Part 3: At the height of his abilities

Brief Encounter: Melodrama at the train station

Night, the shadow of Light,
And Life, the shadow of death.

– Swinburne

Robert Krasker loved cars, trains, everything mechanical – in The Gentle Sex he had already shown how he could stage a train station as a place of farewell and arrival. In Brief Encounter (1945) another quality was added: the station as the location of a melodrama. Two people who don’t know each other meet, fall in love and renounce each other – and meet again and again at the train station.

For someone like him, who thought in pictures, knew how to model shadows and work out contrasts, steaming locomotives, forbidding and dark platforms, anonymous train station halls, speeding trains, dark underpasses and empty waiting rooms as a symbolic backdrop for renunciation, lack of fulfilment and longing were simply a through ball [football term – Ed.]. Director David Lean didn’t have to persuade Krasker for long.

The first shot shows a train driving through the station, threatening, loud, dismissive, dangerous; not by day, but by night. Even before the opening credits of the film we see a platform, on the left a water tank, behind which lies a strong light source, on the right the roof of the platform which is partially illuminated. A powerful battery of spotlights is concealed behind the signal further ahead

in the picture. The camera is mounted on the platform in an unusual perspective: tilted slightly upwards so that the platform roof can be seen, but also both light sources from the right and left. Now a train roars diagonally through the picture from the left, the mighty, white whirling steam of the locomotive piles up in the headlights to form gigantic mountains. Only after the last carriage, when the station is quiet again, do the opening credits begin with the first chords of Rachmaninoff’s Piano Concerto in C minor.

While the opening credits are running, the tracks are still in a deceptive night’s sleep. After the end credits, a train whistles loudly towards the viewer from the lower right corner of the picture. The camera is still mounted on the platform at an angle. It doesn’t move, doesn’t follow the train, and the association with tragedy and horror is clear. ¹ The train racing diagonally through the picture gives the picture an almost three-dimensional quality.

That’s the setting. From here the story between Laura and Alec develops, which Laura tells in a flashback in the film. The train station plays a major role in this. The film is so dramaturgically interwoven that in the first scene the drama announces itself without a word and in the last scene the mystery is resolved. A kind of mosaic that only comes together at the end. The refreshment room, in which the decisive scenes take place, also provides the bracket that holds the events together.

Tragedy in the refreshment rooms

Railway official Albert Godby (Stanley Holloway) looks at his pocket watch, smiles and nods because the train passed on time. Mr Godby jumps over the rails, jumps onto the platform and whistles into the station café. Cut. Café inside (Denham studio): Mr Godby enters, the camera is behind the counter, over the head of Myrtle Bagot (Joyce Carey) ². While the camera listens to the palaver of the two from above head height and in big close-up, it shows via a slight pan movement a couple sitting at a table further back in the refreshment room – depressed, mute, with an aura of melancholy around them. The door opens and Dolly Messiter (Everley Gregg) ³ enters – a friend who sits down with the couple without being asked.

The camera remains in position, showing the couple from above, staying just above their heads. It’s like it hasn’t decided yet if it even wants to stick with this couple. But when Dolly sits down at the table with the two of them, the camera drops almost imperceptibly to eye level with the three of them. Although the viewer cannot yet know how these individual people are connected, the drama can now be guessed at.

Alec Harvey (Trevor Howard) hardly dares to speak. Laura is rigid with pain. Both do not hear Dolly’s words. Finally, Alec says, “I have to go,” and stands up. But the camera stays on Laura and doesn’t get up. Alec turns around again – cut – and now we see in an extreme close-up how Alec puts his hand on Laura’s shoulder – for four seconds. This touch makes Laura shiver. The camera freezes in the medium close-up shot, as if wanting very, but not too much, to look at Laura’s pain on her face. She follows Alec to the door with her eyes. Will he come back?

Dolly goes to the counter to buy some chocolate and when she turns around Laura is gone. Outside, an express train is speeding through the station. Shortly thereafter, Laura is back in the door of the café – trembling and deathly pale. The camera stays in front of the table, blurring the table to show Laura at the door. Laura comes back to the table. The lens follows them with a slight zoom. Now the camera lowers below eye level into a semi-close up shot and while Laura sips the cognac with reluctance, the camera stays on her. Something happened, but what?

However, the structure of the inner monologue in which Laura narrates this film prevents the viewer from dropping out at this point because they do not understand what is happening there. Rachmaninoff’s music maintains the tension, the images unravel through their density of symbolism, Celia Johnson’s eyes are so alive and so much a mirror of her soul that she is captivating at every moment.

Flashback and resolution

This scene is repeated at the end of the film – the two lovers have realized that they cannot act against the constraints of society, against the morality of their environment, against their own families and must separate – without ever having lived the consummation of their love.

At first everything is as in the first scene – the camera stays in a semi-close up shot slightly below the couple’s eye level, it doesn’t move, there is no intermediate cut. The frame shows Alec in two-thirds of the frame, the camera almost touching his shoulder. It’s his scene.

Alec stirs the teacup: “What are you thinking about?”

Laura: “I’m thinking of nothing”.

Alec: “I love you more than I can say. I love you with all my heart.”

Laura: “I’d like to die if I could.”

In this last minute, the girlfriend Dolly bursts in, who does not understand the fatefulness of this moment and thus creates an ambiguity in this scene, so that the heavy and desperate emotions seem all the stronger. Alec and Laura are appalled by her presence.

As at the beginning of the film, the camera pans towards Laura’s face, but the close-up is now underscored by Laura’s inner monologue, while she relates the whole film to her husband as a flashback. “Fate was against us until the last minute…” And with her eyes wide open, she whispers after Alec’s gone: “Oh god, could I see him again, just for a second”.

At this moment of extreme emotionality, the camera is tilted almost 40 degrees to the left. At the same time, it moves from close-up to extreme close-up. Everything rotates for Laura – but the camera doesn’t rotate with it, it literally falls out of the frame and only comes closer in this movement. The underlying whistling tone reinforces the impression that Laura’s blood is freezing in her veins. Even as she jumps up and tumbles out of the waiting room, the camera freezes in that shot. Laura can no longer control her pain. In this scene, the camera no longer observes, but becomes a participant: it shows how Laura’s world is unhinged by tipping herself over from her allotted role. This paradigm shift occurs in Krasker’s films for the first time here. In this way, the inner mood of a person can be expressed with cinematic technique.

The camera now follows her onto the platform. Laura wants to throw herself in front of the passing train. She thinks it over at the last moment, flinches, and stands frozen, staring blankly, hair blowing wildly, blinded by the lights of the train. “I wanted to do it, but I couldn’t – I had only one wish left: never to feel anything again. I never wanted to be unhappy again.”

When shadows chase shadows

The movie is dark, like a blacked-out train station in the last year of the war. The cameraman demands the outmost from the film material despite its limited exposure values and tonal range. The spotlights are aligned in such a way that they only illuminate the detail that the camera wants to see. The story not only takes place in emotional darkness but also in the dark of night; nowhere is it darker than the train station that Krasker creates for this melodrama. ⁴

It’s often the small scenes that show how a cameraman makes the material his own. Laura comes up the incline to the platform (at 20′). It’s still a time when meeting Alec doesn’t dictate her thinking, though she says in the monologue that she thought for “a moment” that maybe Alec might be on the train to Churley.

The camera initially remains behind a railing. Light comes from the bottom left, illuminating Laura’s coat while the face is gently diffused, lit from the right. It’s night again. Laura goes up the incline to the platform. The train to Churley on the opposite platform is just starting to move with its windows ⁵ brightly lit.

Now the viewer has to deal with three sequences of movements: Laura walks slowly, as if in thought. The train speeds up, but at the same time the camera starts moving and now follows Laura until she sits down on a bench. First, the camera has Laura in view from a half long shot. However, it is only when moving that the camera lowers itself so that – when Laura sits down – it has already reached her eye level.

This simultaneity of several motion sequences, which are at different speeds, shows in a very sophisticated way how much Laura’s inner being is already agitated, how many memories are replaying in Laura at the same time: her family, herself and this doctor, who removed the grain of sand from her eye and whom she can’t get out of her head. Her inner world is in motion and the camera depicts that through its images. ⁶

In such scenes and sequences of movements, Krasker shows how much he was trained in German Expressionism and how much he was fascinated by the striking placement of light and shadow in hard chiaroscuro. Above all, the actors had to follow him – which was less difficult for Trevor Howard, a newcomer to the industry, than for Celia Johnson, who brought with her a wealth of theatre experience. ⁷

It was dark, and it’s becoming darker

After her first visit to the cinema, Alec takes Laura’s arm and they walk down the stairs to the platform. When the stairs end, they step into the shadows. The two can no longer be seen, but only guessed at. It’s dark and they’re enwreathed in shadow. When they step out of the shadows, their faces, which are illuminated by diffuse, selectively strong light, appear much more intense and expressive than without this phase of darkness. What disappears in one movement in the dark for a moment then reappears all the brighter. You just have to have the courage to wait for the darkness to become light.

Krasker and Lean stage the light and dark sides of a taboo relationship and make use of all the symbols and interpretations that come their way at this nocturnal train station. Their implementation in camera movements and perspectives is worth a second look, another example.

Laura leaves the refreshment room. She now knows that she fell in love with Alec. She wants to wave at him again. Cut. She comes to the platform. But you can’t see her face. It is in shadow. But we know: she will be seen again soon. In this short time in shadow, her facial expression can change again.

She turns to the left and now walks up and down the platform, lost in thought. The camera watches her from behind in a semi-close up shot and follows her. Her face can only be seen in half profile, but the camera stays behind her until she turns around and walks back the same way. Strong light now comes from above, so that the shadow of the brim of her hat stretches deep over her face. A spotlight illuminates the face from the right so that the contours become visible and the moment Laura feels for the first time that she is walking into something that scares her, the cloud of steam from a locomotive hits her in the face from the right. She sees clearly and yet not. In the inner monologue, she imagines Alec coming home, greeting his wife, and then Laura wonders if he’ll tell her about meeting her at the train station? ⁸

The kiss in the underpass

The relationship develops. Two Thursdays later, Alec and Laura go boating. Alec almost falls into the water. The two are drying their things in the boat rental company’s hut and professing their love. Arm in arm they go back to the train station. It’s night.

A platform underpass. The image is in thirds; the first two thirds show a dead, lifeless, forbidding wall. In the last third is the access to this underpass. The camera is low, almost on the ground. Then two silhouettes are approaching through this entrance, which can be seen far ahead: Alec and Laura. The spotlight in the entrance is mercilessly bright. In this cold environment, Alec wants to kiss Laura for the first time. Should he steal a kiss before the next passer-by comes into the underpass? The camera stays very close from below. They turn towards each other, light from above lies on Laura’s shoulders. ⁹ Alec kisses her hard and passionately.

In the middle of the kiss, the camera “stands up”, goes back and goes into the medium long shot and more shadows announce more people. Light falls through a shaft into the underpass.

The two move on quickly as if they’ve been caught. Their love doesn’t stand a chance.

A declaration of love over a cup of tea

Brief Encounter, Kurze Begegnung – where else are encounters shorter than at a train station? People arrive and depart, wait and await. Part of this station is the refreshment room, which is part of the film’s reality but was really located in the Denham studio. It is also the location of the first love scene between Alec and Laura. As the nature of this love is yet to be fully revealed and can only be hinted at, the cameraman is faced with the task of filming the unspeakable.

Laura and Alec have another cup of tea in the refreshment room ¹⁰. Alec talks about his research into the petrification of lungs from industrial dust. ¹¹ Laura looks at him and suddenly says, “You look so young all of a sudden, like a boy”. “How did you come up with that?” “I don’t know”. The Rachmaninoff concerto can be heard in the background again and now the camera moves very slowly over Alec’s shoulder towards Laura’s face. She wrestles with herself, and laboriously regains her composure. Krasker illuminates her face extensively: no shadows. Through its movement towards Laura it becomes clear: both of them are only talking words now, but are thinking of something completely different. Both get into a kind of trance: the moment is now. Strong light from above causes Laura’s hat brim to shade her forehead and nose, the light plays on her shoulders, her eyes and nose are bright white and shadowless. The moment of truth is near: finally, they can confess.

Celia Johnson decides this scene for herself – fragile, soft, dissolved, feminine, loveable, with big soulful eyes that won’t let go of the camera. When Alec asks that they see each other again next Thursday, the camera stays at eye level. When he says, “I beg you, very humbly”, there’s a cut, a close-up and the camera looks down slightly from above. We look down at Alec. He struggles for this woman, he begs her – and the cameraman reacts and shows him in close-up – but from above. Full light on his forehead. Does this man humiliate himself by asking instead of demanding?

In his study of Brief Encounter, Richard Dyer dealt extensively with the content of the film.¹² How the emotional content of the story was implemented by a team of sensitive filmmakers amazed the industry. Director David Lean, then 37 years old, cinematographer Robert Krasker, then 32 years old, and production manager Ronald Neame, then 34 years old, were a young team of almost the same age who were among the finest talents of British cinema and all contributed to this visual realization. Lean definitely had a photographic eye, thought in sequences and had discussed and defined the photographic style of the film in detail. Ronald Neame did not succumb to the temptation to set himself up as a backup cameraman, even though he was one of the top people in that side of the business.

Great Expectations: Lean lets Krasker go

When Brief Encounter hit theaters in February 1946, it made the team instantly famous. The film was not a box-office magnet, but gained cult status in just a few years. David Lean was “made” as a director and Robert Krasker became more famous with each of his films. Word got around in the industry that a new star had risen in the cameramen’s sky.

David Lean wanted to make the Dickens film Great Expectations that same year. As a result of the last project, the director and cameraman wanted to continue working together. Robert Krasker was hired as Director of Photography. Filming was supposed to start in September 1945. The core crew was identical to the Brief Encounter team: Cineguild again producing, Anthony Havelock-Allan was writer and producer, Ronald Neame executive producer, George Pollock assistant director, Arthur Ibbetson camera operator, Jack Harris did the editing and Margaret Furse the costumes.

In the late summer of 1945, Krasker began filming at St Mary’s Marshes in Kent, a verdant, waterlogged landscape on the Thames Estuary. It was in this setting that young Pip’s encounter with the convict Magwitch was to take place – a dark, terrifying scene.

When David Lean saw the first few metres of film from these outdoor shots, he was horrified. Kevin Brownlow describes this eruption in his biography of David Lean:

“David [Lean] remembered the situation with some embarrassment. ‘You have to cast technicians as you cast actors’, he said. ‘Bob Krasker had photographed Brief Encounter and I took him on Great Expectations. But I was devastated by the first two or three lots of rushes because the photography hadn’t got the guts I wanted for Dickens. It’s no good having those outsize characters, convicts and crooks and God knows who, in polite lighting. It doesn’t work. If you’re going to do Dickens you have to have very strong photography, black shadows and brilliant highlights. Bob’s rushes were flat and uninteresting.”

David told him that what he was doing seemed little different to Brief Encounter and that it needed to be “much more daring, huge great black shadows, great big highlights – over the top.”

Krasker was a brilliant cameraman, on that everyone agreed. Part of his trouble was the fact that he was shooting on the Medway in misty conditions which were bound to register low in contrast. But he had done exteriors in sunlight, and they, too, had disappointed David.

Ronald Neame, himself a former cameraman, also believed that Krasker was not on top of his form. Neame suggested that Krasker could resign because of “ill health” and Guy Green would be hired to replace him. David said to Neame, “Well, can you arrange it?”

“It was one of the most awful things I’ve ever had to do in my life and as the producer I had to do it”, said Neame. “I said, David and I feel we should make a change. I know it won’t affect your career and we’ll do it very quietly and secretly”. But obviously, Bob was very upset. To be taken off a film is a terrible thing.”…

“And then I saw The Third Man, which Bob Krasker photographed, and I thought, Oh my God, what a terrible mistake I made. What an injustice.” Carol got it out of him later, because it was wonderfully photographed, all the contrast and guts he didn’t have on Great Expectations.” ¹³

This recollection gives rise to many questions. First off, Guy Green and Robert Krasker had known each other since they worked on the 1942 film One of Our Aircraft is Missing. Would a man like Green so easily oust a colleague, even in the tough film business? Could he feel the hurt? Why didn’t Ronald Neame contradict his director, who must have known from his own experience that outdoor shots are dependent on the weather and that when the fog is gathering in the Thames Estuary it’s just not possible to get clear, shadowy shots? ¹⁴ And what does Lean mean by the fact that the photography of these few scenes looked like Brief Encounter? Was Lean implying that Bob Krasker photographed each film in the same style, unable to adapt to the subject matter? And doesn’t David Lean’s belated insight that Krasker did everything “right” again with The Third Man come across as rather condescending?

When Guy Green was asked what really happened between Lean and Krasker, he replied:

“Bob Krasker was a wonderful cameraman. I don’t know what went wrong, maybe it was a personality thing.” ¹⁵

However, if it was something personal between Lean and Krasker that led to this split, why were professional reasons put forward that made the insult to the cameraman even more serious? Why did Lean send his producer Ronald Neame ¹⁶ to fire the cameraman? Would such a sacking not have been a matter for the boss?

A possible explanation lies in the egos of the two men. Lean didn’t deal well with one of Krasker’s traits: his tenacity. Krasker was not a simple cameraman. Once he got into a story and the images stuck in his head, he was hard to reach with other ideas. With his friendly, outwardly conciliatory manner, he attracted directors. He was an artist in his own right. He never left the camera during filming.

Krasker was also loyal. There was no doubt about that either. But when you’re shooting for months, you also get to know each other’s downsides. There is no evidence that Lean and Krasker clashed during filming. Also strange is the fact that Krasker seamlessly chose David Lean’s rival, Carol Reed: as if the change had been planned beforehand.

Life can only be experienced in the moment and only understood in hindsight. Krasker never worked with Lean or Neame again. If Lean had continued to trust him ¹⁷, he might have had a global hit like Lawrence of Arabia, but not a global hit like The Third Man.

Odd Man Out: Rejected, but rescued

When Carol Reed heard that one of the top young people in motion picture photography had just been fired by his colleague, he immediately hired Krasker on Odd Man Out, which was also to be filmed at Denham Studios and was starting at the same time. Krasker was allowed to watch the film that he wasn’t permitted to make being shot in the studio next door, while wall to wall he photographed a film that he wasn’t initially supposed to make.

Carol Reed was a different kind of guy. He wasn’t concerned with technology but more with the actors. He didn’t have any problems knowing that he had a strong cameraman at his side who developed his own ideas. Reed wasn’t interested in cameramen as such. He was impatient in the studio, hated long lighting rehearsals and all the hassle of cameramen. It’s not that he didn’t appreciate the result, but the way there was often too tedious for him. ¹⁸ If he didn’t like the work of a cameraman, he hired another for the next film. He made four films in his life with only one person: Robert Krasker.

It took Krasker a long time before the lighting for a scene was what he felt was “right”. He was reluctant to settle for half solutions. Reed knew it, and Krasker knew it, too – yet they got along. Reed often didn’t need the whole set for intensive rehearsals with the actors, but withdrew to other rooms. During this time, Krasker had every opportunity to figure out the lighting in the studio that he felt was needed. Everyone knew about the weaknesses of the other and so a partnership developed that lasted over seventeen years.

Reed had grown up as the illegitimate son of a well-known English actor with all the attitudes of the wealthy upper class. Sometimes more arrogant than accommodating, he had a big house in Chelsea and drove a Bentley. In contrast, Krasker, who came from a poor background, looked even smaller and slimmer.

In every film there are leading masters and rather unsung heroes. In Odd Man Out, Robert Krasker and Fergus McDonnell belonged to the second category. Robert Krasker converted the drama of the film into images, Fergus McDonnell edited these sequences into a furioso – in the six-minute robbery scene one hundred and six cuts! The battle scene in Henry V had half as many!

Flight into darkness

Johnny McQueen has been sentenced to 17 years in prison and escapes. Hiding in a house in Belfast, he is now sitting with his friends to plan the robbery. They need money for the “cause” of the organization but which organization or cause it is not entirely clear. But since a Madonna hangs on a calendar page in the lower room of the house, the association with the IRA is not far-fetched. ¹⁹ Johnny wants to carry out the robbery himself. As he laces his shoes, he says to Kathleen: “Don’t worry, I’ll be fine”. The lace rips.

The first thing that strikes you is how close Krasker gets to the actors in this claustrophobically cramped space. The light comes from above, brightened with strong side light. He uses a wide-angle lens and stays so close you can almost feel the men breathing. Johnny is photographed from below; when he is standing the camera stays at knee height. Originally, the director and cameraman wanted to stick with this perspective to avoid demonizing a criminal, but Johnny (James Mason) looks so likeable, so middle-class, that it’s hard not to feel any sympathy for him.

The narrowness of space is identical to the narrowness of the world in which these terrorists – that’s what they have to be called – live.

The film takes place over an eight hour period. The attack on the payroll office of a cotton mill in Belfast took place in the afternoon while it was still daylight. After these first 18 minutes, there is only dark night for 93 minutes in the film.

The raid

When Johnny is picked up by Nolan and Murphy for the robbery after long months in hiding, he can hardly stand the sensory overload of the streets, squares and people. Everything is spinning; he is close to fainting. The camera now changes from observer to actor. It sees through Johnny’s eyes. She looks from above at the tram tracks, which fork out in rapid motion, the walls of the houses become slanted and take on a threatening quality. The camera shoots from centimetres above the cobblestones so that the individual stones can no longer be seen. Johnny only sees disturbing details such as the big tyres on a bus. He no longer understands his surroundings. Everything falls on him. The pedestrians seem to him to be behind a frosted glass pane. Everything is blurred to him and he puts his hand in front of his eyes, so confused that he gets out of the car in front of the factory. He looks up and sees the steep chimney of the cotton mill. The connotation is: how will I manage this?

In just a few seconds, Reed and his cameraman filmed Johnny’s inner state through a wealth of details and ideas. The camera not only sees: it acts. The chain of iconic details – from the broken shoelace to the chimney – makes the suspense in this first chapter almost unbearable. In his book, Karel Reisz ²⁰ described the robbery itself, which was cut at high speed, so precisely and precisely that an analysis can be dispensed with here.

The first dream

During the robbery, Johnny shoots the cashier and is wounded himself. A sharp steering manoeuvre causes him to fall out of the getaway car, and his buddies leave him behind. He finds shelter in an air raid shelter. The bunker is bright, the brick walls reflect the daylight from outside. The sun casts a narrow beam of light onto the dusty cement floor. Johnny lies helpless in a corner, leaning his head against the wall. The camera moves along his dark coat to his fingers, which paint narrow tracks in the sand on the ground. Blood runs down the back of the hand. Johnny is badly injured.

A soccer ball falls into the bunker. Children play outside. Johnny wakes up and looks up in disbelief and now the light changes: strongly concentrated light falls through a side window of the bunker, the previously well-lit wall parts become dark, from the outside a spotlight shines against the barred door to the bunker. You can see the ceiling of the claustrophobically cramped room. Exhausted, Johnny sleeps. Day turns into night. Again the camera leaves its observation post and it no longer records the whole scene but sees it through Johnny’s eyes. He hallucinates that he is in his old prison cell. The jailer comes in and gets the ball. Johnny talks to him and tells him what he just experienced, in a reflection of an alternate reality. As Johnny asks himself, “I must have passed out”, the lighting switches back to the previous mood, the jailer fades out and now a little girl stands in the bunker and, frightened, retrieves her ball. The camera becomes an observer again. The dream is over.

On the weeping streets of Belfast

The police cordon off the city centre after the robbery. Everyone is checked on the street. Johnny’s friends are looking for him. The police notice them in front of the Five Bells pub. When the officers shine their flashlights on them, they run away. The police give chase. Krasker lights up the streets of Belfast as if it were the dress rehearsal for Vienna in The Third Man. The street lamp in the small square in front of the shop is on, the shop windows are bright, but the real light comes from the battery of spotlights behind the shop building. The street is wet and the water also reflects and intensifies the eerie atmosphere.

Krasker creates atmosphere ²¹, but he cannot use light from sources such as the street lamp to do this. His light is spotlight. He doesn’t care about the realities of our world, he creates a cinematic reality, which conveys only the story. Light should create tension and direct the viewer. With the strong background light, he accepts that the three fugitives can only be seen as shadow figures and their faces remain in the dark.

Cut. You walk along a narrow path between two stone walls. Where does the light come from? At the far left behind the stone wall is a searchlight that is placed in such a way that it cannot be seen, even though the men walk between the narrow walls in its direct cone of light and their ever-growing shadows hurry ahead of them.

Finally they jump over an old wooden fence and hide, squeezed close together. They have knocked over a trash can, the lid falls to the ground with a bang and keeps rattling until Pat throws himself on top of it. The police pass on the other side of the fence. You will not be discovered. Saved for the moment!

It is small scenes like this that add to the richness of detail in this film, although the outcome is certain from the outset: Johnny has no chance of being redeemed, neither through the love of Kathleen nor through the courageous help of his friends. The camera has him stagger, reel and stumble through the dark streets of Belfast, largely recreated in the studio. The longer this odyssey lasts, the less light falls on his face, until the final shootout takes place in the wet and damp snow flurry of the harbour, in the shadows.

The second dream

Odd Man Out thrives on strong contrasts. It’s perpetual night in this film, but then Johnny stumbles into an achingly bright saloon. The waiters recognize him and lock him up in a kind of closet in the taproom that still existed in old English pubs. There he is protected, held and at the same time at the mercy of the innkeeper. Johnny knocks over the beer. It flows onto the table. The foaming beer bubbles become faces and the people who were his fate that day appear in them: the cashier at the spinning mill, whom he shot, the two women who took him in at short notice, the horse-drawn carriage driver who drove him. The tragedy of the last few hours flashes past him once more. And then everyone talks at once in this beer puddle: his friends, his buddies, his girlfriend. Suddenly Johnny screams. The whole pub turns to him.

Krasker enhances the expressiveness of this final scream by squaring this image up to the upper right edge, giving the viewer the impression that Johnny’s scream almost falls out of frame. And despite this high key lighting, Krasker does not forget to work out the folds of his black coat with light in such a way that he depicts downright classic folds. Aesthetics in decline.

No Hollywood lighting, here

Krasker patiently set his spotlights, experimented with reflections, with dabs of light, with spots of light, repeatedly rearranged his lights, experimented and tried different light intensities and tried to create a living darkness through which the viewer’s attention should be drawn. In particular, the background light of a scene required all his care. He broke with all viewing habits of an audience accustomed to Hollywood brightness.

Krasker’s way of lighting had nothing to do with American high-key lighting. He didn’t want any bright, “beautiful” films at this stage. For him there was only cinematic reality. With him, light became the means of expressing the plot. His lighting direction sought the depth of the images. He used his lens’ resolving power to the limit and the smoothly staggered transitions from light to dark created three-dimensional images. Low-key lighting enhanced the mysterious, the heavy, the bizarre, the dodgily demonic in this film. The result was “mood lighting”.

Krasker approached a work like F.W. Murnau’s The Last Man [aka The Last Laugh – Ed.] very closely, about whose lighting Richard Blank writes: “‘Natural’ light sources play no role at all. What matters is highlighted. The light source is the spotlight. If streets or other lamps can be seen in the picture, they are part of the décor and do not point the way for the lighting of the scene” ²².

The film was a huge success from the start. “Odd Man Out received unanimous praise from the London critics”. The Dublin Evening Mail wrote in March 1947: “The finest piece of cinema turned out in Britain since the British started making pictures”. When the film was released in America, American Cinematographer wrote: “There has not been such lighting and imaginative use of the camera since Orson Welles’s Citizen Kane.” ²³

For Krasker, it all came naturally. The colour scheme of Henry V had caught the eye of the experts. Brief Encounter put him in the premier league of British cameramen. Odd Man Out made him famous in Europe and beyond. He received an Oscar for The Third Man and became famous.

Uncle Silas: The “bad” relative

Krasker worked on Odd Man Out until January 1946, after which the order book thinned out. Immediately after the end of the Second World War, the English film industry was in agony, and the number of films produced there fell by half compared to 1945. Sheer need reigned. How should films be made? Krasker also felt this bear market. You had to make a living from something.

He still had contacts with the producer Filippo del Giudice, for whose company Two Cities he had already photographed five films. However, the company, which came under the umbrella of the Rank Organization, was in financial difficulties. Nevertheless it produced Uncle Silas and Charles Frank ²⁴ directed. It was the last time Robert Krasker photographed at Denham Studios, a black and white production starring Derrick de Marney ²⁵, 17 year-old Jean Simmons and Greek actress Katina Paxinou.

One of the first shots shows the vestibule of Caroline Ruthyn’s father’s (Reginald Tate) country mansion, a large hall where the sun streams through the windows and casts long bright patterns on the tiled floor. An example of the best Hollywood high-key lighting. Krasker could also do it differently.

When her father dies and Caroline (Jean Simmons) inherits his fortune, her father’s shady brother, Uncle Silas, becomes her guardian. He takes her to his own country estate and now the uncanny events begin. A Madame de la Rougierre (Katina Paxinou) is placed at her side. Krasker now uses every opportunity to create the gloomy atmosphere needed for the plot with little light and lots of shadows. In a nightmare scene, he lets the shadow of the “evil” Rougierre’s nose reach deep into her forehead, clearly showing that this woman can teach us to fear.

When Caroline challenges her uncle to an argument at night, Krasker enlarges his shadow so enormously that the opposite wall becomes a projection screen. We know that the best shadows don’t come from table lamps, floor lamps or ceiling lamps, but from spotlights. A real film noir! The viewer, however, knows that the innocent, honest, gentle and kind Caroline will ultimately be saved and that all the horrors in the film are only intended to delay the final rescue by her loved one. So Krasker’s camera work has a different function than in Odd Man Out, where the viewer had to watch a person perish.

Bonnie Prince Charlie: Scotland in papier-mâché

Alexander Korda was back! He had sold his shares in United Artists, had money again and now thought of picking up where he left off in 1942: as a film producer, if necessary as a director.

He wanted to do it again, and although times had changed, he intended to make new films based on the old recipes. For example, an historical costume drama with a lot of extras, decorations, colour and landscape shots! Preferably together with another chapter from Britain’s glorious past! That had to lure the post-war depressed Britons to the cinema.

This time the aim was to retell the error of Charles Edward Stuart, who landed in Scotland in 1745 to wrest the English and Scottish thrones from the ruling Hanoverians. He arrived with a ship and a handful of soldiers, but then managed to rally the Scottish clans to his cause. With their help he took Edinburgh. But the victory march did not last long. Against the British superior force of 30,000 soldiers, Bonnie Prince Charlie and his 5,000 soldiers ventured into the Battle of Culloden in the Highlands on April 16, 1746. It turned into a disaster and his troops were wiped out. For half a year he wandered through Scotland, hidden by the population, before he was able to flee to France.

Bonnie’s fight was so hopeless but he himself was so sympathetic, and his fellow Scottish citizens so upright and fearless. David Niven was supposed to play Bonnie, equipped with “a voice hardly large enough to summon a waiter” ²⁶.

For almost a minute and a half, the camera pans across the Scottish mountains and glens, showing the wisps of mist over the lochs and the wild landscape, pausing at karst ridges and driving towards the rolling glens. Then Charlie goes ashore and meets the shepherd Donald (Morland Graham), a loyal and down-to-earth Stuart follower. He tends his sheep amongst the rocks. His face is illuminated in a nuanced manner and the camera comes up very close to him. Above high-arching Scottish skies, blue and sunny with scattered clouds, a glorious day in the far north of Britain. Unfortunately, the sky is painted and the rocks are in the studio.

Shepperton’s Scotland

Looking back over 60 years ago, it’s hard to understand why the filmmakers came up with the idea of recreating the Scottish landscape in the papier-mâché studio. Sure, one was independent of the unreliable weather in the north of the British Isles. But what about the “realism” of such decorations?

Right at the beginning of the scene between Flora McDonald and her father, the camera pans towards her and the shadow of the camera box can be seen on her dress. Nobody seems to have noticed this error.

One more detail: when Charlie has persuaded the Scottish clans to march with him on London, he and the clan chiefs stand side by side (in the studio) and watch (in the Scottish Highlands) as the warriors and soldiers stream down from the hills and assemble. Then, cut and reverse cut again and again: the landscape, which is sometimes dark, sometimes light because the man for the outdoor shots, the Canadian Osmond Borradaile, was dependent on the Scottish weather. His lighting does not harmonize with the lighting of the faces in the studio! Such jumps in color and atmosphere change back and forth twelve times until the viewer is dizzy.

Robert Krasker could explain how this clash of attitudes that don’t go together came about. Although the film is set in Scotland, Borradaile’s exterior shots almost fell under the editing table: of the 111 minutes of the edited film, a full 8 minutes 50 seconds are original shot, that is, 9 percent. Everything else was filmed in the studio. Mostly in the light of day, because this Krasker film is the brightest since The Gentle Sex.

In the final few metres of the film, the cinematographer shows sympathy for the woman in Charlie’s life: Flora MacDonald (portrayed by 25-year-old Margaret Leighton). A beautiful, tall woman who saves Stuart through her loving commitment, but without fleeing to France with him (“You will always live in my heart”). In one of the last shots, when saying goodbye to the prince, Krasker approaches her from below with the camera, then tilts the camera slightly and slides into a close-up that shows the woman’s pain, feelings and farewell. There is no Hollywood light halo in her hair, there is no need for diffusion or other light effects to capture the beauty and emotion of her expression on film. ²⁷

A debacle

How did the team feel when, after 30 weeks of shooting and four different directors and umpteen screenwriters, everything seemed to be in the can? Korda was so angry about the foreseeable failure of this film that Bonnie Prince Charlie was no longer allowed to be mentioned in his presence. ²⁸ The opus failed completely at the box office and the critics made fun of it. Richard Winnington wrote: “It is that London Films, having surveyed the finished thing, should have quietly scrapped it” ²⁹. The Manchester Guardian resorted to irony: “To turn to dullness the most poignant and romantic episode in the last 250 years of British history was, in its way, a remarkable achievement”. ³⁰ Krasker also got something: “The action is slow, the photography uninspired, and the accents are mixed”. The Scotsman took on Vincent Korda: “Here was what was to be the film’s most shocking deficiency – the inadequacy of the studio sets”.

The Third Man: Working on a worldwide success

„Jedes Misslingen hat seine Ursache, jedes Gelingen sein Geheimnis“

(“Every failure has its cause, every success its secret”)

– Joachim Kaiser

Filming is not a Sunday stroll. Krasker had to put up with the failures. There wasn’t much time anyway, because half a year later a new project was to begin that demanded all his strength. Producer Alexander Korda came up with the idea, espionage veteran author Graham Greene wrote the screenplay, and director Carol Reed was certain that bombed-out post-war Vienna would provide just the right, enigmatically ambiguous setting for a gangster story. Although Vienna had been divided into four zones by the victorious powers, the Viennese made virtuoso use of the friction between the Allies and so the city continued to go about its business. The ideal setting for The Third Man. So together they found an inventive producer, a famous author, a sensitive director, a grandiosely cynical actor and a sensitive cameraman. Together they achieved global success!

Korda’s London Film Productions had signed an agreement with the American producer David O. Selznick which gave them both rights to the film. The British production team arrived in Vienna in mid-October 1948. Three camera crews would shoot for seven weeks: Stan Pavey in the sewers, John Wilcox and Hans Schneeberger by day, and Robert Krasker as the chief cameraman in charge by night. Carol Reed monitored all three teams and tried to stay awake 24 hours a day, six days a week.

Karl Hartl’s Wien Film ³¹ provided the additional technical equipment. He brought an unknown zither player to the reception party for his British colleagues: Anton Karas. Reed did not know such an instrument and was fascinated. Krasker was the only one from the British team who could converse fluently in German with the Austrians. Otherwise, the Austro-British understanding seemed to work.

Why bother with three camera teams? Reed was afraid that it might snow in Vienna in the harsh winter of 1948/49: he didn’t want snow for the film. Snow covers up while the film should reveal. In addition, in order to create the densest atmosphere and mood possible, very detailed individual shots had to be shot, especially at night. Krasker and Reed agreed that the light had to create the atmosphere that the film thrives upon: suspense, mystery, fear. Hard contrasts, sharp shadows, angular chiaroscuro.

When Harry climbs over the rubble mountain: a scene analysis

The American Holly Martins (Joseph Cotten) comes to Vienna at the invitation of his friend Harry Lime. Upon arrival, he learns that Harry is dead, that he died in an accident. The longer he questions those involved, the clearer it becomes that something is wrong with this accident. Is Harry really dead? When Holly feels followed at night, he yells at a man in the dark: “What kind of a spy you think you are, satchelfoot ³²? What are you tailing me for?” The light goes on in the doorway and “dead” Harry (Orson Welles) stands in front of him. Holly learns that Lime is involved in the murderous smuggling of diluted penicillin. The police can only arrest Harry if he gets out of the Russian sector. Holly is supposed to play the decoy (“I’ll be your dumb decoy duck”) and arrange to meet Harry Lime at the Marc Aurel cafe. The friend as a spy.

In this scene, the film keeps viewers in suspense for two and a half minutes. In 42 cuts and 21 shots, in images of dark streets, squares, mountains of rubble, of people with tense faces, in eerie light and in the dead of night, everyone is waiting for Harry: will he come? Holly sits in the café and torments herself in the role of the traitor. This is how tension can be created: the sequence of scenes in the finished film.

[Soon I will add a very large table describing the scenes, lighting, camera movements, durations and so on, as published in the book. – Ed.]

Less is more

There is only dialog in ten sequences. The rest is silent, underscored by the zither music. The dialogue between Paine, Calloway and the balloon seller ³³ is misleading at first. A subplot that is so exciting because everyone thinks: “What does this balloon seller have to interfere with now? I hope it doesn’t come out that the police are waiting here? Does Lime perhaps notice beforehand that he’s running into a trap?” But there is also irony in the inscrutable game: Paine buys a balloon, of all things, which is symbolic of joy, peace and children’s play. What should he do with it now? A kind of comic relief that turns into the opposite: the tension increases even more.

In figure 18 [I will add still-frames from the movie here, in a coming revision. – Ed.], the gigantic shadow of The Third Man appears for the first time – on the front of the “Alte Hofapotheke” – a trick that Krasker had already used in Brief Encounter and Odd Man Out. But the shadow is still a deception, because Harry doesn’t step out of the shadow, not even during the repetition (number 20) and only in figure 23 – the second repetition – suddenly the gigantic shadow doesn’t become Lime, but an old balloon seller.

This confusion gives the audience a pause to breathe. The tension that has built up is released, in a grotesque way. But the film doesn’t let up. The next scenes are cut in a precipitato (acceleration). The shortest shot is one second, the longest – a tracking shot – is 15 seconds. The camera (figure 19) pans down from the top of the Josefsbrunnens (Joseph’s Fountain) onto Paine and Calloway waiting in the shadows. But they can’t get rid of the balloon seller. At the same time, the countdown continues inexorably.

In short sequences, seldom more than three seconds, alleys are shown that lie still and lifeless, as if in a coma, but what would Lime come through? A damp street (figure 7), the light reflected on the pavement, the next alley (figure 9) wet although it never rained in the film, and the reflections of the light are reflected on the round heads of the stones. The archway (figure 11) is particularly exciting, in which a mysterious spot of light shows how lively such an archway can appear with clever lighting.

Light is a means to an end. The chief cameraman sets the light and the spotlights are switched on and off by the gaffer. It’s as simple as that. Strong light comes from the Marc Aurel café, which is amplified outside. Again and again the camera wants the reflection of the light on the wet street. The mirror effect is a mystery. What will happen next? Wet cobblestones, in which the individual stones are modelled three-dimensionally, appear more mysterious than smooth, wet asphalt!

Not all streets are wet on this evening when Harry Lime gets his ass in his collar. [Colloquialism? – Ed.] In figure 31, the street on which the balloon seller is walking is dry. Did the script girl forget to write “Night, wet road”?

The suspense is heightened

The shots in between medium and long shots are constantly changing (figures 1 to 2, 3 to 4, 5 to 6, and so on). We never only see the detail in the close-up, but always the whole. We are brought close and at the same time kept at a distance. Only seven close-ups are included in the 42 cuts – mostly police officers whose breath shows the cold of the night, who turn their heads or stare stubbornly ahead. The camera is fixed and does not move: nevertheless the settings correspond to each other. For example, in figure 4, Holly leans out of the window to check on Harry. Figure 5 shows what he sees. In figure 6 the policeman turns his head to the right. In figure 7 an alley is shown through which Lime could come. And so forth.

Krasker relies entirely on the effects of shadows. The camera repeatedly takes a deep perspective, photographing from below (figure 29). But shadows are never just dark: every shadow is brightened by patches of light, islands of light that are often not consciously perceived. Krasker would have reserved radiant brightness for films of a type that he did not shoot, musical revues!

The camera (figures 9 and 41) works twice in this sequence of scenes with canted, that is, oblique perspectives. Once with Holly in the café, which again emphasizes how shaky his feet are, how little he knows how Harry will react once he realizes the betrayal. Is that what a friend does to a friend? The other canted shot shows the mountain of rubble, in the foreground with the remains of an old structural splendour, over which the man, to whom these 42 cuts have led, is now climbing in the back right.

The sequence of these scenes and cuts appeals to archaic fears in the viewers. The silence, the zither music, the lowered camera, the eerie light, the constant darkness, the crooked perspective, the imponderability of what is to come. A film noir that lives from and through the power of its images.

The “skewed” perspective

“It was Carol’s idea that every shot should be photographed at a slight angle and although this wasn’t apparent perhaps to everybody, it did impart a kind of moodiness to the whole picture, and I’m sure it was this idea of Carol’s that helped me to win the Oscar.“

– Robert Krasker in an interview with the BBC 1954.

Looking at these settings can make you dizzy. Hardly any edge is vertical, everything is tilted and shifted, the perspectives are unsettling. Content and form enter into a synthesis. Because when Holly doesn’t meet his friend Harry at the train station and he has to find out that he’s dead, reality collapses for him. Karl (Paul Hörbiger), the porter in Stiftsgasse, who has seen everything but better not remember, is the first for whom the ground begins to shake. Anna (Alida Valli) doesn’t know what to believe anymore. Is Harry alive or dead? Holly no longer understands the world when he meets the dead Harry at night. Everything shakes and sways, the straight is bent. The camera reacts and tilts the perspective. Nothing seems straight and solid anymore. Even the last scene in the underworld, where Lime is already wounded and is pulling himself up the stairs, is shot by the camera from the slant.

On the other hand, there are enough “straight” shots in which nothing is tilted. Form and content correspond again. When Paine and Calloway find out that Lime has disappeared into the underworld, there are no angles in the picture. The most famous “straight” shot is the last one: Anna walks down the main corridor of the central cemetery in Vienna and – only interrupted by a cut – comes straight towards the camera and yet walks past her. Holly waits in vain. She doesn’t look at him. Now there is clarity, now the dizziness goes away and makes way for a new reality.

The oblique perspectives have made this film famous ³⁴, although many viewers only subconsciously perceived this sophisticated type of photographic commentary at first. “A kind of moodiness,” as Krasker says, touching on deep-seated fears.

Is The Third Man a film noir? It is absent from film noir lists. Apart from the fact that such categorizations don’t help much, all the visual stylistic features of a film noir are fulfilled: low-key lighting, strong light-dark contrasts, conspicuous silhouettes, oblique settings, low camera perspectives, shooting at night. It was a style that emerged in the late 1920s and 1930s and is associated, among other things, with the name of the German cinematographer Eugen Schüfftan. Karl Prümm writes about Schüfftan’s work: “Darkness is the background on which the visible only sparsely lights up, always on the verge of disappearing, fragmentarily and only momentarily. … The harsh contrasts of light and dark are now sharpened even more with masterfully controlled artificial light sources.”

Krasker mastered this technique of sharpening. His lighting always comes from the cinematic, never reflects alleged reality. It is always the reality of the cameraman. In doing so, Krasker often used side light, which also serves the “logic of the absent” (Prümm) and thus promotes secrets and indissolubility.

“Side light dynamizes the picture, bursting the picture boundaries, because the side light refers to a light source, to a space outside the picture. An irritating game between the visible and the non-visible is opened up for the viewer. A strong disquiet emanates from this light that transcends borders.” ³⁵

But unsettling, vacillating, uncanny, intangible, dark and shadowy, dizzying, enigmatic should be the characteristics of The Third Man. Carol Reed and his team had created a classic of film history. ³⁶

The Oscar

When the film premiered at the Plaza Theatre in London on September 2, 1949, it broke all records. Just three months later it was also shown in Germany. The premiere was on January 6, 1950. People lined up at the box office: everyone wanted to see this film. The “Harry Lime Thema” and the “Café Mozart Walzer” by Anton Karas appeared on 78 records that sold by the thousands. People hummed the zither solo on the street.

The overwhelming box office success led to a serious argument between Korda and Selznick. Korda felt that he had ceded too much of the American success he had hoped for to Selznick and called for improvements. Selznick refused, Korda kept the negative print of the film under wraps. Only after bitter arguments could the film be shown on February 2, 1950 at the Victoria Theater in New York.

The critical reception of the film was consistently positive. But not all critics cheered. C.A. Lejeune accused Reed of making things too easy for himself: “Mr Reed has never before elaborated his style so desperately, nor used so many tricks in the presentation of a film”. The Observer of September 4, 1949 stated: “The most distracting is a habit of printing his scenes askew, with floors sloping at a diagonal and close-ups deliriously tilted, a device that can be used with great effect in short passages … but is apt to grow tiresome with repetition.” ³⁷

The American Academy of Motion Picture Art and Sciences in Hollywood had a different opinion. Director Carol Reed, editor Oswald Hafenrichter and cinematographer Robert Krasker were nominated for an Oscar for their performance in this film. The award for best camera performance was divided into black and white photography and color photography. Four competitors were nominated alongside Krasker: Milton Krasner (*1901) for All about Eve, John F. Seitz (*1892) for Sunset Boulevard, Harold Rosson (*1895) for Asphalt Jungle, Victor Milner (*1893) for The Furies.

All four cameramen, significantly older than Krasker, all Americans, had been employed in Hollywood for decades. Milner had already received an Oscar in 1934, none of the others up to that point. Would Krasker’s more European “style” be worthy of an award in America?

On March 29, 1951, a Thursday, the Oscar awards ceremony took place in Hollywood. All About Eve was voted best film of the year. The best director award went to Joseph L. Mankiewicz, but not to Carol Reed, as hoped. The faces of the British present grew longer.

Unsuspecting in Leeds

On the morning of March 30, 1951, production manager Adrian Worker sat at breakfast at the Queen’s Hotel in Leeds, northern England. As usual, he was listening to the radio. Then the news broke that Robert Krasker had won the Oscar for best black and white photography. Worker jumped up from the table, electrified. “What, our cameraman? And he didn’t tell me anything!” He was on tour with Krasker for the location shoot of Another Man’s Poison. He ran into Krasker’s room, forgot to knock, and just yelled, “Bob, you did it!”

That evening there was a party in Leeds that had not been seen in a long time. Krasker beamed ³⁸, was also a little embarrassed that only he and no one else on the team had received an Oscar and for a few hours lost his usual shyness about seeing himself in the spotlight. Even the press took notice.

After his teacher Georges Périnal, Guy Green and Jack Cardiff, he was now the fourth British cinematographer to receive this award. “Peri” congratulated him “with all my heart”. One of the first telegrams came – sounding a little distant – from Carol Reed ⁴⁰. The fact that he himself did not receive an Oscar for his performance must have hurt him. Colleagues congratulated him including Harry Stradling, himself a multiple award winner, whom Krasker had met in Joinville. A telegram even came from the doyen of American colour cameramen, Joseph Ruttenberg, whom Krasker had met only briefly during his London shoot. Congratulations to producer David O. Selznick, who had doubts about the film until the very end, because everyone agrees that it will be successful. Krasker himself never thought of flying to California to attend the ceremony. In the end, he thought he might win an Oscar. The British Consul in Los Angeles accepted his trophy.

The statue was handed to him six months later in a London pub, artlessly wrapped in brown wrapping paper. The Consul simply pressed it into his hand. So the famous golden sword-bearer, which stands upon a roll of film, found its purpose in Krasker’s narrow terraced house in Ealing at 25 Castlebar Road, initially as a doorstop. ⁴¹

Footnote

1. As always, it’s all a question of perspective. If the comrades had filmed the train during the day and perhaps panned along the moving train, it could have been the start of a nice (and very different) film.

2. Joyce Carey met Robert Krasker again in Cry, the beloved country (1950).

3. Krasker met the actress on The Private Life of Henry VIII, then worked with her on I, Claudius and The Gentle Sex.

4. The recordings from mid-January to mid-February 1945 at Carnforth railway station in Lancashire, a few miles north of Lancaster at the gateway to the Lake District, were unusually harmonious. Shooting almost every night until early morning, the actors were surrounded by a crew of nearly 80 people. Celia Johnson wrote to her husband: “You’d think there could be nothing more dreamy than spending 10 hours on a station platform every night but we do the whole thing in the acme of luxury and sit drinking occasional brandies and rushing out now and again to see the express roaring through” (Kate Fleming, Celia Johnson: A Biography, Weidenfeld & Nicolson, London, 1991, ISBN 10: 0297811886, ISBN 13: 9780297811886, p. 171.) While the actors lived in Windermere in a rather luxurious hotel despite the ongoing war and were driven to the set in a Rolls every evening, the technicians and other employees lived in and around Carnforth.

5. The windows of the train are illuminated from the inside with headlights – if you consider that the individual compartments were not connected to each other and so each compartment had its own headlights, connections and cables, with twenty visible compartments it is easy to estimate how much preparation was necessary for the lighting of this scene.

6. On the other hand, it could also be true that Krasker simply wanted to liven up the image of the train station on an early evening and therefore caused movement. But the man next to the camera rarely thought so broadly [crudely? – Ed.] and neither did David Lean.

7. Celia Johnson complained about the film’s darkness. In mid-March 1945, the dream sequences were filmed in Denham. The costume designers and makeup specialists wanted Celia Johnson to look extra festive in the ball gown. After the shoot, Celia Johnson wrote, “The whole of the hairdressing wardrobe and makeup departments have been on their toes in a wild attempt to make me look glamorous. On the whole, they succeeded fairly well but I saw some of the rushes today and the whole thing is perfectly pitch dark so all their sweat and toil has been completely unnecessary.” (Kate Fleming, Celia Johnson: A Biography, Weidenfeld & Nicolson, London, 1991, ISBN 10: 0297811886, ISBN 13: 9780297811886, p. 174).

8. The platform on which Laura is now walking up and down was recreated in the studio. When she turns to face the incoming train, we’re back in Carnforth.

9. This scene was also shot at the Denham studio.

10. One critic remarked that the film’s motto was “Make tea, not love.”

11. Trevor Howard managed this scene with difficulty, he couldn’t read the text, got muddled, was endlessly needy and Celia Johnson became more and more tired during the shoot (see also Kate Fleming, Celia Johnson: A Biography, Weidenfeld & Nicolson, London, 1991, ISBN 10: 0297811886, ISBN 13: 9780297811886, p. 175).

12. Richard Dyer, Brief Encounter, British Film Institute, London, 1993, ISBN 10: 0851703623, ISBN 13: 9780851703626.

13. Kevin Brownlow, David Lean, Richard Cohen Publications, London, 1996, ISBN 10: 1860660428, ISBN 13: 9781860660429, p. 213, 214.

14. Incidentally, Lean used these apparently inadequate shots for the opening sequence of the finished film. So were they really that bad?

15. Kevin Brownlow, David Lean, Richard Cohen Publications, London, 1996, ISBN 10: 1860660428, ISBN 13: 9781860660429, p. 214

16. Neame describes the incident rather coolly in his memoirs: “(Krasker) was obviously upset when he learned of our decision. I told him how genuinely sorry I was, adding, ‘You’re too talented for this to affect your career’. And it was true.” (Neame, Straight, p. 99)

17. One of the oddities of film history: Green, the same age as Krasker, had been working as a Director of Photography since 1940 and had already made three films with Reed (Climbing High 1938, The Stars Look Down 1940, The Way Ahead 1944). But apparently Reed didn’t want him for Odd Man Out, which would have suited him both conceptually and photographically. So Green was “free” for David Lean. Since Reed obviously hadn’t hired a cameraman just a few months before shooting began, the question arises: who did he originally want to hire for Odd Man Out?

18. Oswald Morris (Author), Geoffrey Bull (Author), Michael Caine and Sir Sidney Lumet (Foreword), Huston, We Have a Problem: A Kaleidoscope of Filmmaking Memories, Scarecrow Press, 2006, ISBN 10: 0810857065, ISBN 13: 978-0810857063, p. 131-143.

19. Peter William Evans, Carol Reed, Manchester University Press, Manchester, 2005, ISBN 10: 0719063671, ISBN 13: 9780719063671, p. 70.

20. Karel Reisz, The Technique of Film Editing, Focal Press, London, 1953, ISBN 10: 0240521854, p. 261ff.

21. Details play an important role: while the men are walking through this small square, someone on the floor above the shop draws their blinds because of the shouting – he doesn’t want anything to do with the whole thing.

22. Richard Blank, Film&Licht, Alexander Verlag, Berlin, 2009, ISBN 13: 9783895811999, p. 95.

23. Nicholas Wapshott, The man between: a biography of Carol Reed, Chatto & Windus, London, 1990, ISBN 10: 0701133538.

24. Charles Frank, born January 23, 1910, had mainly worked on dubbing until this film. Even after Uncle Silas, he was unable to establish himself as a director.

25. Krasker had previously shot Dangerous Moonlight (1941) with him.

26. From The New Yorker review, quoted in Halliwell’s Film and Video Guide 2003.

27. The Scottish critics objected to this film for exploiting the encounter between Bonnie Prince Charlie and Flora MacDonald into a love story, which is historically unsupported and thus a history concoction that the film people came up with believing that such an episode would open up the American audience market for this film. But it was precisely this last shot, which once again showed Flora in a particularly good “light”, that the Scots did not like. Your national hero as a flushed-face lover!

28. Korda, Und immer, München 1981, p. 33.

29. Quoted from Halliwell’s Film and Video Guide 2003, New York 2003.

30. All quotes quoted from Kulik, Korda, p. 305.

31. Karl Hartl and Alexander Korda knew each other well because Hartl had been Korda’s production manager in Budapest in the 1920s. Hartl was also a versatile man – he had steered the country’s film fortunes during the German occupation of Austria and was one of the first to be denazified after the war. Robert Krasker, fascinated by the charm and personality of this man, made two more films with him.

32. Lexicons do not list this word. Apparently it refers to a baseball player in America who had particularly large feet. So: “big-footed” or “you with your square slippers”.

33. A “man from the street” whom Reed had hired for this film and who pronounced the German word “Luftballon” with the omission of the compound so that it could become a “balloon”, which he built into a German sentence. This play with the German language is admirably maintained in this English film, where entire passages are left in German (for example, the insults of the landlady

Hedwig Bleibtreu) without being translated. You knew what was meant without understanding the words. In places, The Third Man is a wonderful silent film that thrives on the power of the images alone

34. “Robert Krasker finally reached his artistic peak in the fall of 1948. In passages clearly reminiscent of the German, cinematic expressionism of the 1920s, he photographed a moribund world of ruins and shadows, Viennese stairwells and wide, nocturnal squares in The Third Man, the catacomb-like drainage and seemingly endless cemetery paths. He deliberately used oblique perspectives as a stylistic device that promotes tension and creates atmosphere”. Das große Personenlexikon des Films, Vol. 4, p. 476. Nevertheless, it is somewhat perplexing that Krasker did not even want to claim this oblique perspective for himself, as if he wanted to say: “I was always just an executive organ. Others had the ideas…” (Author’s note).

35. Both quotes from Prümm, Bierhoff, Körnich, Kamerastile im aktuellen Film, Marburg 1999, p. 46/47.

36. Four years later, Reed tried to repeat the success of The Third Man. With the film The Man Between he moved the action to Berlin, used similar elements such as slanted perspectives, people mysteriously looking around, illuminated ruins and rubble landscapes and in turn told a story that takes place between the eastern and western sectors of this city, which is also divided. The actors were James Mason and Claire Bloom. “Imitation Third Man with an uninteresting mystery and a solemn ending. Good acting and production can’t save it”: Halliwell’s Film and Video Guide. Would Krasker have found the ruins of Berlin similar to the ruins of Vienna?

37. Quoted from The C.A. Lejeune Film Reader, p. 241.

38. See John Harris, My Life, p. 16. Krasker didn’t get the news while filming State Secret, but during Another Man’s Poison. State Secret had already been shot, in mid-October 1949.

39. Although these laureates lived and worked in Britain, Périnal was French and Krasker was born in Egypt and raised in Australia, with only Green and Cardiff being allowed to call themselves “genuinely” British. “Peri” could be proud that his student was also found worthy of an Oscar. It was another seven years before another British cinematographer received this award: Jack Hildyard. He had worked on three films with Krasker and could, with a little imagination, be called his student.

40. We don’t know if there was also a congratulations from “David” (Lean), who might have been able to congratulate his kicked-out-cameraman, as did former friend Ronald Neame: the collection at the British Film Institute (BFI) offers no clues.

41. Desmond, Glimpse, September/October, p. 26. When friends pointed out that this approach to the award was perhaps too casual, he later placed the Oscar on the mantelpiece in his Sloane Square apartment, and nobody was allowed to touch it.

The Robert Krasker Project

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