Australian cinematographer and Director of Photography Robert Krasker, BSC made three epic feature films with American director Anthony Mann – El Cid, The Fall of the Roman Empire and The Heroes of Telemark – and the first two were produced by Samuel Bronston from his base in Madrid at Chamartin Studios.
It is likely that Robert Krasker, who grew up between yellow-orange desert and sparkling shallow sea-edge in the remote Shark Bay township of Denham in Western Australia, made his decision to buy a connected pair of apartments in the Andalusian city of Marbella, about this time: my research into specific times and dates continues.
“Robert Krasker, … one of the film world’s masters of color and lighting.”
Krasker had moved into his Sloane Square apartment in the late 1950s after his courageous and remarkable mother Mathilde died and family connections with the western suburbs of London had dissolved.
Did the light and warmth of the Costa del Sol bring psychological and physical comfort and relief from the almost lifelong debilitation caused by malaria contracted in Sudan while camera-operating in 1938 for The Four Feathers and the Type 1 diabetes to which it led?
Samuel Bronston’s “El Cid”, page 38:
THE CAMERAMAN
ROBERT KRASKER, Academy Award-winning director of photography for his memorable lensing of “The Third Man,” is considered to be one of the film world’s masters of color and lighting. He has been lauded for his work on such pictures as “Henry V,” “Romeo and Juliet” and “Trapeze.” Although the Australian-born Krasker has photographed all types of pageantry, he feel that “El Cid” offered his greatest opportunity because of the many real-life settings of ancient castles and towns, as well as the multitude of panoramic scenes.
Links
- The Hollywood Art (via Wayback Machine) – Maverick Gentleman: Samuel Bronston’s Vanishing Empires
- Wikipedia – Anthony Mann
- Wikipedia – Samuel Bronston – “Bronston frequently worked with a regular team of creative artists: the directors Anthony Mann and Nicholas Ray, the screenwriters Philip Yordan and Jesse Lasky Jr., composers Dimitri Tiomkin and Miklós Rózsa, the co-producers Jaime Prades, Alan Brown and Michał Waszyński, the cinematographer Robert Krasker and film editor Robert Lawrence. He also favoured Charlton Heston and Sophia Loren as his leading actors.”
- Wikipedia – Samuel Bronston Productions
The Robert Krasker Project 