous, attitude to politics.”