Robert Krasker’s father Leon Krasker is listed several times in ‘The Western Australian Directory’ aka ‘Wise’s’ of 1914, in Alphabetical, Towns and Trades Directories

Front inside pages, ‘The Western Australian Directory’ aka ‘Wise’s’ of 1914. Image courtesy of State Library of Western Australia at https://slwa.wa.gov.au/collections/collections/post-office-directories/post-office-directories-1910-1919/western-3

When Leon Krasker made his first trip from Britain to Broome and back in 1907 did he go see Mark Rubin for advice on how to become a successful pearl buyer and pearl dealer?

At different times Leon listed himself as being based in Broome and Shark Bay, then called Sharks Bay as it was so named by explorer and pirate William Dampier after he arrived there in August 1699, as well as at 99 Hay Street, Subiaco in Perth, Western Australia.

Mark Rubin had several addresses in Western Australia by the time Leon Krasker arrived:

Links

‘The Northern Times’ reports on the death of Leon Krasker, father of Australian cinematographer Robert Krasker, BSC, on 30 September and 21 October 1916

The Northern Times, Saturday, 21 October 1916, page 4, ‘The Death of Mr. Leon Krasker: A Pathetic Message’. Image courtesy of the National Library of Australia via Trove at http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-page7365961

The little township of Denham in Shark Bay was some distance away from the pearling grounds the other side of the peninsula and where the luggers beached up to sell their wares to traders like Leon Krasker visiting Monkey Mia and Herald Bight.

As many non-indigenous travellers in the deserts of Western Australia have found, injury, thirst and death can lurk just around the corner if undersupplied and alone, and so Leon Krasker’s lonely death came upon him by accident during a normal weekly business trip.

Farbige Schatten – Der Kameramann Robert Krasker, by Dr Falk Schwarz, Part 1: The becoming of an artist, A riding accident (early translation from German into English):

Leon Krasker became a valued member of the community. He had organized his pearl trading tightly and rode his horse Battler every week to buy pearls from the fishermen along the coast. The ride on his horse was risky because Leon Krasker had lost a leg in an accident and was wearing a cork prosthesis. Again and again he was asked to drive in a carriage because it seemed safer. One day he didn’t come back.


The Northern Times, Saturday, 21 October 1916, page 4, ‘The Death of Mr. Leon Krasker: A Pathetic Message’:

The Death of Mr Leon Krasker: A Pathetic Message
Further particulars of the finding of the body of Mr Leon Krasker, pearler, of Shark Bay, whose death in the bush was reported some four weeks ago, have been received, and from these it appears that Mr Krasker left Denham for Herald Bight on September 22, and should have returned on the 24th.

On the morning of the 28th, Mr William Sunter, pearler, Shark Bay, left Denham with a lad named Ernest Adams to search for Mr Krasker, and, when about three miles from Denham they met a coloured man named Joe Hanup, who was in Mr Krasker’s employ at Herald Bight, on the pearling ground.

Hanup was carrying Mr Krasker’s artificial leg, and said he had found the leg on the track the night before, but did not see any thing of Mr Krasker.

They returned to Denham, and at 8 am they again left in company with Mr Edwards, Pearling Inspector, and Mr William Thomas, and when about 12 miles from Denham and 1 1/2 miles north of the water tank, they came across Mr Krasker’s body under a wattle tree about ten yards off the track.

The body was lying in a position which indicated that deceased died very easily, and no signs of any struggle were noticeable.

Mr Edwards picked up Mr Krasker’s pocket-book which was lying behind his head, and read the following to his companions, written in deceased’s handwriting: “I fell off my horse one hour before my destination and broke my leg. I start back for the tank and failed. Where you will find me the thirst killed me. I am sorry to die before life time, my cherir, I loved until my last. I leave everything to you. Don’t worry too much, suppose everything for the best … I expected relief … I kiss you my last. Kiss my children for me and also my parents. Your loving husband.”

This was signed by the deceased. Mr Sunter then left Mr Edwards and Mr Thomas in charge of the body, and continued on to Herald Bight to inform Mr Adams of Mr Krasker’s fate, and when a mile and a half along the track he picked up a visiting card belonging to the deceased with the following words written thereon: “4 o’clock on 22nd and have not reached tank, it is yet too long, and I suffer much with thirst. L.K.”

About a mile further on Mr Sunter picked up a legging, and another visiting card belonging to deceased which was found stuck in the side of the legging had the following words written on it: “I fell off my horse, broke my leg. Trying to reach the tank. September 22.”

The body was brought in to Denham, where the burial took place.

The Northern Times, Saturday, 30 September 1916, page 2, ‘Tragic Death’. Image courtesy of the National Library of Australia via Trove at http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-page7365941


The Northern Times, Saturday, 30 September 1916, page 2, ‘Tragic Death’:

Tragic Death.
News was received by the police on Thursday evening of the tragic death of Mr Leon Krasker, the well-known pearler of Shark Bay.

It appears that Mr Krasker left Shark Bay on the 22nd instance on horseback, with the intention of riding to Herald Bight, but news was received that he had not arrived at his destination, so on Thursday morning a search party went out and found his body about 15 miles from the Bay.

It is surmised that he was thrown from his horse, as his leg was broken, and that the unfortunate man afterwards perished from thirst.

There was no Justice of the Peace available at Denham, and therefore no inquest could be held, but the body has been buried and full particulars will be sent to the Resident Magistrate for his consideration.

Mr Krasker leaves a wife and children, who are at present at Shark Bay, and much sympathy is felt with them in their sad loss.

Links

Robert Krasker’s father Leon Krasker and the reason for naming Krasker’s Tank in Francois Peron National Park in Shark Bay after him

Krasker’s Tank at Francois Peron National Park at Shark Bay in Western Australia. Image courtesy of Campedia.com.au at https://campedia.com.au/business/16311/kraskers-tank-francois-peron-national-park

Australian cinematographer Robert Krasker, BSC was just three years old when his father Leon died and the family, now consisting of mother Mathilde, George, Georgette, Marie aka Mitzi, Stephanie and Robert himself, had suddenly lost its major income-earner.

Based on recently found documents, Leon and Mathilde each owned a share in three pearling vessels and one hopes that Leon’s shares passed on to his widow.

Mathilde began describing herself as a pearl dealer on official documents from 1917 onwards until 1920 when her “profession, occupation or calling” was noted as “nil” on a passenger manifest followed by “wife” in 1923, “home duties” in 1926 and “retired pearler” in 1931.

Too much faith should not be placed in the accuracy of shipping documents as many seem to be written in haste and with some errors in spelling and ages.

Links

The parents of Robert Krasker, BSC, Leon and Mathilde Krasker, owned shares in three pearling vessels in the north-west of Western Australia

Cover, Ships Registered in Western Australian from 1856 to 1969: Their Details, Their Owners & Their Fate. Image courtesy of Rod Dickson and maritimeheritage.org.

Ships Registered in Western Australian from 1856 to 1969: Their Details, Their Owners & Their Fate, by Rod Dickson

Introduction

Originally these registers were transcribed for my own personal maritime research but, as time went by, it became evident that they were important to other researchers, maritime and in other fields.

Mr Mike McCarthy encouraged me in the work and as it progressed it was published as a paper, (No. 80), in March 1994 for the Maritime Museum at Fremantle in eight volumes, each with its own index and biographical index.

These eight volumes, however, proved to be unwieldy and it was decided to redo them as a single entity. Since the original version was finished research has enabled me to add further information on the vessels, their operations and their fate and this has been added to the publication as it came to light.

Sometimes, just sometimes, exactly the right information suddenly pops up right at the top of search results and it not only fills in some gaps but reveals something unexpected but invaluable.

That occurred earlier this week when I was following up on a phone conversation with someone in the library at the Australian Maritime Museum who told me that Leon and Mathilde Krasker had owned shares in two pearling boats in the north-west of Western Australia.

A search engine turned up a huge PDF containing their names three times over, against three boats, and also revealed the name Mark Rubin against over 30 other vessels.

This had to be the Mark Rubin written about in Dr Falk Schwarz’s book about Robert Krasker, BSC, the Mark Rubin whose success in the north-west of WA had inspired Mathilde and Leon to risk everything as strangers in a strange land, sail to Fremantle, travel up the coast and set themselves up as pearl buyers and dealers as Mark Rubin had done not long before.

Australian Dictionary of Biography – Mark Rubin (1867–1919):

Soon after 1900 Mark moved to Broome, Western Australia, centre of the pearling industry, where he quickly became a leading pearl dealer, travelling yearly to London. He also owned a large pearling fleet. About 1901 the family moved to London, although Mark continued to spend most of his time in Australia. Believing that war in Europe was inevitable and that wool would be more in demand than pearls, he bought several large sheep stations in 1912-13, including de Grey and Warrawagine near Port Hedland, Western Australia, and Northampton Downs in Queensland. He also transferred his pearl-dealing business to London and Paris. Mark died at Fontainebleau, France, on 6 November 1919, leaving a fortune.

Leon Krasker had travelled from Broome to Fremantle on 12 October 1907 on the Charon, just one leg in a probable round trip from Britain to Western Australia and back.

His imminent arrival in Fremantle on the Oruba from London earlier that year had been announced in a publication named Empire of Saturday 24 August 1907, and further research may turn up passenger lists with further details.

Mark Rubin appears to have already been well set-up financially before arriving in Broome from the eastern states after engaging in various businesses there whereas Leon, Mathilde and their then young family of one boy and two girls had left Hackney in London in straitened circumstances according to Dr Schwarz’s book, Farbige Schatten – Der Kameramann Robert Krasker.

Fact Checks

  • “Leon Kracker” – His name is, of course Leon Krasker despite official documents and newspapers mistakenly naming him as Louis and other variations of given name and surname.
  • “Mathilde Kracker” – In the same way, her name is actually Mathilde Krasker.

Links

Robert Krasker, BSC in ‘El Cid’ article in ‘Cinema’, beautifully-designed film magazine from 1960s to 1970s by US publisher Spectator International, Inc.

Cover, Cinema, Volume 1, Number 1, 1963, published by Spectator, International, Inc. in the USA from 1962 to 1976 according to Wikipedia.

Yesterday I turned up a magazine about film that I knew nothing about until I discovered all the issues from just one year, 1963, at the Internet Archive. The publication is named, simply, Cinema and its design and writing styles are reminiscent of an almost now forgotten magazine publishing mini-revolution that was born in the 1960s in Germany then spread to Great Britain, and, via Cinema, to the United States.

Given I grew up in several remote towns in Western Australia sandwiched between desert and ocean, not unlike Robert Krasker, I was exposed to few books and magazines during my formative years.

It was only when I moved to the capital city of Perth – “the most remote capital city in the world” – that I came across a small collection of art, design and photography books and magazines in the art school’s library.

It was in one of those magazines that I came across mention of an art direction genius named Willy Fleckhaus and the revolutionary German magazine for which he was responsible, Twen, and although the library held no copies of it, other publications there mentioned past British magazines that may have learned some lessons from its design, photography, typography and writing – Nova and Queen.

Neither were in publication by the time I went looking for them but other stylish and style-oriented magazines had appeared in the UK by then, including i-D and especially The Face with its exquisite typography and page design by Neville Brody.

Brody pushed the early and sometimes timid innovations of Twen, Nova and Queen into the 1980s at The Face and pushed the arts and crafts of type design and typography into realms those pre-Macintosh magazine designers may well have never imagined.

When I conceived and co-founded former cult Australian photography, visual arts and culture magazine not only Black+White my aim was to go even further beyond Brody’s innovations into something newer again and in a direction more appropriate to the state of Australia culture in the 1990s.

As I did not actually own the magazine my suggestions carried little weight and were often pooh-poohed or simply misunderstood, and they were also dependent on finding a great magazine art director to fulfil them.

Eventually one turned up and during an all too short time in the art director’s chair there, he won fifteen international awards for his innovative and expressive typography, article and cover designs.

Back to Robert Krasker, Cinema and El Cid

It has been suggested more than a few times that I should put together a book about Robert Krasker, one that goes well beyond Dr Falk Schwarz’s 2012 publication, Farbige Schatten – Der Kameramann Robert Krasker in scope and approach, something more than a simple translation of that book from German into English.

In theory I agree given Dr Schwarz’s European readership certainly know who Robert Krasker was and what he achieved but am sceptical about an Australian publisher taking on such a task given virtually no Australian to whom I speak about our greatest ever cinematographer knows who he was or of the many famous films upon which he worked.

“While not a film for the Eisenstein worshiper, the cinematography of Robert Krasker has magnificent moments, especially in his use of the actual backgrounds and interiors.”

If the miraculous were to occur, however, I would hope such a book would be graphically and typographically innovative in ways not dissimilar to those first explored in magazines like Cinema, Twen, Nova, Queen, The Face and i-D.

As to why and how, those are subjects for another article here sometime soon.

Links

Robert Krasker, BSC in Library of America: The Moviegoer’s ‘Peter Ustinov’s Billy Budd: Elemental conflict in a vivid tapestry of life at sea’, by Michael Sragow

Library of America: The Moviegoer’s Peter Ustinov’s Billy Budd: Elemental conflict in a vivid tapestry of life at sea, by Michael Sragow, 1 August 2019 at https://www.loa.org/news-and-views/1138-peter-ustinov8217s-billy-budd-elemental-conflict-in-a-vivid-tapestry-of-life-at-sea/

British actor Terence Stamp is in the news once again in relation to a sequel to another film to be shot in Australia as well as locations beyond these shores.

So, it seemed appropriate to share a little more about the actor, the film that gave him his brilliant cinematic career and the Australian Director of Photography who played a role in helping him get there with his very first part, something of a minor miracle.

Billy Budd was a departure for Robert Krasker from the Technicolor widescreen epics that late 1950s and early 1960s Hollywood believed would persuade its formerly dedicated movie audiences to tear themselves away from their television screens.

“Robert Krasker, Ustinov’s cinematographer, was a legend who ranged from epic comedies like Caesar and Cleopatra to classic dramas like Brief Encounter.”

Krasker began his filmmaking career at Les Studios Paramount in the south-eastern Parisian suburb of Joinville-le-Pont with three remakes of a US Paramount Pictures film, with all versions in black and white or, as it was often referred to in Europe, monochrome.

His first few projects at Alexander Korda’s London Film Productions where he was apprenticed to French Director of Photography Georges Périnal were in monochrome, too, but DoP and apprentice-cum-camera operator both earned their stripes as colour cinematographers when Korda made a deal with Technicolor to site its British processing and printing laboratory onsite at his Denham Studios complex in Buckinghamshire west of London.

After Krasker became a Director of Photography in his own right, his first few projects were shot in black and white but the big breakthrough that led to him being hailed as “The Man for Colour” came with DoPing Henry V for actor/director Laurence Olivier.

From then onwards Robert Krasker would jump between the two forms, monochrome and colour, as story and budget required, and Billy Budd did not have budget enough for Technicolor.

A well-matched unit, Krasker and Ustinov

Peter Ustinov was well-suited to tackling a war film about characters with ambiguous motivations, according to Michael Sragow:

In many ways, Ustinov was in his wheelhouse—he was part of a generation of veterans. During his British Army service in World War II, he had collaborated with thriller-writer Eric Ambler and the great director Carol Reed (best known for Odd Man Out and The Third Man, both shot by Krasker) on the famous propaganda feature The Way Ahead, which dramatized a lieutenant (David Niven) molding conscripts into a fighting unit. Ustinov himself despised being in the army: he called it “a nightmare school for backward adults, in which degrees could be achieved in monstrous disciplines.”

Krasker (underclass) and Ustinov (upperclass) intimately understood the true nature of the British Empire’s class system and its expressions and impositions through architecture, clothing and space:

What sustains the film’s suspense is its piquant clarity about the everyday dangers of an eighteenth century sailor’s life (an exotic extra for today’s audiences, now that Tall Ship adventures are no longer a popular genre). Ustinov and Krasker exploit nautical space to brew up an enveloping aura. They convey the emotional and physical dynamics of every onboard experience, from the sailors sleeping on hammocks in close quarters to the vertiginous loneliness and fear of a foretopman climbing the foremast. Their visual limpidity enables us to “read” the class bias built into the architecture of the ship, from the quarter deck down to the hold, as easily as we do the gaps between upstairs and downstairs on Upstairs, Downstairs or Downton Abbey.

Links

Robert Krasker, BSC in ‘Samuel Bronston’s “El Cid”‘ brochure

Samuel Bronston’s “El Cid”, 40-page brochure, page 38. Image courtesy of Internet Archive at https://archive.org/details/samuelbronstons0000char/mode/2up

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 CAMERMAN

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
  • WikipediaAnthony Mann
  • WikipediaSamuel 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.”
  • WikipediaSamuel Bronston Productions

Terence Stamp writes about the “diminutive Turner of light” Robert Krasker, BSC in ‘The Ocean Fell into the Drop: A Memoir’, describing how Krasker’s genius launched Stamp’s brilliant film career

The Ocean Fell into the Drop: A Memoir, Terence Stamp, Repeater, 19 September 2017, ISBN-10: ‎1910924539, ISBN-13: ‎978-1910924532, ASIN: B01N9WTJ0L.

Robert Krasker has been credited with helping Terence Stamp get his big break into the film industry via bleach, hair dye, sunburn and Krasker’s usual brilliant lighting, image and motion design.

Terence Stamp is one of the last people now living who knew Robert Krasker in a professional capacity and, having worked with him on two films, Peter Ustinov’s Billy Budd and William Wyler’s The Collector, has some anecdotes about the Australian cinematographer to share.

Meanwhile here is how Dr Falk Schwarz wrote about the hair bleach incident in his book on the great Australian cinematographer, Farbige Schatten – Der Kameramann Robert Krasker:

“We’ll get you as sunburnt as possible, and then we dye your hair to ash-blond and I can make you look like an angel!”

— Robert Krasker to Terence Stamp

1Audio Commentary by Terence Stamp and Steven Soderbergh on Billy Budd DVD, Warner Video 110801.

As I am unable to access that DVD I went in search of other sources and came across an even better description written by Terence Stamp himself:

Pages 28 and 29, The Ocean Fell Into the Drop: A Memoir, Terence Stamp, Repeater, 19 September 2017, ISBN-10: ‎1910924539, ISBN-13: ‎978-1910924532, ASIN: B01N9WTJ0L.

Robert Krasker was the director of photography, a real Turner of light. He’d lit The Third Man, held as ‘the’ example of black-and-white photography. In this regard I believe he’d suggested to the director that my dark hair should be dyed blonde. I endured four hours of peroxide, yet it was worth it, as I will explain later. His lighting plan was my first hurdle, as I could hardly keep my eyes open once under the intensity of Krasker, sunlight, carbon arcs and reflector boards. He had me face the full intensity of his lighting with closed eyes, only opening them on ‘Action’. He advised me never to wear sunglass as they would weaken my eyes’ resistance to light. I have followed his advice to this day.

Pages 30 and 31, The Ocean Fell Into the Drop: A Memoir, Terence Stamp, Repeater, 19 September 2017, ISBN-10: ‎1910924539, ISBN-13: ‎978-1910924532, ASIN: B01N9WTJ0L.

‘Action!’

Listening to it as the noose slipped over my head, I slowly faced the mutinous crew.

‘Cut!’

Ustinov smiles to me. He turns to Robert Krasker, who nods. Ustinov looks toward the sound team. OK.

He smiles again to me.

‘I feel we got that, folks.’

It was to be the final shot in the film for me.

I shall go deeper into what happened to me during that take as it was my very first step into a new standpoint that would change the direction of my life.

Pages 32 and 33, The Ocean Fell Into the Drop: A Memoir, Terence Stamp, Repeater, 19 September 2017, ISBN-10: ‎1910924539, ISBN-13: ‎978-1910924532, ASIN: B01N9WTJ0L.

Such a shock it was to see myself up there on the big screen, looking as I had never looked in life, courtesy of Peter Ustinov and the diminutive giant of light, Robert Krasker. On reflection, my decision to concentrate my energies solely on celluloid was made that night, and whilst I didn’t see life in such terms then, I must have realised the universe was telling me something. The second implosion was my final scene in the film, ending with Herman Melville’s line, ‘God bless Captain Vere.’

The transcendental moment that had happened to me on that single last take on location left not a dry eye in the house. And while it was the last thing I was aware of that evening, my sails became set for new horizons.

Pages 38 and 39, The Ocean Fell into the Drop: A Memoir, Terence Stamp, Repeater, 19 September 2017, ISBN-10: ‎1910924539, ISBN-13: ‎978-1910924532, ASIN: B01N9WTJ0L.

It was a really nice surprise when the shoot relocated to England—Kent, as it happened—and I discovered Bob Krasker, the DP who had done so well by me as Billy Budd, was lighting the exteriors, this time in colour.

I couldn’t overlook how well my work was working out, the opportunity I had learning from a great man like [William] Wyler so early in my carer, and how the fundamentals he made clear to me would equip me later when I encountered lesser directors. and even one who didn’t want me at all. …

The Collector was a Wyler classic; Samantha [Eggar] and I won the Best Actress and Best Actor awards respectively at Cannes 1965, and she was nominated for an Academy Award.

Links

Robert Krasker, BSC in ‘Laurence Olivier’s Presentation of Henry V by William Shakespeare in Technicolor’ pamphlet on the film, its production details, cast and crew

Laurence Olivier’s Presentation of Henry V by William Shakespeare in Technicolor, The Theatre Guild, date and other publication details unknown. Image courtesy of Internet Archive at https://archive.org/details/laurenceoliviers0000shak/mode/2up

I have encountered more than a little misinformation, disinformation, untrue facts and bizarre untruths in the course of researching the Australian cinematographer and Director of Photography Robert Krasker, BSC so it is rewarding when I find documents by the makers of the films upon which he worked, such as this pamphlet by the Two-Cities production company which commissioned Krasker to film Laurence Olivier’s Henry V.

Unfortunately only three pages of The Theatre Guild’s pamphlet are currently available for viewing at Internet Archive: the production credits page and the front and back cover.

Nonetheless the production credits page has already proven to be an invaluable testament to two key members of the film’s camera department, Director of Photography Robert Krasker and Camera Operator Jack Hildyard.

I have observed some confusion in dictionaries, encyclopaedias and other books and magazine articles about Henry V and its makers, about whom its cinematographers actually were.

Often, for example, both Robert Krasker and Jack Hildyard are mistakenly credited as joint cinematographers for Henry V whereas Krasker is clearly the Director of Photography and Hildyard is definitely the camera operator as attested to by this pamphlet.

According to Dr Falk Schwarz, this is the full complement of Henry V‘s camera department:

Director of Photography: Robert Krasker; Camera Operator: Jack Hildyard; Assistant Camera: Norman Foley, Irvin Pannaman; Focus Puller: Freddie Ford; Clapper Loader: Jim Body.

Laurence Olivier’s Presentation of Henry V by William Shakespeare in Technicolor, The Theatre Guild, date and other publication details unknown. Image courtesy of Internet Archive at https://archive.org/details/laurenceoliviers0000shak/mode/2up

Just one more thing…

Speaking of fact checks, one fact I really want to check with primary sources or at least good quality secondary sources is whether Robert Krasker, BSC was also Head of the Camera Department at Two Cities Films as some publications I’ve come across have asserted.

That would make two British film production companies for which he was camera department head with the other one being RKO-British as attested to by the British Fim Institute’s Sight and Sound magazine.

Images of more pages found on the Web from Laurence Olivier’s Presentation of Henry V by William Shakespeare in Technicolor pamphlet:

I’ve been searching for more pages from the pamphlet as I’d hoped they would contain an explanation of the colour and set design decisions made by Olivier and his art director, choices that received some degree of criticism over the years including, according to Dr Falk Schwarz, from Robert Krasker himself.

In Henry V, the problem was to present Shakespeare in the modern visual idiom. We couldn’t use the normal technique of ‘cutting’ a scene into short sequences because that would have ruined the soliloquies. So we had to make the picture ‘flow’ with the words.”

– Robert Krasker 1

Despite the fame and acclaim won by Laurence Olivier’s production of Henry V, and the high praise awarded to Robert Krasker for his cinematography to this day, the two never worked together again.

And so the style was found and the shooting script made. Robert Krasker, who was a very brilliant lighting cameraman, frankly never took to the style at all; each time I showed him a new set he would look at it, shrug and say ‘Looks terribly phoney’

Laurence Olivier 2

Something similar occurred with Krasker and director David Lean on the set of Great Expectations which was to be their second film together after the success of Brief Encounter. The opening sequence Krasker shot for the former wins high praise to this day but Lean fired him immediately afterwards, believing the legendary Australian not to be up to the task of photographing the rest of the latter.

We can only imagine the brilliant work Krasker might have made of Olivier’s subsequent Shakespeare adaptations, Hamlet and Richard II, just as we can only imagine what he could have done with Lawrence of Arabia and other David Lean films.

Fact Checks

  • “Robert Krasker—The Director of Photography” – Correct.
  • “Jack Hildyard—Operating Cameraman” – Correct.

Links

  • WikipediaRKO Pictures – RKO-British aka RKO British Productions was a division or spin-off of RKO Pictures aka RKO Radio Pictures.
  • WikipediaTwo Cities Films

Footnotes

  1. Kevin Desmond, A Glimpse of KraskerEyepiece, London, Part 1: September 1990, Part 2: November 1990, page 25.
  2. Laurence Olivier, Bekenntnisse Eines Schauspielers, ISBN 10: 3362002722, ISBN 13: 9783362002721, 1988, page 155; Laurence Olivier, Confessions of an Actor: An Autobiography, Simon & Schuster, 1982, ISBN 10: 0671417010.