Part 2: On the path to the summit

Farewell to Périnal

England was at war! The liberal production methods of Alexander Korda were a thing of the past. The film industry was subordinated to the Ministry of Information. Many studios were turned into storage rooms for war materials. Raw film was conserved. England was so surprised by the sudden war that it lacked everything. The expansive Korda, who had just made his pathetic commitment to England – “Becoming a British citizen and taking a British passport was not, to me, helped so important as the feeling that I belonged, the thought that I had put down roots here” ¹ – stayed in America. From June 1940 to May 1943 he lived and worked in California ². In January 1940, his brother Zoltan had already traveled to Arizona and California to cure his tuberculosis. The Kordas had made themselves invisible in the country’s most difficult hour – albeit leaving behind gigantic debts. The Korda name was no longer good for credit in Britain.

The well-proven Denham team also scattered. Employees were drafted into the military, others looked for new positions. The foreign employees had to return to their home countries. Prudential Insurance owned the Denham studios, while London Film Productions existed in name only. Robert Krasker, who had not been called up for military service because of his unstable health, had to look for work. His mentor and friend Georges Périnal turned down the offer to go to America with Korda and work there. He did not want to join the professional organization of American cameramen, the American Society of Cinematographers (ASC), which would have been a prerequisite for any work in America. He did not return to France either, although as a foreigner he was now subject to work restrictions in England and was no longer allowed to move about freely. He stayed, but worked significantly less.

Périnal and Krasker shot Old Bill and Son (1940) at the Denham studios for the Legeran production company, which Zoltan Korda had founded and which only produced this one film.

Some of the old team were still there: music director Muir Mathieson, editor Charles Crichton, architect Vincent Korda, who had not followed his brothers to America, and English sound engineer A.W. Watkins. There was a depressed atmosphere in the studio, even the director Ian Dalrymple could not find joy in his film after the shooting was over. “The film opened in London just as France fell – ‘So did the film’, says Dalrymple” ³.

Krasker had switched to the British arm of American RKO Radio Film. They set up their offices in Denham and brought their own people with them. The few films still produced in England had one clear purpose: to promote Britain’s war aims. Such is the plot of Dangerous Moonlight (1941), which Périnal photographed with Krasker in the second year of the war. A Polish aviator and an Irish woman fall in love, and when the Pole finds out he can work as a pilot in England, he enlists in the Royal Air Force. The lovers are separated, but are reunited. Director Brian Desmond Hurst wanted to create a multinational mix of characters so that he could show the international struggle against fascism in Germany.

This film became a farewell. It was the last time Robert Krasker and Georges Périnal worked together. Krasker knew that he could develop only if he managed to step away from Périnal’s shadow. He had worked with the Frenchman for nine years, working together on twelve films during that time. The master had to dismiss the disciple in order to enable the disciple to become a master himself.

Perry and the light

“Perry”, as Périnal was called by his team, had shown Krasker how contrasts could be modelled even with weak light sources, what a striking effect penumbra could have, how masterfully chiaroscuro could be used to record the inner drama of a film and sharpen the viewer’s perception. Périnal’s visual language was never imposed from the outside, but always developed from within the film’s content. Périnal was able to translate emotions into images. The close-up shots of people everywhere in Things to Come after the city was bombed, and the fear, anxiety and paralysis reflected on their faces would not have been as effective without subtle and careful lighting. Périnal loved the perfect, the technically correct work and his student was only too happy to follow him.

Beyond the artistic, “Perry” and “Bob”, as they called each other, also got along well on a human level. The older Frenchman must have appreciated Robert’s quiet reliability. Not everyone on the set understood what they had to say to each other: Périnal spoke French with Robert. At least as long as the others didn’t hear it.

Périnal appreciated everything mechanical. He once said that he would have liked best to become a motor vehicle mechanic and repair speedy speedsters in his small workshop. That, he suggested, might have been a greater pleasure than filming the presumptuous ideas of megalomaniacal filmmakers. Robert Krasker also shared this love of cars. As soon as he could afford it, he drove small, fast sports cars himself.

But Périnal was also a ‘solid’ guy, someone you could rely on and who, on the other hand, showed enough presence of mind in the chaos of unforeseeable crises during filming. Périnal’s humility and friendliness radiated to the team around the camera and the focus pullers, clapper boys and operators formed an island, a pillar of mutual trust in the studio, almost a family. Périnal and Krasker seemed to be made of similar stuff.

When Georges Périnal died in London in 1965 at the age of 68 – the same age, by the way, as Robert Krasker, who also only lived to be 68 – director René Clair wrote about his former cameraman: “a little melancholy, a little lonely; gentle and smiling, passionately involved in his work alone, into which he poured the care and the desire for perfection which made him one of the great masters of the art (…) Georges Périnal came to the movies as a modest artisan, and artisan he remained to the end of his days.” ⁴

He could have used those words to describe Robert Krasker.

One of Our Aircraft is Missing: on a higher plane

England trembled before German bombers attacked strategically important targets, England feared the invasion of German troops. Would Hitler dare take the British Isles? In this situation, the studios lacked that light-heartedness that is needed to make films, a fear-free space that makes artistic work possible.

Robert Krasker sought contact with new filmmakers who might secure him employment. He met the Englishman Michael Powell, who had shown particular talent as a director with the Hebridean film The Edge of the World (1937) and had been immediately signed by Korda. His partner was again a Hungarian – Emeric Pressburger, born in Miskolc and a versatile talent – as a screenwriter, director and producer. Together they had founded the production company The Archers, together they became the kings of entertainment films in Great Britain in the 40s and 50s. But working with Powell and Pressburger didn’t extend beyond that one film. Krasker was unable to maintain this contact.

Powell and Pressburger produced One of Our Aircraft is Missing (1942). In August 1941, shooting began for the film, which Robert Krasker supervised as associate photographer together with Ronald Neame as chief cameraman. This work alone took six months to complete. The shoot was not under a lucky star: two months earlier, the Austrian cameraman Otto Kanturek, who had lived and worked in England since 1933, had fallen and died while taking aerial photographs. It was a warning sign that everyone understood and that must have affected everyone.

The very first scene in One of Our Aircraft is Missing showed the relentlessly harsh reality of war. A letter appears on the Dutch government-in-exile stationery in London, “In the summer of 1941 five Dutchmen were executed by the Herrenvolk for assisting in the escape of a British Air Crew”. We see an empty cockpit in a flying airplane, empty engine rooms. In the flight center, a British flight observer says that there is still no report from “B for Bertie”. Then, at dawn, we see the low-flying plane approaching a steel pylon of a power line at treetop level. It shatters and bursts into flames. The sudden crash is frightening. It says in the text that appears, “B for Bertie crashed on Sunday morning 04.31 but our story starts some fifteen hours earlier”. The film only slowly reveals that the British flight crew jumped over the Netherlands and is now trying to escape to England. Their Dutch helpers are later killed by the Nazis.

Awe-inspiring in its quiet consistency, consistency and unflinchingness, this first sequence is a testament to the skill and sensitivity of editor David Lean, who was to play a part in Robert Krasker’s life. They met while filming this propaganda film.

The film culminates in a scene in a Dutch church where the fleeing English soldiers mingle with the faithful. The priest speaks the liturgy and during the prayer the door of the church opens and a German officer strides silently and menacingly through the church. Will he discover the British? Everyone looks depressed, in agreement, while the rays of light shine brightly through the church window in this wordless scene. In the close-up, light and shadow are reflected on the anxious faces. Especially penumbra. The room is lit from outside by bright light coming through the windows. More light seeps in through the half-open door. The artful lighting emphasizes the tense and dangerous atmosphere. ⁵

Despite the clear message, there is also an ambivalence in this film. Right from the start, the Germans are described as the “master race” and portrayed as merciless Nazi henchmen who are occupying the Netherlands and treating their opponents mercilessly. But when German soldiers flee to one of the life rafts in the sea and meet English soldiers there, they are more comrades than enemies. ⁶

In 1942 Krasker was still working on Rose of Tralee (1942), a hot-blooded love story from Ireland, which deals with longing and unfulfilled love and plays a major role in the music. Created with the most economical means, the film took up an Irish song that was also very popular in England and reflects the mood of this film:

The pale moon was rising above the green mountains, 
The sun was declining beneath the blue sea,
When I strayed with my love by the pure crystal fountain, 
That stands in the beautiful Vale of Tralee

Krasker shared the photographic work with Jack Parker.

Another setback

As if everyone didn’t already have enough to worry about in this third year of the war in which ration cards had to be handed out and everyone lived in constant fear of further Nazi bomber attacks on London and other cities. The war was becoming more and more of a nightmare. Robert Krasker also had to worry about his health. He was still struggling with the long-term effects of the malaria infection he had contracted in 1938. He took medication regularly, which was not easy for him. Due to the constant intake of quinine, his blood sugar level fluctuated considerably and he repeatedly suffered from bouts of fever. His extremely fragile nature and weak constitution could not easily shake off this disease.

In 1942, at the age of 29, he was diagnosed with diabetes; and not the simpler form of Type 2, which is easier to treat and control, but a Type 1 disease that has no genetic roots, which is an acquired disease. Immediate treatment with insulin was essential. The deficiency had to be compensated for by a constant supply of insulin. This “diabetes mellitus” was difficult to get under control because the disease of the autoimmune system was so severe.

The fear was that ketoacidosis would result as a result of the lack of insulin. In extreme cases, it leads to fainting within a very short time, which can turn into a coma without timely outside help and is life-threatening. This slipping into a coma was and remained a lifelong, acute danger for Robert Krasker. That is why he could not live without medication and was not allowed to be without people who could help him in an emergency.

It must have seemed like the end of the young man’s career when the doctors revealed this scenario to him. The production of artificial insulin only succeeded 20 years before. Robert Krasker had to carry syringes with him all the time and had to inject insulin into his leg using large cannulas. In addition, determining blood sugar was always a gamble – how exactly could it be identified? There was no finger-prick test yet. You had to rely on experience.

Krasker realized that he was not resilient, that as a social person he had to live according to medical rules and that there were many things he was not allowed to do and many things that he could not do. Getting up early, the long days in the studio, the stress, the arguments, the constant delays, the endless shooting dates abroad, the stresses of the pulsing heat of the studio spotlights – his health would have been better served by the quiet life of an office worker. Because in this shark pond of ‘film’ how could he hope that his sensitive constitution would be taken into account? Although this illness determined the rest of his life, he could not give up his job, especially not now, shortly before his first film of his own.

The Gentle Sex: a train station full of women

“Leslie Howard‘s film The Gentle Sex also presented me with a most interesting problem. Seven actresses, all in their own way beautiful, all playing roles of equal importance, yet all widely different in looks and personalities. To have treated them all with the same technique would have been courting flatness and artistic boredom. I had to work out a different approach for each and mould them into a cohesive and practical whole.”

– Robert Krasker ⁷

Krasker’s Opus One. How did he deal with his newly acquired freedom, freed from all the shackles of his second Director of Photography, Périnal? How did he set up the lighting? How did he photograph the action? How did he put himself in the emotional context of this film?

1942, the third year of the war. Britain’s will to persevere must not flag. The year before, the British Parliament had passed legislation that made it compulsory for all women between the ages of 20 and 30 to join the ATS, or Auxiliary Territorial Services. The ATS became the British Army’s female division. The young women were not drafted into service with arms, but worked in kitchens, offices, clothing stores or army matériel administration. As the war dragged on, they were also trained as truck drivers and helped out with radar and anti-aircraft guns.

This is where the film begins. Based on the fate of seven women, he shows what awaits them in the ATS, how this service for the threatened country is changing women’s self-perceptions and lives. And at the same time, the initiators of this “last” reserve invoked supposed virtues of women such as unpretentiousness, modesty, obedience and submissiveness. But that was the mortgage that women in this situation in England took out on themselves. In no way do they redeem these alleged virtues in this film. On the contrary!

This film is also notable for the fact that, as a young Director of Photography, Krasker spoke at length about the actors and his technique of handling and photographing them. One of the few self-testimonies that exist for his work.

The first picture shows a station hall, which we see from above – a man is leaning on the parapet and the camera moves past him towards the hall. The hall is set up in Denham’s studio and this first picture already shows how Krasker works. [This text refers to a still-frame from The Gentle Sex that I will add here later along with other relevant photographs – Ed.]

The hall “lives” from light and shadow, it has depth, movement and vitality. It looks “good”, harmonious, warm, friendly, with indirect lighting. There is a bright mood, nothing about farewell, pain and finality, as later in the station of the film Brief Encounter, but a station in the lives of these women – they say goodbye to their families and friends there to take up a post. Rather domestic all sorts, farewell to the mother, but no drama. Everyone knows they’re coming back – perhaps humanly changed, but not physically endangered. Therefore no sharp light-shadow contrasts, but diversely differentiated brightness.

In front we see a grid with a phone booth that says “Southern”. Eye-catching is a large clock hanging over the hall showing 10.05 (and not turning even though it is closer to 10.05 am because despite the time of day there is no daylight in the hall). Below that are the display cases with the timetables, lamps hanging next to the pillars that support the roof. People come and go, a cart is pushed through the hall. The light is scattered in many ways, less focused by reflectors and comes from above, from the sides, from the direction of the camera, the people in the middle of the hall cast a variety of shadows. There are islands of light everywhere. The back part of the hall is brighter. In the middle of the hall, where the crowd is the thickest, strong light falls from the ceiling, the dark suits of some men stand out clearly from the crowd.

Now the camera is starting to move, but we’re not done with the lens zooming in on the people we’re meant to see. The camera only left the platform after a wide aperture and now hovers slightly above the heads of the people in the station. The narrator (Leslie Howard): “Women, women, all over the place, this station is seething with women, they think they’re helping, I suppose, rushing about, what can it do to them? Well. Let’s swoop down and have a closer look at them, take a cross-section of them, take a handful, a couple of armfuls: the weaker sex, the fair sex, the gentle sex”.

Crowd in medium shot. The camera moves closer, takes a closer look at the faces and focuses on the porter who is carrying the suitcases for two women. The first close-up shows a younger and an older woman, with the older one carrying a dog in her arms.

Cut. Then a close-up of Betty (Joan Greenwood), her face white all over, very brightly lit, a woman who doesn’t hide, who is expressive, is open and shadowless, who hides nothing, equally beautiful and young, but also a strong character. Krasker keeps the key light directly behind the camera but uses fill light from the sides. The beauty of her even face shines. “I can’t believe I am off,” Joan says to her mother, who replies, “For Heaven’s sake, don’t get lost.” She stops again and now Krasker lets the accent light come from diagonally above, so that the right side of her face is slightly shadowed during the movement. The camera moves very close, only the neck casts a shadow. The women separate.

The camera now switches back to the balustrade and zooms down again. Anne (Joyce Howard) comes into the picture, blond, radiant, unusually pretty, vulnerable, a slightly wistful line around her mouth. Again, Krasker works with the key light from above, but the camera follows her into the crowd but doesn’t follow her, stopping now at Maggie (Rosamund John) with her mother, both of whom are leaning against a platform ticket machine. Both are wearing hats and Krasker now sets the light so strongly from above that the brim of the hat casts a shadow up to the eyebrows ⁸.

This mother is also full of parting pain. “When I get home, the house will never be the same.” And now Krasker mounts a spotlight on the floor that shines its light straight up, leaving Maggie’s neck without a shadow but casting shadows on her face. One suspects: this young woman does not yet know exactly how she will deal with the new situation. She seems insecure, fickle, dependent on external influences.

Quite different is Dot (Jean Gillie), who says goodbye to her elegant dandy boyfriend. She is a young, confident woman and that is how Krasker photographs her: light from above again, with strong fill light from the sides so that her partner casts shadows on the wall, slight exaggeration of the cheeks, then the neck is shadowed, fill light from an angle below. She says “I want new people” and her face is mostly shadowless and very determined. Only the nose casts a slight shadow. Krasker places the camera below the line of her eyes and then points the lens up, making Dot look very sophisticated from this perspective and appear even taller than she might actually be. But she dominates this situation. However, the cameraman photographs her friend from above. In this situation, the boyfriend is the smaller, the inferior, the man Dot wants to part with, whom she looks down on and who has no place in her new life. When he finally says quite simply, “I’m gonna miss you”, the cameraman must also have felt sympathy and releases him from this perspective with a soft cut.

Erna (Lilli Palmer) appears in the throng of people in the train station. She’s alone, she’s running away from something, she’s worried, maybe confused, a delicate woman who has experienced hardships, whose face is marked by sorrow and worry. She turns her head to the right because she’s looking for something, and the right side of her face is shadowed as the narrator says, “so lost and so angry.” Then again leading light from the right. She wanders through the hall – always pursued by the interplay between light and shadow. Lilli Palmer fascinates the face-loving cameraman from the start – perhaps because, though this is not said in the film, she has experienced a lot of bad and unpleasant things. All of this can also be found in this first shot. ⁹

This opening scene introduces us to the women in this film and already characterizes these main characters through the photography and the way they put themselves in the picture. The train station scene alone lasts five minutes and consists of 47 cuts and three tracking shots – an elaborate, tediously rehearsed, carefully and precisely lit prologue to the actual plot.

What happens at night

The women come to terms with their new lives, they get to know the drill, they march, they have to drive big trucks ¹⁰ and are also assigned to work at night. The men appreciate them and sometimes there are also civilian “touches” – for example at a dance in the barracks canteen. A band is playing and pretty Anne is summoned by Flying Officer David Sheridan (John Justin), who immediately captivates her with his fresh, masculine nature. While the others continue to dance, both go in front of the barracks. It’s night outside. “Krasker night”, a carefully composed chiaroscuro.

Now he lights a cigarette. The blazing light of the match lights up David’s face for a few seconds. The flame is so bright that it can hardly come from a normal match. Then David shows what he is rolling back and forth in his hand: a cartridge with a swastika welded onto it. “It came from a ME-109 ¹¹ or what was left of it”. Fighter pilot David found this cartridge in the wreckage of an airplane. He asks Anne if she would like to keep this cartridge. ¹²

In this half-minute, the camera unfolds the emotional content of this scene in front of the viewer and, through the relationship between light and shadow, makes this slowly evolving relationship between the two clear. This scene is designed from the inside out, it allows the shimmering, the emotional, the slowly developing, the secret of this first encounter to arise before the eye of the viewer. In the second part of the scene, which is broken up by eight cuts and only lasts 1’11”, the atmosphere from the first scene is carried on. The two get closer than a cigarette length. In the close-up, with weak light from the left and right, David appears very thoughtful and sympathetic. “What are we fighting for?” he asks Anne. And continues: “Mainly to create a world fit for living. We are sick of a world where people have to die because they don’t know how to live. For the first time in history we have something to live for … instead of something to die for. You have got to fight for peace”. And then David adds surprisingly arrogantly: “Were you listening?” – “Of course, I was”, Anne replies obediently.

The darkness seems to wrap a band around the two, the weak islands of light that are placed there draw attention away from the barely recognizable externals. Here are two talking who find themselves in a tragic tangle in a war and want to give in to the delicate web of a budding love.

The dialogue is enhanced on film because the subtext is determined by the cameraman – the two fall in love with each other. The ambiance, the surroundings, the careful lighting, the highlighting of just some parts of the two faces, the playing moonlight, all contribute to turning the rational dialogue into its emotional opposite. We hear the words, but the camera tells the real story.

Photographing the Stars: Krasker lets you study his cards

Five years later, Robert Krasker explained his concept as a cameraman in more detail in an essay in the film magazine Picturegoer 13. He also refers to The Gentle Sex – the quotes are incorporated as captions [To still-frames and photographs… Ed.] in this chapter. He allows himself to be studied with great openness. His introductory remark goes to the heart of his work: “The stars of the cinema, like the stars of the firmament, are all different shapes and sizes, and each scintillates in his (or her) own particular way. Each requires a different camera and lighting treatment to bring out the individual quality of perfection”. But what does perfection mean? When it comes to the characters, Krasker limits himself to “physical beauty”.

Renée Asherson, for example, has a cheeky snub nose that suits her role as Katherine in Henry V perfectly. “The basis of good camera work, contrary to popular illusion, lies in truth”. Actor Leslie Howard refused to wear make-up because he wanted to look “natural” on screen. Krasker points out how difficult it was for him to photograph the make-up-free Leslie Howard next to other actors with make-up on. “I had to combine two different lighting techniques in one shot”.

For the cameraman, it’s about recognizing and working out the individuality of an actor, emphasizing it but not exaggerating it. A distorted image of Joan Greenwood in The Gentle Sex would have resulted if she had only been portrayed as lovely and delicate, thereby suppressing her strong character.

When is someone photogenic, asks the cameraman. He comes up with his own priority list of what he looks for first on a face: “Nose, eyes, lines of expression, chin-line, cheek bones, teeth, hair-line and mouth”. No face has two exactly equal halves. Only once did he photograph an actress who had exactly the same halves of her face – Vivien Leigh, in Caesar and Cleopatra. And he thinks how much easier the job of a director and cameraman could be if they didn’t have to worry about whether the right side of the face or the wrong side was in the frame. Krasker pays particular attention to noses. “An unfortunate nose shadow can literally ‘kill’ a face’s character”.

To find out what a person is like, you have to look them in the eye. The eyes tell something about people. “Thus one of the secrets of camera work is to take this human habit into account and inject it into an inanimate object, namely the camera”. What he would prefer are actors who act unfazed in front of the camera and simply forget the lens.

Clear words that seem programmatic in their absoluteness and make Krasker one of those cameramen who didn’t stand behind the scenes with a cool lust for technology and could tell the lighting technicians how many watts should be aimed at which detail. This method of getting involved with the respective personalities, far away from a purely technical point of view, allows Krasker to be recognized as an empathetic image designer. He had delivered the first testimony to this art of admission with The Gentle Sex.

The Chronicle History of King Henry the Fift with His Battell Fought at Agincourt in France or, A Colourful Challenge

“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 ¹⁴

“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 ¹⁵

It’s hard to imagine that the 30-year-old Robert Krasker, who was just responsible for his fourth film, was so relaxed and critical of the icon of British acting, the already famous actor and director Laurence Olivier! Olivier’s blunt statement about Krasker reflects the contrast between the two: Krasker, the man of realism who could capture reality on film and knew what his camera lens saw, and Olivier, who wanted to play with many realities, who did not possess a “photographic” eye but a concept of substance.

The biggest problem was the colour. The producers insisted. Although the process had evolved since the first encounter with Technicolor in 1937, it had not fundamentally changed. Briefed and trained at Technicolor’s Denham labs, Robert Krasker also knew the pitfalls. Initially, in the war year of 1943, there was only one 3-strip Technicolor camera in the whole country that was available for this film. This giant box was as expensive as two homes and feared: it was clumsy and unwieldy, like a freezer set upon stilts. The two film magazines in the camera generated so much noise in the studio that sound recording was impossible. So the magazines had to be sound-insulated, “blimped”.

The inner workings of this iron box were delicate. Three black and white films ran synchronously through the camera. Behind the lens was a square prism, which was composed of two 45° prisms and was provided with a translucent gold layer in the diagonal. This prism directed 25% of the incident light directly onto the first film, which recorded only green tones through a filter. At right angles to this film gate was a second film gate onto which 75% of the light was transmitted through the prism.

Two films ran on top of each other behind this film window. A magenta (aniline red) filter transmitted blue and red light recorded from these two films. The three film strips were only brought together in the laboratory and then all the tones of the colour scale were mixed from the colours cyan blue, magenta and yellow. The Technicolor film had to be “printed”.

However, there was an improvement that all cameramen appreciated: the sensitivity of the Technicolor film material could be increased threefold, so that the light requirement of 3,600 lux was not required as with the first films, which made the studio vibrate with heat and all the actors and technicians constantly breaking out in a sweat. You no longer needed light-absorbing filter panes in front of the spotlights in the studio. Now about 1,500 lux was enough, still a lot, but no longer four times the amount of light as for a black-and-white film. In addition, during the lengthy studio recordings, it had to be considered that spotlights were in short supply due to the war and electricity was rationed.

Colour also required a completely different way of thinking. Paul Sheriff, Laurence Olivier and Carmen Dillon discussed which colours should prevail and what the leading shades could be. A lot of challenge for a Director of Photography in the second year of his self-employment!

Filming a complex Shakespeare story in the middle of the war, not only in colour and with hundreds of extras and horses, but also with a gigantic budget and expensive equipment, seemed presumptuous. But Laurence Olivier and his producer Dallas Bower didn’t give up and finally found the right sponsor in Filippo del Giudice, who owned the production company Two Cities and who was fascinated by Olivier’s acting skills. The government’s War Office was also helpful. The film had the highest budget ever for a film in England: £350,000. However, the real cost was closer to £475,000. ¹⁶ Del Giudice could not finance such sums and had to sell his company to J. Arthur Rank in the course of filming.

Krasker had put together a good team: Jack Hildyard, five years his senior, was a camera operator with whom he had already worked on the shooting of The Lamp Still Burns (1943), and Bill Wall, who had already worked with The Thief of Baghdad had shown that he could confidently handle the enormous light volumes that would be required. The hardest part was filmed first: the team traveled to Enniskerry, Ireland for eight weeks in late summer 1943 to stage the Battle of Agincourt. Studio recording at Denham’s studios continued for another sixteen weeks. The film was finished in early 1944 and was released in cinemas at the end of November 1944 – five months after the Allied troops had invaded France. ¹⁷

“Make the picture flow”

Krasker keeps the camera constantly moving and stages this “flow” from the very first picture. An accurate depiction of the camera movements in the first twelve minutes of this film up to the first appearance of Henry shows how Krasker dissolves the brittle material into a series of interwoven and interrelated tracking shots.

In an almost two-minute segment, the camera first moves over a model of Elizabethan London, travels from the Tower over London Bridge, over the Thames to two round buildings that are open in the middle. The camera then moves to the side and now focuses on the first rotunda, in which the flag is just being raised. The camera looks into the open roof. Then cut to the flag with the inscription “Globe Playhouse”.

The camera is now in the theatre. A man in red stockings and a brownish hat ties the flag at the bottom. The camera remains mobile, waits for the man’s trumpet signal and slides down one floor in a medium long shot without any cuts, where the musicians have been waiting for this signal and are now beginning to play. But the camera continues to explore the theatre, pans to the side – still in a medium long shot – and now moves towards the stands, where the spectators in their colourful costumes await the start. In a lateral turning movement, the first row comes into the picture and from there a woman lets a handkerchief fall down into the parquet floor. Cut.

A woman catches the handkerchief, the camera is now on the floor but remains at eye level with the audience. In a semi-close shot, she now follows a woman who carries a large pannier full of apples ¹⁸ in front of her and praises them to the audience. A well-dressed gentleman in black walks past, but soon gets lost in the turmoil. The camera continues to move towards the stage. People greet each other there, there is still confusion, the music is playing, the camera remains in the long shot and stands symmetrically to the middle of the stage. We can rest. The audience is introduced, we get an impression of the conditions in this theatre. ¹⁹

A boy appears on stage, holding a sign announcing the title of the play. The camera now moves behind the boys and for the first time we see the audience from the stage’s point of view, again from the medium long shot. counter cut. From the balcony follows a long shot of the stage at an angle of 45°. The camera also stays up there when Leslie Banks appears, the man who personifies the choir: “O for a muse of fire” he begins – but already with the second part of this movement “that would ascend the brightest heaven of invention” the camera switches back to the perspective of the audience in the stalls and follows Bank’s movements from this perspective, constantly changing between medium long shot and medium close-up without a cut.

But then something unexpected happens: Banks comes to the edge of the stage, the camera moves towards him from below, changes to the close-up without a cut, remains standing at the slightly inclined angle and Banks is allowed to address all of us: “On your imaginary forces work”. We are addressed directly.

The number boy reappears: “Ante Chamber of King Henry’s Palace” and immediately the camera pans up to what is happening now above the stage, where the Archbishop of Canterbury (Felix Aylmer) and the Bishop of Ely (Robert Helpmann) concoct their rancour: “My Lord, I’ll tell you. That same bill is urged…” The camera moves to a semi-close shot, maintaining the low-angle angle, but swaying slightly in the frame, as if to indicate that an audience is standing, cannot stand perfectly still. Nothing distracts. The camera is just as focused as the viewers. Not a word should be lost.

At the mention of Sir John Falstaff, however, there is unrest in the audience, the camera shows the angry spectators in three opposite shots from above, each in a long shot, that is, from the perspective of the two churchmen. Henry banned Falstaff, the audience is furious about it.

Cut. Backstage. The camera looks through an open staircase from behind. The two come down and the camera follows them through the crowd of actors putting on makeup and costumes. It’s a throng of people, staged with great attention to detail. The camera remains in a long shot in a long shot. Only now, at 12’30”, Henry comes into the picture for the first time, from the left, in a close-up, with a crown and a flowing red cloak. Before his performance, Laurence Olivier nervously clears his throat again. Yes, he now has to step in front of the audience, go out onto the stage, but the camera only follows him a few metres. It stops in the side entrance to the stage, switches from the close-up to the long shot. The film viewers experience the first appearance of the king through the stage door. Olivier bows to his audience: “Where is my gracious Lord of Canterbury…”

On soft soles

This last image has tremendous depth of field and is a carefully composed image. ²⁰ To the left and right, the doorposts limit the view of the king and the audience. The camera crew is in great form – when the king walks past the camera and turns his back on it, the image is perforce blurred until the focus puller has then tracked the sharpness and the lens allows him to capture both the actor and the actor in the long shot bring the audience into focus again.

Krasker and Olivier masterfully juggle several realities here – because at first Olivier is still “playing” the king in a theatrical performance, but as the film progresses Olivier “is” the king before finally becoming an actor again. With this distancing attitude, this interplay between the cinematic realities is indicated.

The camera always remains in the observing role. It refrains from acting itself and does not develop any dynamics of its own. The camera performs, following the actors’ movements, showing the viewer as much as possible and adding accompanying images to the text. The camera is mounted on a rubber-tired carriage and drives around the actors. Then it is in turn attached to a crane and can thus effortlessly and weightlessly record the height of the Globe Theatre. As the camera pans, it pans gently, sometimes imperceptibly, directing the viewer’s eye. The flow and gliding of these first shots sets the concept for the whole film.

The production of a colour film also remained an equation with unknowns for the camera crew. The viewfinder was mounted sideways on the camera, so there was significant parallax – the operator saw what he was photographing with a shift. Second, the “rushes” (quick copies or “dailies”) that the laboratory delivered the next morning could only be viewed in black and white. So they didn’t allow any conclusions about how saturated the image would really be. It took days for a copy to be made that provided more detailed information. In addition, the cameraman had to use as little film as possible because the war forced rationing and the camera ran three films at the same time rather than one film. The Technicolor colour consultants, led by Natalie Kalmus, also attempted to elucidate their firm’s artistic approach to designers, architects, directors and cinematographers. ²¹ Three-quarters of the footage shot was used in the film’s final cut. ²²

The long camera ride

We left the stage. After a soft fade we are in front of the “Boar’s Head Tavern”. It’s night. A ray of light lies on the entrance of the old half-timbered house. The upper floor is illuminated with a bluish-green light, a window glows faintly from within. On the left of the house the deep dark red guild sign of the inn. On the first floor, a woman in a white cap opens the window (at 31’50”), looks out and disappears again, but leaves the two panes of the window open. Now the camera slowly moves from below and moves up to the window. Very carefully, still hesitantly, as if to say: can we do that?

The long shot becomes a medium long shot, the camera approaches the window. Nobody knows what’s behind it yet. The camera makes a half arc and now moves directly towards the window, while the cellos of the film music (William Walton) play minor tones on the low strings. Only when the camera appears to be on the windowsill do we realize that an old, bearded man is lying on a bed – Sir John Falstaff. The colours are restrained, the room, more of a closet, is dark, only one wall is lit.

The camera moves on: through the window, onto the bed and goes into a close-up without the tracking shot being interrupted by a cut. John Falstaff (George Robey) lies in bed, sits up, the camera freezes and says: “God save thy Grace, King Hal, my royal Hal, God save thee, my sweet boy”. An old man lies on his deathbed and his last words are of unbreakable loyalty to his king.

Then Falstaff hears his king’s voice: “I know thee not, old man”. Now Falstaff sits up, the camera comes closer – still in the same tracking shot – and goes into the close-up. It moves close to his face, not avoiding all of the man’s pain. Falstaff can’t believe it when he hears Henry’s voice: “…that I have turned away my former self, so shall I those that kept me company”. Now the camera is very close to Falstaff’s face, he cannot bear these merciless words from his king, he cannot and does not want to believe them and sinks back onto his pillow. He dies.

This uninterrupted tracking shot lasts 125 seconds. The camera seems to be holding its breath, no one dares to breathe for this long tracking shot to succeed. The light on Falstaff’s face comes from the right and flickers like the candle next to his bed, the background is a dark red-green curtain.

Everything is in the mood for war, everyone is screaming and full of lust for victory – but up there, in this old inn, in a dark room lies a man for whom victories no longer mean anything, who has lived his life and is forgotten. And just as one hesitates before opening the door to a dead man’s room and reflects again on the threshold, the camera slowly and respectfully moves up to this window.

Horses, wagons, swords: the battle

Sixty-four minutes of film pass before it finally says: off to battle the French! The horses are saddled, the armoured men are mounted, the trumpet calls are sounded, the lances are cleaned, the sights are down and the troops are arrayed. And then it says: Attack! Or more nobly: “All things are ready if our minds be so!” Henry decides to fight and the small town of Agincourt, northwest of Arras in France, achieves historical fame on October 25, 1415.

“God be with you all” – that is the battle cry. Henry cheers on his warriors, jumping gracefully from the cart onto his waiting horse. His soldiers hammer pointed trunks into the ground, intended to injure the enemy, the music lets the horns flare up martially, drums are beaten, the king dons his protective chain mail, ²³ the enemy lines form up, crossbow-armed warriors with helmets march with them, armoured horses in front, armour and swords and lances and flags are proudly carried in front – more colourful than threatening. Cinema in Technicolor.

At 97′ the cameraman comes up with something new. The armies are still marching towards each other. But the camera films a puddle on the meadow. The horses and warriors are reflected in the puddle and you can hear the smacking sound of the hooves in the water. To enhance this effect, the camera pans across the muddy meadow with the horses until a horse gets too close to the camera and the shot is interrupted. The music further dramatizes this moment of encounter.

Now the warriors can no longer avoid each other. The camera is mounted on a trolley that can race along specially laid tracks on the Powerscourt Estate near Enniskerry, Ireland. Action time. The battle order of the French – and this is where the camera is now – is symmetrical and well ordered. All stand in the same line, all horses in a row. The camera car sees them and drives off. Light gait. Also on the car behind the camera are the headlights that amplify and brighten the light of these Irish days. The horses and their riders cast long shadows. Intermediate cut: The men stretch their crossbows. Cut: Henry watches, composed.

Then again the order of battle. Now the camera truck is getting faster. It no longer stays in line with the horses, but overtakes them. Trot, fast trot, turning into canter. Some riders stay behind. The mob of warriors becomes more disordered. The camera continues to pick up speed and keeps the perspective: long shot. Then gallop. The camera races with the horses. Then the camera moves too fast, it seems to fly, horses and men give their last, cut: the archers aim, Henry raises his arm and gives the signal, the sharpened pegs come into the picture with which the galloping French cavalry should be stopped. Cut. Then Henry again, who is supposed to give the command. Cut to the crossbowmen shooting their arrows. Cut. The flurry of arrows flies towards enemies and hits them. ²⁴. Then everyone falls on each other, horses fall, swords clash, flags catch fire, warriors drop dead to the ground, horses collapse – there was something to see for the entrance fee.

What colour reveals

When the Danish film director Carl Theodor Dreyer ²⁵ analyzed the best colour films of the first twenty years of colour film history in 1955, he also included Henry V. “Olivier picked up the ideas for his choice of colours from miniatures of medieval manuscripts.”

Olivier and Krasker had agreed on a colour rule of thumb: the English, the good guys, are “red”, the French, the ones to be fought, that is, the not-so-good guys, are “blue” – bourbon blue. The costumes and decorations were based on these two basic tones. On the English side, the “warm” colours prevail in all shades, on the French side, the rather “cold” ones. All further considerations followed this dramaturgical concept.

In the first twelve minutes of the film, muted colours dominate – dark reds mixed with browns and yellows. The curtain on the stage, in front of which the first few minutes unfold, is kept in warm red with heraldry on a dark blue background. It is only when Henry appears that bright colours suddenly come into the picture: his jacket is a monochrome, commanding red. All the other costumes are kept in darker shades of red, which makes the “boss” appear all the more radiant. Monochrome red is the colour of the king and Henry also sees red: he wants to crush the French and extend his dominion to France. Red is an expression of vitality, of life energy ²⁶, on a metaphorical level it stands for joie de vivre, desire, sexuality, eroticism, fantasy, stands for active, exciting, challenging and imperious. All this is Henry. But red is also the colour of war. Henry is not only a general, a battle leader, but also a lover. ²⁷ Even in the long love scene at the end of the film, he wears a radiant red.

Here, too, the red colour has symbolic power – Henry is the aggressive ruler who is in charge. Katherine is his victim. She has no choice but to say yes. The colours give it away: in a turquoise dress with white trimmings and a cap that takes up the turquoise tone of the dress and a white veil, she stands opposite him. These colours, which fluctuate between green and blue, stand for loyalty, modesty, seriousness and hope – an ideal queen for the united kingdom.

During this long scene, the lighting changes. First of all, this white-painted “kitsch” scenery in an imaginary palace, in which the two meet, is exactly what Krasker criticized about the whole film: “terribly phoney”. High stylization goes hand in hand with high artificiality. But then Krasker takes the lighting, which is cold, clear, bright and shadowless at first, back a little and makes it warmer, thereby allowing the emotional quality of this scene to come to the fore.

Katherine and Henry cast shadows in the bay window, in which they also get closer spatially, they become quite real people. Strong light from above mixes with fill light, but diffusion softens their outlines. The camera always remains at eye level, at a slight angle to the line of the eye, and changes gently in the movement between long shots and medium shots and close-up shots. Alice, the lady-in-waiting, wears a brown dress with a white collar and white veil. She looks like her colours: non-erotic, comfortable, reliable, conservative – and the viewer suspects: as long as she stands there, nothing will happen to Katherine, the shy person.

The French are completely different. First of all, the colour blue is very cold. She emphasizes the casual arrogance of the French and their pride. But not continuously. At the moment when the costumes and decorations get an ultramarine blue tone, they also have a beneficial, calming and passive effect. Krasker insists on light intensity. The garish white walls of the royal palace signal joie de vivre, but also little discipline and chaos.

The three golden lilies in a blue field can be found on the French robes – the fleur-de-lys, the sign of royal dignity in France. And at the same time a proof of how finely knitted this film is: because the lilies also appear on the armour of the English king in the Battle of Agincourt. In the late 14th century, the English kings also adopted the fleur-de-lys to demonstrate their claim to the French throne.

The colour symbolism of this English Technicolor film is sophisticated. The coat of the French king, for example, is pearl grey with three lilies worked into it. Grey is considered the symbol for the undecided, indifferent, grey is important to balance out contrasts. This is the role of King Charles VI of France, hesitant, beset by the Dauphin, at a loss for words, shying away from action and wishing he had avoided the battle against the English.

Caesar and Cleopatra: the fate of Cleopatra

Despite initial resistance, “Larry” Olivier and Robert Krasker got along well during filming. But not so well that they would have worked together again. When Henry V hit theaters in November 1944, nearly two million people saw it in the first six months. ²⁸

Robert Krasker was now also known as “The Man for Colour”. This is how the producer and director Gabriel Pascal became aware of him. Pascal was an agile, multilingual film producer from Hungary. He had worked in Germany and in Italy before coming to England. Here he managed to convince the playwright George Bernard Shaw, who was difficult to access, that the film rights to his dramas were in good hands with him.

After two and a half years of preparation, the shooting of Caesar and Cleopatra began in the spring of 1944. Within two years Krasker was now again in charge of an extensive production – the budget was two and a half times as high as Henry V, the buildings, which were created in Denham, swallowed up enormous sums of money. Their architect was John Bryan, the costumes were by Oliver Messel.

But the shooting dragged on, the director got caught up in trivialities. First there was still war. Filming in Denham had to be constantly interrupted by bomb alerts. In addition, everything was scarce in the penultimate year of the war. Everyone had to constantly improvise. Then came the first impact: Vivien Leigh, Laurence Olivier’s wife, had a miscarriage. Filming was suspended for five weeks. For all his goodwill, Claude Rains was no Caesar. Worse still, Vivien Leigh couldn’t get into her role.

The biggest blow, however, hit Robert Krasker himself. His diabetes had already made itself felt in Henry V. There were only a few weeks between the end of the exhausting work on this film and the next, not enough to really rest. Krasker wasn’t always careful with his injections. Sometimes he forgot them. After a few weeks of shooting, he was taken to the hospital with the acute danger of falling into a coma. His blood sugar level needed to be balanced. Therapy would take many weeks. The production company fired him and hired Frederick A. Young, for whom this work became the first colour film of his life. ²⁹

In the scenes at the beginning of the film at the feet of a papier-mâché sphinx standing on real sand from Egypt that Pascal had personally collected there, Krasker seemed to be carefully condensing his camera work. But no cameraman in the world could save this film! Shaw’s joke literally got stuck in the sand.

Footnotes

1. Karol Kulick, Alexander Korda: The man who could work miracles, W.H. Allen, London, 1975. ISBN 10: 0491019432, p. 238.

2. Karol Kulick, Alexander Korda: The man who could work miracles, W.H. Allen, London, 1975. ISBN 10: 0491019432, p. 239.

3. Karol Kulick, Alexander Korda: The man who could work miracles, W.H. Allen, London, 1975. ISBN 10: 0491019432, p. 267.

4. Film and Televison Technician, May 1965, quoted from the Internet Encyclopaedia of Cinematographers (IEC) website – may now be defunct.

5. In the role of the priest, Krasker met the then 20-year-old actor Peter Ustinov, whom he was to meet more often.

6. The next propaganda film Powell and Pressburger made, The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp, provoked a violent controversy between Churchill and more liberal politicians. The question arose: how were Germans to be portrayed in such films?

7. Photographing the Stars, by Robert Krasker, Picturegoer, June 7, Odhams Press, 1947, p. 5.

8. One immediately recalls the scenes Périnal and Krasker composed in I, Claudius, where Claudius’ face is barely recognizable under the slouch hat, but every time the cameraman seems to be out of light, Laughton does a movement that lights up his face again. An unbelievably provocative way of dealing with the chiaroscuro that Sternberg dared to do with his cameramen and that is remembered well beyond initial impressions.

9. In her memoirs, Lilli Palmer sees the work on this film as rather sober. She was pregnant, needed money and took what was available. “The image that was formed of me could not possibly have been seductive. Probably nobody else had been found for the role. Anyway, they sighed and decided to try me after I’d lied about another month of my pregnancy. I made my escape in joy and haste. We were saved.” Lilli Palmer, Dicke Lilli – gutes Kind, Deutscher Bucherbund, Stuttgart, 1974, ISBN 10: 3858860344, ISBN 13: 9783858860347, p. 125.

10. The most prominent young woman who was trained as a truck driver in the ATS service was the then 16-year-old Princess Elizabeth, who was crowned Queen of England 10 years later.

11. The Messerschmitt Bf 109 (often erroneously referred to as the Me 109) was a German single-seat fighter of the 1930s and 1940s.

12. The film-trained viewer knows at this point at the latest that an airman who gives away his talisman – a gesture of the highest symbolic value – will probably not return from the next mission.

13. Photographing the Stars, by Robert Krasker, Picturegoer, June 7, Odhams Press, 1947, p. 5.

14. Laurence Olivier, Bekenntnisse Eines Schauspielers, ISBN 10: 3362002722, ISBN 13: 9783362002721, 1988, S. 155; Laurence Olivier, Confessions of an Actor: An Autobiography, Simon & Schuster, 1982, ISBN 10: 0671417010.

15. Kevin Desmond, A Glimpse of Krasker, Eyepiece, London, Part 1: September 1990, Part 2: November 1990, S. 25.

16. Jörg Helbig, Geschichte des britischen Films, Stuttgart, 1999, ISBN 13: 9783476015105, p. 197.

17. “This really is the most extraordinary place. No one appears to take the slightest interest in the war. Literally not the faintest, though now and again they are annoyed because they can’t get 500 horses without going to Ireland for them.” The actress Celia Johnson on her visit to the set, cf. Kate Fleming, Celia Johnson: A Biography, Weidenfeld & Nicolson, London, 1991, ISBN 10: 0297811886, ISBN 13: 9780297811886.

18. The text specifies “sweet china oranges”, a variety of Seville oranges, which initially also look like this when the saleswoman is carrying them in front of her. But the next time the camera pan past, it’s more like red-cheeked apples.

19. This opening scene is very similar to the train station scene in The Gentle Sex in terms of its focus on the crowd, but at the same time also in terms of the elaboration of individuals.

20. It may be worth noting here that it is not the reality of a film shoot for the cameraman alone to determine the settings. These setups and rehearsals, some of which can last for hours, are always preceded by detailed discussions between the director, set designer and other employees. It is not possible to reconstruct who contributed what at what point in time. The result is important. That’s why we speak here in general terms of “the” camera or “the” cameraman as the ultimate performer.

21. Natalie Kalmus saw her role not only as a consultant who, with her knowledge of the complex Technicolor process, contributed to the knowledge of the team. She interfered in all artistic matters, hampered innovation in the studio, wanted lots of light, few shadows and low color saturation, and often got very personal in dealings with directors and cinematographers. After recording Gone with the Wind, producer David O. Selznick wrote: “I have tried for three years now to hammer into this organization that the technicolor experts are for the purpose of guiding us technically on the [film] stock and not for the purpose of dominating the creative side of our pictures as to sets, costumes, or anything else.” Nobody could make a Technicolor film in those years without having Ms Kalmus on the set. She had a sense of power and let the team feel it.

22. Bruce Eder, audio commentary, Henry V, United Kingdom, 1944, The Criterion Collection.

23. But even in this emotionally charged moment, in which the French once again send a messenger to the other side of the battlefield in order to perhaps still avoid the argument, this scene is again moved to the studio, because “outside” is better “inside” (at 95′).

24. For Percy W. “Poppy” Day, the American who was responsible for the special effects in Denham for many years, these arrows gave sleepless nights because they were not seen on film. The Technicolor process could not depict the thin arrows. So the animators had to paint the arrows and it was only by applying an extra layer of lavender to the film that they managed to adequately render on celluloid this English attack.

25. Carl Theodor Dreyer, Dreyer in Double Reflection: translation of Carl Th. Dreyer’s writings ‘About the film’ (Om Filmen), Donald Skoller, E.P. Dutton & Co., Inc. (now Penguin Random House LLC), Boston, 1973, ISIN: B000IUA8C2, p. 173.

26. Max Keller, Faszination Licht: Licht auf der Bühne, Prestel Verlag, 2010, ISBN 10: 3791343726, ISBN 13: 978-3791343723.

27. In the scene with Renée Asherson, Olivier is wearing his red royal jacket, which doesn’t quite fit him. It’s just too wide, gathered at the waist by the belt and clearly creases. Given the high level of perfection and professionalism of this film – intentional, coincidental or wartime poverty?

28. However, it took the film several years to recoup its costs.

29. Jack Cardiff, who was to be available for the second camera unit filming in Egypt, also resigned from his contract at short notice and looked for other work. F.A. Young and Edward Scaife finished filming in Egypt.

The Robert Krasker Project

Researching Australia's greatest, forgotten international feature film cinematographer & Director of Photography.