Part 1: The becoming of an artist

The Eastern Jew looks to the West with a longing that it in no way deserves. For the Eastern Jew, the West means freedom, the opportunity to work and develop one’s talents, justice and autonomous rule of the spirit.

– Josef Roth, The Wandering Jews

Table of contents

The wandering

There is a mystery surrounding Robert Krasker’s birth date and place of birth: the reference works are by no means unanimous as to when and where he was born.

The sadly now defunct Internet Encyclopaedia of Cinematographers (IEC) supplies a birth date of August 12, 1913 and names Perth in Western Australia as the location.

For the now-defunct website brit.movie.co it is August 21, 1913 and Perth, in the Guild of British Camera Technicians’ Eyepiece magazine in 1990 it is August 13, 1913 and the place of birth is given as Shark Bay in Western Australia.

The Große Personenlexikon des Films dates his birth to August 13, 1913 in Perth, and the Film Reference website finally puts the date as August 12, 1913.

Finally, the online edition of the Australian Dictionary of Biography gives, correctly, August 21, 1913 and the place of birth as Alexandria in Egypt.

Such a jumble of data is occasionally found in the biographies of artists, musicians and painters. Be it because a pianist like Artur Rubinstein wanted to hide his true age or a film mogul like Louis B. Mayer believed that his descent from a Jewish family in Galicia would damage his Hollywood reputation. Why Robert Krasker could cause such confusion with information about his date and place of birth is not easy to explain. He was not interested in any form of honour, registration or posthumous fame. But since he remained a very private person throughout his life, he had to fear that the mention of his birthplace in Egypt would have confronted him with further questions that his story had demanded. Robert Krasker, who as a cameraman was a master of the dark and shadowy, wanted to keep his own origins in this same darkness.

“Krasker” was not the original family name. Their ancestors came from East Prussia and originally lived in Pommeranz. ¹ Later the family settled in Russia. As the great-grandparents of Robert Krasker in the early 19th century Russia wanted to immigrate to Romania, the border guards on the Danube could neither write nor read the name and certainly not understand it. So he asked the family in which part of Russia they had lived. Since this area was called Karoska, that name was given to them. Over the years, it gradually became “Krasker”. ²

The Krasker family stayed in the border area between Bulgaria and Romania. Krasker’s father Léon was born on December 12, 1877 in Tulcsa, today’s Tulcea, at the gateway to the Romanian Danube delta. A small town with barely 60,000 inhabitants at that time, who worked in shipyards and the textile industry. As to Léon’s parents, father David worked as a merchant, and mother Sophie raised the children. Léon stated on all official documents that he was born in Romania. However, in the year of his birth, Tulcsa or Tulcea still officially belonged to Bulgaria and only fell to Romania the following year. Here, too, the father, not unlike the son in this respect, carried out a small retouching of reality.

During the great exodus of the Jews in the 1890s, the family emigrated to France. They now lived in Paris. There Léon Krasker learned the trade of goldsmith, but then became an entrepreneur and trader. His brother Aaron, a diamond cutter, migrated to Alexandria in Egypt and settled there.

Léon had fallen in love with Mathilde Rubel. Mathilde came from an Eastern Jewish family from Chernivtsi, the capital of the crown land of Bukovina in the foothills of the Carpathians, on the border with Galicia. She spoke German. In 1881, the year Mathilde was born, Czernowitz was still part of the Austro-Hungarian dual monarchy. Mathilde and Léon married on May 26, 1904 in Paris.

The following year their first child was born in Paris: George. It was difficult for the young family to be “patriotic”. Eastern Jews had it just as difficult in Paris as in other western cities. Nobody had been waiting for them. They were viewed with suspicion and often met with open hostility. The prospects of an appropriate professional position that corresponded to their skills could not be expected. So where should you go? Would it be better in England? The Kraskers moved on, away from their parents and family, away from France. It was their fate to move about.

They were fated to move restlessly from country to country. In London, the family lived in the northern borough of Hackney, a neighbourhood where many Jews had settled.

What awaited them there does not exactly read in contemporary sources as the hoped-for El Dorado. After the great exodus of Jews from Galicia and Russia, the government in London, together with the Royal Commission on Alien Immigration, tried to establish rules to direct the immigration of Eastern Jews into the right direction. But the rush made any individual examination impossible. The immigrants settled mainly in three cities: London, Manchester and Leeds. They opened hundreds of small workshops and shops in London’s Hackney district. The term “sweated labour” ³ referred to the torments that immigrated Jews were expected to endure.

“To the misfortune of the immigrants, the trades they entered were in decline and characterized by low wages, long hours, irregular or seasonal employment, and poor working conditions. Workshops were housed in garrets, cellars, backrooms in private homes, stables, disused sheds, crumbling warehouses. Most were overcrowded, dimly lit, poorly ventilated, littered with refuse, and permeated with foul odours. Toilet facilities were scandalous. It was not unusual for inspectors to find floors smeared with faeces, toilets leaking water onto workroom floors, and unenclosed urinals.” ⁴

Was that the promise? Was Western Europe cold-shouldering Jewish immigrants by keeping them out of all important positions and sealing itself off against them? Word got around about the incredible adventures of the Eastern Jew Mark Rubin ⁵, who had made fabulous fortunes trading in pearls in Australia. He was already a legend in his own lifetime.

Léon Krasker was still young. At the age of almost 33, wouldn’t he rather live in a country where he wasn’t judged on the basis of his origins and religious affiliation? He had been trying to establish himself professionally for ten years. External circumstances were not favorable to him. Would it be better in Australia? Maybe even easier? Released from the confines of Europe, but haunted by homesickness for a Europe to which one was both attached and from which one had turned away? It took fierce inner struggles before the decision was finally made: we want to take the risk! Maybe as a pearl dealer.

It was also important to take care of the growing family. During their time in London’s Hackney district two girls were born: in September 1906 Georgette and in December 1908 Marie “Mitzi”, who was later to become Robert’s favourite sister. The five of them needed to make the long voyage to Australia. After weeks of traveling on the steamer SS Nera, the family arrived on April 12, 1910 at the port of Fremantle in Western Australia.

SS Nera limps into Fremantle, 9 July 1905. Image courtesy of State Library of Western Australia.

Perth was only a stopover. The actual destination was Shark Bay, 800 kilometres north of Perth. So they set off into the wilderness of the Australian continent, leaving all forms of civilization behind that they knew from Europe. With fatal consequences, as it turned out.

Far away in Shark Bay

The road to Shark Bay was a long one, and they traveled up the coast over bumpy dirt roads and poorly paved roads. An adventure with three small children! A risk, because the medical care in the desert country was only very sporadic and poor. The Kraskers came from a densely populated, cultivated country in Europe and now had to reconcile themselves in the Australian outback with being largely on their own.

By the time they arrived, Shark Bay was no longer the centre of Australia’s pearling industry. A law had just ruled that Malays and Japanese, who had previously mainly done the dangerous work of diving, could no longer be employed. Only the few should dive for the precious good of the sea. In 1910 the shallow waters around Shark Bay were considered to be largely fished out. The adventurers moved on to Broome, 1,500 kilometers to the north-east, where this part of the coast promised better yields.

Did Léon ⁶ Krasker know about this shift? Then why would he still want to live in Denham where his chances of a career in the pearl trade were less? It remains a mystery.

The sight that the Kraskers faced in the small town of Denham took some getting used to. A beach landscape stretching to the horizon on the Indian Ocean, flat as far as the eye can see. A putrid stench hung over the place itself because the oysters that were fished had to be piled up in wooden tubs on the beach so that they could dry out. Only when they were dry did the pearls fall out of the shells, if there were any in them at all. The flesh of the oysters themselves was inedible.

Léon Krasker and his family settled in. How successfully he ran his pearl trading, how the family got along, how they lived and worked there, cannot be researched today. Denham now has a population of just under 1,000, the pearl trade is long gone and the town’s memory of those early years seems to have been erased. It came and went and left few traces.

In 1911, another girl was born to the Kraskers: Stephanie. Now there were six of them and Léon decided to give up his Romanian citizenship. After a two-year waiting period, any newcomer to Australia could apply for citizenship. In November 1912 Léon Krasker signed the Application for Certificate of Naturalization. The local official Arthur Reginald Adams certified his reliability as a citizen of the town of Denham. He swore an oath of allegiance to the British king. The form names Edward VII, the son of Victoria, as King of Britain, who reigned in 1910, including as King of Australia, which title then passed on to his son George V. However, the forms in the otherwise well-managed Commonwealth had not yet been reprinted and so the name of the new king was simply handwritten over them.

Born in Alexandria

Europe, the old homeland, was still in people’s hearts and minds and also in the Krasker family’s. Their family of origin lived there, their siblings, Mathilde’s mother. In 1913 Leon had enough money and in January the family embarked for Egypt from the port of Fremantle near Perth.

There was another reason for the trip: in order to get better prices for his pearls, Leon had to travel to Europe in order to cut out the middlemen. Mother-of-pearl buttons were á la mode, and pearls were needed in abundance. Leon had them in his luggage, by the sack. In addition, Mathilde’s mother lived in Alexandria, and Leon’s brother Aaron from the extended family had old connections there, but had already moved back to Europe at the beginning of 1910 because of his wife’s illness. ⁷

When they boarded, Mathilde Krasker was two months pregnant with her fifth child. Whether or not she knew her condition upon departure, the trip was not postponed. In Alexandria they could be reached at the postal address Sidi-Gaber, at the main railway station in the city. On August 21, 1913, the youngest son of the family was born in Alexandria, Egypt. His name would be Robert.

His parents did not initially register this birth with the Australian consul in Alexandria but waited to register until January 1914, when they returned to Perth. And so, under the testimony of Sister Weintraub, Robert Krasker’s birth certificate was issued and officially stamped and sealed in Perth on January 28, 1914.

A riding accident

Leon Krasker went about his business, the family had settled down in Shark Bay, which at the time was repeatedly noted as Sharks Bay on official documents. The Kraskers lived at 25 Knight Terrace (known as “the pearl dealer’s cottage”) on Denham’s seafront, right on the Indian Ocean. Leon Krasker became a valued member of the community. He had organized his pearl trading tightly and rode his horse Battler every week to buy pearls from the fishermen along the coast. The ride on his horse was risky, because Leon Krasker had lost a leg in an accident and was wearing a cork prosthesis. Again and again he was asked to drive in a carriage because it seemed safer. One day he didn’t come back.

The Shark Bay Chronicle provides an account of Leon Krasker’s final hours:

“Krasker used to ride a horse called ‘Battler’ over to Monkey Mia and Herald Bight to buy pearls. When he returned he always brought mail in his saddle bags from the men at the various pearling settlements. He would take the letters to the post office, and the post mistress Gladys Lloyd would put the letters in the mail bag for the next State ship.

He was always punctual. One day the ship was due and when there was no sign of Krasker, Mrs Lloyd became anxious about him. A search party set out from town on horseback and found Krasker’s body on the road three miles from the turn-off on the road to Herald Bight.

He had stopped to open a gate, and on re-mounting had been thrown from his horse, and in the fall had broken his good leg. The unfortunate man began dragging himself along the ground towards a distant sheep watering point. However the effort was too much and his strength ran out before he could reach it. He perished on the lonely track. Leon Krasker had a notebook and pencil with him, and before he died he scribbled a note relating what had happened to him and wrote a will.” ⁸

Leon Krasker did not make it to this simple water outlet. To date it is known in Denham as Krasker’s Tank.

The cause of death is entered on the official certificate: “Fell from horse and broke leg and perished from shock on the beach 12 miles from Denham.” He died 11 miles from Denham. The day of his death was dated September 26, 1916. In his last notes shortly before his death he wrote to his wife:

“I start back for the tank and failed where you will find me – the thirst killed me. I am sorry to die before (my) life time, ma chérie, I leave everything for you.”

Three days later, the burial took place according to the Church of England rite in Shark Bay Cemetery. On the tombstone it says:

In loving memory of Leon
Beloved husband of Matilda Krasker
died 26th September, 1916
aged 39 years
He left his home in health and strength
No thought of death was near
He had no time to say farewell
To those he loved so dear.

This tragedy left the family helpless and disconsolate. Leon had died in the middle of his life, in the middle of constructing his life’s work, in the midst of his business as a pearl dealer. He was survived by five dependent children aged 3 to 11 years.

What should Mathilde Krasker do? Going back to parents and in-laws in France was impossible because the First World War was raging in Europe. A voyage by ship was unthinkable in 1916. So there was nothing left but to take over her husband’s role and, in addition to looking after the children, continued the business as best she could. On a business trip on board the ship Ormonde to Melbourne in 1920, she stated that her profession was “merchant”.

Move away, but to where?

The family situation in Shark Bay became increasingly difficult. The children developed and asked for schools, for education, for opportunities to acquire knowledge. That wasn’t possible out there, so far away from civilization. Denham had a school but no high school, so how were the kids supposed to thrive with their gifts, talents and aspirations in the narrow circle around Shark Bay? Shark Bay seemed to hold little promise for the future. So the family decided at the beginning of 1923 to return to Europe first. The passenger list shows that they reached England on board the ship Hobsons Bay on February 17, 1923. From there they traveled on to Paris to live with relatives.

The return to the confines of Europe had more to do with desperation than with the joy of returning home. After all, settling in France with five children and organizing training and school there took a lot of strength, nerves and time. Robert was only 10 years old and the oldest of the children was 18. France had also changed. After the horrors of the First World War, the country had been bled dry, impoverished and was slowly trying to free itself from the trauma of this war. And now they were back in a country and a continent that they actually wanted to leave but couldn’t really.

They stayed three years. Robert was now 12 years old, slim, gaunt and bright. He showed artistic interest, liked to paint and designed plans for buildings. He went to school in France, learned the French language, played with French children, but the cramped apartment, the proximity to relatives, life in a grotesquely overcrowded city like Paris did not make it easy for the Kraskers. They were used to the vastness of the Australian landscape, the desert landscape and the sun, the light and the warmth of the Indian Ocean. Paris was not a terminus. Mathilde Krasker decided, we may assume with a heavy heart, to return to Australia once more.

One can only speculate about the reasons. Was staying with relatives not a permanent solution? Did business in Australia have to be supervised? Was life in France unpleasant? Robert broke off his French school education again. In early 1926, the whole family returned to Australia from Marseille on board the ship SS Cephée. They arrived back in Fremantle, near Perth, on March 8, 1926. It seemed to be the fate of the Krasker family in this generation, too, to wander restlessly through the world.

SS Cephée at sea in bay, New South Wales, circa 1930, https://nla.gov.au:443/tarkine/nla.obj-162512379. Image courtesy of Trove, National Library of Australia.

Denham had changed. The pearl trade became more difficult: a woman could only assert herself with difficulty in an all-male society. Although the shortcomings of Paris had now given way to a comfortable life in a small community on the edge of the world and the ugly sides of the French cosmopolitan city faded, its beautiful aspects shone all the more brightly. Robert had experienced schooling in France. What was there that was adequate in the Australian bush? They weren’t at home in Europe, and they weren’t at home in Australia anymore either. The plan to settle down in Denham a second time hadn’t been made any easier by the death of her husband and her children’s father.

They couldn’t stay in Denham either: the family realized that all too well when they tried again. This stopover in the small community lasted three more years. Some things had improved there, too, and sharing in the fate of the Kraskers was also beneficial for the family. But it wasn’t enough. The European roots were too deep. In the end, we don’t know why Mathilde Krasker decided to leave Australia after all and return with her five children to Europe, which she had already left twice.

Fairfax Corporation. (1925). People on the wharf watching the departure of the passenger ship Balranald, Walsh Bay wharf, New South Wales, 8 April 1925 Retrieved August 21, 2023, from http://nla.gov.au/nla.obj-157916549. Image courtesy of Trove, National Library of Australia.

On January 13, 1929, coming from Melbourne, they reached the port of Southampton on board the ship SS Balranald. Robert Krasker was now 16 years old, had repeatedly dropped out of school on two continents and was faced with the question: what will become of me?

What he had acquired in this back and forth between the continents were languages. He learned easily, was intelligent, and could easily absorb new impressions. As a boy he spoke English in Australia and French in France, and spoke German with his mother. He had an eye for light, for nature, for people. So it made sense to think of an education that included all of these talents and at the same time was in line with the trend of the time: photography.

The photographic eye

Photographic vision is not something you are born with, but it can be learned. Robert enrolled in art school in Paris. There he learned to paint and draw, how to think in terms of proportions, how to model and work with clay and stone. Basic knowledge that accompanied him throughout his life, and whenever his time allowed, he also painted and drew in his later years. It was easy for him and he had an eye for motifs. Still, the 17-year-old found seeing the world through a lens much more of a challenge. Especially since the pictures had not only learned to walk, but also to speak. The sound film had announced itself. Robert was young, curious and open-minded.

But first he needed proper manual training. Where better to learn photography than in Dresden, a Mecca of the photography industry? The Leica came onto the market in 1925 and quickly became a cult object. In 1929, Paul Franke and Reinhold Heidecke in Braunschweig invented the first twin-lens reflex camera. The Ihagee works in Dresden manufactured the first Exakta cameras. Professor Robert Luther founded the Photohändlerschule, the professional photography school, in Dresden, which emerged from the Institute for Photography at the Technischen Universität, the Technical University. So Robert, who had spoken German from the start, decided to study photography in Dresden. He lived with his uncle George, who worked as a translator for Zeiss Ikon in Dresden, on Residenzstraße (now named Loschwitzer Straße) in Dresden’s Loschwitz.

The Photohändlerschule was designed in such a way that it taught theory and its application in practice. Photography had changed: it was no longer just a job for professionals but also became a hobby for amateurs. The industry recognized the opportunities that lay in this market. So great companies like Perutz and Zeiss Ikon and Leica got together and founded this school in Dresden, which was to train future photographers so that they could carry the knowledge and reputation of German ingenuity all over the world.

The school was initially located in the Beyer building on the campus of the Technical University in Dresden. Then the photography school moved into the building at Zinzendorfstraße 47, not far from its former location. In the disastrous bombing of Dresden on February 13, 1945, the school and all its archives, holdings and documents were reduced to rubble and ashes. Nothing was left, everything was lost and no evidence of the time Robert Krasker spent in Dresden survives.

What were the most important questions for aspiring photographers back then? An excursion titled “night patrol with the camera” was on the curriculum. “About the production of shadow-free beetle photos” was taught and puzzled over as well as about compensating and backlight developers. The question was asked: is photomontage a gimmick? Panchromatic sheet film had been invented and needed to be tested and understood. Considerations were made as to what the difference was between a snapper and a photographer and how much the once frowned upon photographs with artificial light had now led to an important illustrative form of photography. How to get better night shots of the stars without excessive glare, and how do you deal with the density curve of negative materials?

There was another reason why Germany was highly valued photographically in those years: German film gained international recognition through works such as The Blue Angel (1929) and M – Eine Stadt sucht den Mörder (1931). Directors like Fritz Lang and Josef von Sternberg worked in Berlin. Silent films such as Nosferatu (1922), The Last Laugh (1924), Metropolis (1927) and Die Weisse Hölle vom Piz Palü (1929) achieved the highest recognition for their expressive visual design. Cameramen such as Fritz Arno Wagner, Karl Freund, Curt Courant and Eugen Schüfftan lived and worked in the German capital.

One of the largest film factories in the world was built in Wolfen near Bitterfeld. As early as 1914, 30 million metres of raw film were being produced there every year. In 1924 there were 200 film production companies in Germany.

It was a wild, turbulent and troubled time in which Robert Krasker found himself. Debauchery and want, waste and lack of money, risk and conservative preservation coexisted and at the same time there was an atmosphere of high artistic creativity, especially in Berlin. The fact that something new was developing could also be felt in the rather peaceful, contented Saxon royal seat in which this newness was reflected as if in a concave mirror, as if through a spyglass. It was a time of upheaval and departure. The film people knew that the hour had come: silent films were dead, long live talkies! What was to be expected politically could already be seen in outline.

Robert had enough to do in processing the new impressions that rushed over him. He absorbed these experiences. But the foreignness, the mixture of petty-bourgeois narrowness and exaggerated self-importance, as well as the flaring hatred of Jews and everything foreign, were also part of the German reality of those years.

On the assembly line in Joinville

Everyone was talking about talkies, and the Americans had them to sell. Because as easy as it was to adapt the subtitles of the silent films to the respective national language, it became just as complicated to have films speak in other languages. Synchronization was still a foreign word and the cinemas wanted talkies, as many as possible.

The film people got the message. One of the first talkies was The Blue Angel, starring Emil Jannings and Marlene Dietrich, to be made in two versions: German and English. ⁹ Hollywood was not prepared to have films made there in Spanish, French, Italian and German as well. Where would one find the actors, the writers, the directors? A babel of languages was the threat, and Hollywood realized that this project could not be realized on the west coast of America.

Paramount’s bosses in Hollywood moved the production of these multilingual films to Paris. Paramount bought the existing Ciné-Romans studios in Joinville, 26 kilometers south-east of Paris, invested millions of US dollars and built six new, state-of-the-art sound studios there in just a few months, in which more than 300 sound films were shot between 1930 and 1933, mostly comedy.

To accomplish this feat, Paramount’s French boss, Robert T. Kane, transformed these studios into a Mecca for film talent. He needed and snapped up directors, actors, architects, editors and cameramen. The pace of production was insane. There were no working time limits, no overtime, no special payments. Films were made here on an assembly line.

Robert Krasker, freshly back from Dresden, received a tip and applied to Joinville. Not just out of curiosity and delight in new things: he also had to earn his living. Every extra hand was welcome there. Bob came as a student, as a viewer, as an apprentice, but also as a translator and interpreter. He became a coffee fetcher, script boy, personal assistant, director’s and cameraman’s right-hand man and finally got to know the “old hand” Philip Tannura.

The General and a scenario repeated

Tannura was born in New York in 1897 and had worked for a time at Edison Photographic Laboratories. At the age of 25 he succeeded in becoming a Chief Cameraman in a lightning career. He shot Matinée Idol (1928) with Frank Capra and Circus Kid (1928) with George B. Seitz. In the late 1920s he joined Paramount’s Parisian adventure. Three films were made there with him: Le Rebelle, Generalen and Die Nacht der Entscheidung. Robert Krasker assisted.

For 33-year-old American Tannura, 18-year-old Bob from Australia was a godsend. What the elders could bring to the table in terms of knowledge and experience, the youngsters brought with them in terms of flexibility and linguistic dexterity. “What did he say?” was the agreed code between the two. Bob was already there to translate for the cameraman from the USA what the director or gaffer had just said to him in French. Since Bob showed a thoroughly lucid understanding of all issues connected with the shot and the light, Tannura did not want to be without the young man.

Working on these three films also became a lesson in cinematic cynicism. The story in all three films and in all three languages was always the same: a wife saves her pacifist husband from the firing squad through her very personal commitment to the commanding general. George Cukor first filmed this heartbreaking story in Hollywood, starring Walter Huston and Kay Francis, ¹⁰ under the title The Virtuous Sin.

Then director Adelqui Migliar put his hand to the French version in Joinville, calling it Le Rebelle and putting the emphasis less on the love-loving wife and more on the nonconformist husband. The camera work was particularly praised by the critics. ¹¹ Tannura and Krasker must have wondered about the flexible use of the original material.

The Swedish version of the same material was directed by Gustav Bergman under the title of Generalen. Now General Platoff was suddenly the main character and Marya Ivanova in the original version mutated into Maria Sabline in the Swedish version. No one except the Swedes on the team understood a word of the script, but Tannura and Krasker, on the same set, saw how agile screenwriters can be when they push the original material beyond its language’s limitations.

The German version was simpler. Bob understood what the actors were saying. The German-speaking audience was a particularly interesting market for the Paramount managers: 64 million in Germany, 7.5 million in Austria, 3.5 million German-speakers in Czechoslovakia, as well as in Switzerland and Scandinavia! In the fourth version, Conrad Veidt took on the role of General Gregori Platoff, Olga Chechowa played Marya, and Trude Hesterberg played Madame Alexandra. The opus was titled The Night of Decisions and directed by the Russian Dimitri Buchowetski, who was known in film circles as the man who almost directed Anna Karenina with Garbo – if he hadn’t tangled with the studio boss at the last moment, who fired him after a showdown. It was a colourful crew working in Joinville.

The work was quick and hassle free. The cold cynicism of an industry geared only to profit, which turned out every production at an adventurous pace and got by without artistic ambitions and which let the market dictate its pace. How were films to be made? Joinville was like a mill to be turned and Robert learned a life lesson: films are not made for art, but for profit. The exceptions prove the rule.

In Joinville, Robert met an elite group of emigrants who worked there as cameramen and who later wrote film history: the Czech Otto Heller, who then went to England and photographed Ladykillers there, among other things, the Russian Michel Kelber, who, after exiling and fleeing the war, worked with Cocteau, the Pole Rudolph Maté, who had already been accepted into the temple of the masters with the silent film La Passion de Jeanne d’Arc (1928). The Hungarian John Alton, who headed the studio’s camera department in Joinville ¹² later had a strong influence on film aesthetics in America, and finally the American Harry Stradling, who rose to become the uncrowned king in Joinville and shot twenty films there with professional routine. Talents without number.

Before Paramount realized the absurdity of the Paris production process and Joinville closed its gates again, Bob decided to follow his sister Mitzi and live in London. He had a British passport, felt drawn to the British way of life and that was the final tipping point for Philip Tannura to also want to work in England. The English film industry was on the up and the years of wandering would come to an end.

A double stroke of luck

England was good for Robert Krasker. There he experienced an unlikely lucky streak. Through Tannura, whose shoulder he also looked over in England, he met the director of this film while shooting Service for Ladies (1932): Alexander Korda. This charming, articulate and charismatic man was on his way to becoming the great mogul of British film. Krasker impressed the Hungarian, who was always looking for new people. Korda, on the other hand, could inspire people, eloquently wrap them around his finger and motivate them.

Robert didn’t have anything more to learn from Tannura, especially since this cameraman shot his films all too routinely, all too obviously. Then a new camera star appeared in the movie firmament, who became an important teacher for Robert.

In 1930, French cameraman Georges Périnal shot Le sang d’un Poète with Cocteau. He had succeeded in realizing the flowing, dreamlike quality of Cocteau’s poetic imagination, filming “a realistic document of unrealistic circumstances”. It was an international triumph. The name Périnal was on everyone’s lips. Périnal then met director René Clair and transformed Sous les toits de Paris (1930) into an airy, floating camera work, a simple and tender declaration of love for Paris. The next film Á nous la liberté (1931) was also a triumph for the Clair and Périnal team.

His reputation also reached England. Alexander Korda wanted to bring as many talents as possible to England. He went to Paris and recruited the French cameraman to work in London. He won him over with a generous offer: employment for life.

Périnal agreed. His knowledge of English was rather moderate and so it seemed sensible to give him an assistant in England who was careful, agile, prudent, fluent in the language, pleasant to deal with and eager to learn: Robert met all these requirements. There was an instant spark between the two. For the next 10 years, Périnal and Krasker remained a team: Périnal set the lights, Krasker operated the camera.

This coup was ideal for Robert Krasker: he could not have wished for a better teacher. He was allowed to accompany Périnal at work and was finally able to build his own aesthetic on the basis of these experiences. This is how he developed into an artist in his own right.

The master and his assistant

In 1932, Alexander Korda founded London Film Productions with his brothers Vincent and Zoltan. They chose Big Ben’s tower clock as their trademark, which was set for 11 am, one hour until midnight.

Georges Périnal, the new chief cameraman, made The Private Life of Henry VIII (1933) as the first film directed by Alexander Korda. Probably nobody expected that this film would be a worldwide hit. A rather conventional film in concept, Périnal was allowed to show in a few shots what he had mastered perfectly in France. This is the case in one of the last scenes, in which Charles Laughton, as the absolute ruler, has his beloved wife executed for her infidelity and paces restlessly back and forth in the large entrance hall. A multi-faceted ray of sunshine falls through the window, Henry the Eighth casts a shadow, symbolic of the last years of his life.

Robert Krasker was also an official camera operator on London Film Productions’ next film, The Rise of Catherine the Great (1933). Alexander Korda rose to become the star of the British film industry. It became fashionable to speak English with a Hungarian accent. Korda’s next film The Private Life of Don Juan (1934) introduced Britain to a new cinema love couple: Douglas Fairbanks and Merle Oberon. Georges Périnal routinely portrayed both in a likeable and friendly light. Robert learned that one of the cameraman’s most important tasks is to put the stars of the film in a pleasant, warm, likeable light that emphasizes their strengths.

Robert, or “Bob” as he was soon known within the team, established himself within the London Films production company. He got to know the different cameras, the lenses, the filters and already understood film technology. A shrewd and cautious colleague, he lent a hand to Périnal and always had what Périnal needed before he could utter it. Bob worked diligently and purposefully in the camera department at London Films.

Rembrandt and northern light

In Périnal’s next film, the artist within the cinematographer was met with a challenge: Rembrandt (1936). Charles Laughton once again played the leading role, Alexander Korda directed and Périnal managed to compose the black and white images as if they had been painted by Rembrandt. The lighting was based on north light, which the master used so often. The light fell strongly from above, so that the illuminated parts shone brightly, but the shadowed parts by no means remained too dark and invisible.

Lee Garmes explained this technique in more detail:

“Ever since I began, Rembrandt has been my favourite artist. I’ve always used his technique of north light – of having my main source of light on a set always coming from the north. He used to have a great window in his studio ceiling or at the end of the room which always caught that particular light. And of course I’ve always followed Rembrandt in my fondness for low key. If you look at his paintings, you’ll see an awful lot of blacks. No strong highlights. You’ll see faces and you’ll see hands and portions of clothing he specifically wants you to notice, but he’ll leave other details to your imagination.” ¹⁵

All the stops of clever lighting had to be pulled out in order to achieve such an effect with the film material, which was still not very sensitive. Robert Krasker later adopted part of this technique for his own films.

Rosher, Rosson & Schneeberger

Different cameramen, different temperaments, different techniques and different ideas! Many looked to America because the film industry and technology there was always a few steps ahead. How did the cinematographers work in Hollywood? Charles Rosher, born in England, could tell them. Korda brought him over from the USA for Men are not Gods (1936). A great reputation preceded him, for in autumn of 1926 he had married F.W. Murnau’s adaptation of Sunrise (1927) to Hollywood lighting. The expressive image design, which was very much based on German models, and the use of hard shadows with strong contrasts, did not fail to have an effect.

In 1936 the American Harold Rosson also came to England. Born in New York in 1895, Rosson, or “Hal” as he was known, belonged to this first generation of cameramen who were still pioneers. Rosson came to film in 1908, a medium that was still in its infancy, as a professional only Hollywood could produce. Having also been married to film star Jean Harlow for eight months, his reputation preceded him. In the film The Man Who Could Work Miracles (1936) Krasker worked alongside Bernard Brown, Maurice Forde and Jack Cardiff as a cinematographer. It was not easy to get along with his American colleague.

Jack Cardiff also had his troubles:

“Hal had established himself in the studio as an outrageous tyrant, firing one camera operator after another, dissatisfied with the standard of their work.” ¹⁶

There were four assistants in this film, two too many. Bob had to learn what it takes in the slow pace of filmmaking: to have patience, to take drubbings, to endure bad moods, to let self-proclaimed kings be kings in the studio, and to convert the camera into a protective shield against getting too close to such people.

There were other temperaments too. Also in 1936 came 41-year-old Hans Schneeberger from Germany, who had worked in Arnold Fanck’s team and was one of the most experienced mountain filmmakers. With the snow epic Die Weisse Hölle vom Piz Palü (1929), Schneeberger amazed moviegoers so much that they thought they could feel the bitter cold of the mountains up close in the cinema. He also photographed the Blue Angel together with Günter Rittau, the film a much-discussed masterpiece of Expressionist camerawork. In the film Forget Me Not (1936), directed by Zoltan Korda, Bob met a completely different type of cameraman: friendly, cooperative, work-oriented, without personal antics. Bob was able to talk with his colleague Schneeberger – “snow mountain”, what a joke – about “snow” – one of the secrets of cameramen, because how do you photograph high-contrast, fluffy cold?

Schneeberger and Krasker’s paths crossed again when the producers brought the German in for the daytime shots of The Third Man in Vienna.

Another Denham

The charismatic Alexander Korda had persuaded the Prudential Assurance Company to invest £1 million ¹⁷ a week in his ventures. He made sure that there was a lively and creative working atmosphere. Soon the previous studios were no longer sufficient and in 1936 a new studio complex was built on a 40 hectare site near Denham in Buckinghamshire, northwest of London. It was more of a complete studio town with seven studios, movie theatres and the most modern technology, almost on par with Hollywood. Korda, brilliant at juggling foreign money, had even thought of a French canteen manager. He also invested in the emerging color film technology and succeeded in establishing the first European Technicolor laboratory in Denham.

Not everything went as planned. Films are barter deal: for every financially profitable film there are two others that bring in nothing or make losses. Alexander Korda was aware of this rule of thumb. Had he overreached himself with the lavish studios in Denham?

“When Alex had finished his first tour of the studios, he sat down, stared at his swans with his Homburg on his head, put his head in his hands and said: ‘I’ve made the biggest mistake of my life.’” ¹⁸

Denham, however, was Robert’s future workplace. For the second time in his life he was involved with a place called Denham. He had lived in Denham in Western Australia for 13 years and it was there that his father had died. He started his career as a cinematographer in a new Denham, in Buckinghamshire.

In those years, Denham became a meeting place for international stars, artists and technicians.

“At one time, every one of the seven stages hummed with film-making. If the stages hadn’t been soundproofed, the whirr of all the cameras would have sounded like fields of cicadas. The studio restaurant was packed with glitterati: Charles Laughton, Marlene Dietrich, Henry Fonda, Miriam Hopkins, Laurence Olivier, Orson Welles, Noel Coward. When visitors like Bernard Shaw, H.G. Wells and the occasional member of the Royal Family were sitting at nearby tables, it was like Madame Tussaud’s with sound”. ¹⁹

It was so international that there was a joke that the three Union Jacks fluttering over the Denham studio lot would indicate the number of British citizens in attendance. ²⁰ One of them was, at least in terms of passport, Robert Krasker.

I, Claudius: Frost under the Roman sun

Josef von Sternberg enjoyed a legendary reputation in the 1930s. He had directed films such as The Blue Angel (1930), Morocco (1930), Shanghai Express (1931), and The Scarlet Empress (1934) and made Marlene Dietrich a world star. Korda bought the rights to Robert Graves’ novel I, Claudius and cast Charles Laughton in the lead role. Having wrestled with the actor as a director on two films, he now wanted another director. Korda was able to persuade Sternberg and even get his cameraman, Périnal, through, although Sternberg had other ideas. Robert Krasker was part of the team: he was the camera operator. ²¹

Filming began in Denham on February 15, 1937. All the studios were needed for the gigantic structures designed by Vincent Korda. He recreated the old Rome with its reception halls, palatial rooms and halls, and hundreds of extras in costly attire were also employed. The leading actor, however, was on the verge of a nervous breakdown, complaining that he “couldn’t find” the role of Claudius. On the set he dropped out and didn’t remember his lines. But it got even worse: In mid-March, Merle Oberon, who played Messalina, was injured in a car accident and was unable to work. With an unwilling leading actor, a star in the hospital and a coldly authoritarian director, there was only one choice: to abandon the project. ²² The combination of Sternberg and Laughton was to be an artistic and business event. Korda’s production company, already strapped financially, baldy needed a hit. ²³

The actor Emlyn Williams, himself in the team, described the éclat between Sternberg and Laughton: “What Laughton needed was sympathy, what he got from Sternberg was frost”. ²⁴

The few meters of film that have been preserved show how intensively and with such great attention to detail ²⁵ that Périnal, Sternberg and Krasker worked in the heated atmosphere in the studio. The pictures are so impressive and so symbolic for Krasker’s own work in the coming decades that they should be examined more closely.

Claudius, half imbecile, half statesman, hobbles and stutters. All conflicting emotions are reflected on his face. Périnal uses strong light from above, so that Laughton’s face remains in semi-darkness and only when the head is raised do the dark eye sockets slowly become visible.

Laughton/Claudius receives the call from Rome in the midst of his pigsties on his farm. He wears a slouch hat against the sun (everything was filmed in the studio and looks quite artificial). Since the light comes directly from above, Laughton’s face is in darkness and parts of his face only become visible through the movement of his head, just as the person of Claudius only becomes recognizable bit by bit in the film itself. The play of light and shadow illustrates this process.

Scene 161/6 in the Senate. Claudius sits. The strongly concentrated light only falls on his toga while his head is in its penumbra. The right half of his face is in shadow, the left is slightly lit, but the light always shines on his shoulders. Then he gets up, but the shadow on his face remains. “Profiteering and bribery will stop,” says Claudius to the Senate, and then, in a rush of broken grandeur: “That’s what I am standing for – I…/uh, uh/…Claudius”.

The inner anguish of Claudius, which is blatantly played out in Laughton’s facial expressions, is intensified by the fact that the camera stays on this face and its inner struggles to the point of pain: slightly tilted, slightly tilted, photographed from above, without any editing. His face is never completely in the dark, but is repeatedly illuminated from below by side light and a soft-key lamp, creating a facial landscape of light and shadow and halftones.

In textbook style, this soulful shadow play on the face of a great actor reveals the drama and inner wear and tear of his character captured with light and camera.

The Drum: A flirtation with colour

Krasker felt comfortable in Denham and made a name for himself. He belonged, was open-minded, worked hard and understood the concerns of the producers: what technology can we use to attract viewers to the cinema? Korda found a new answer: colour. In 1937 he wanted to film Over the Moon in Denham, a story written for his wife Merle Oberon. The American Harry Stradling was hired as a cameraman, whom Krasker had known from Joinville and who had also been working in England for years.

Since Stradling had his own team, the ground opened beneath Robert Krasker so he took the cumbersome 3-strip Technicolor camera to Yorkshire, Monte Carlo, Arosa in Switzerland and Venice to capture the moving images needed for back projection in the studio. Krasker’s first flirtation with colour was a rather quiet, subtle one.

After the financially ruinous cancellation of I, Claudius, Korda strained his financiers with the next adventure: a big colour film intended to capture all the exoticism of the British colonies. Glorious Empire! Korda invested in the new technology. This is how The Drum was born in 1938: a fairy tale about a young Indian, Sabu, who saves an entire city. To ensure that the new medium of colour came into its own, the outdoor photography took place in and around Peshawar and Chitra in India. Colour and India: that had to be a hit in 1938! Périnal, however, did not want to go through the rigours of such outdoor adventures and only directed the studio photography. The Canadian Osmond Borradaile, a specialist in shooting in unusual places, went to India fearless, experienced, stable and adventurous. Krasker wasn’t all of that, nevertheless he went with him.

The Technicolor colour process cost huge sums of money, and the brightness on the sets had to be increased so drastically that the arc lamps trembled with heat. The Technicolor process could not yet handle shadows because the shadows contained no controlled colour. The light had to be harsh and bright because the sensitivity of the film material was absurdly low. Fill light had to be softened with side light to achieve at least some three-dimensionality. ²⁶

The work also changed for Denham’s chief film set designer, Vincent Korda. If he had built gigantic, but black and white decorations for I, Claudius, now everything had to be painted in colour. Vincent Korda was a sensitive artist.

“He (Vincent Korda) was a strange man. He was strangely out of character working as an art director, because he was more of a painter or an artist. He made beautiful designs, but he was an expensive art director because usually, if you wanted some paintings for a set, say, the art director would fake something, but Vincent would get the real paintings in. …He was also laconic and critical of everything”. ²⁷

Today the copy of the film ²⁸ The Drum is badly faded, only the “attractive red” ²⁹ of the gala uniforms of the British officers and the red turbans of the Indian insurgents are still effective. The glaringly lit studio passages give an idea of how much Périnal and Krasker were still fighting for technical understanding of how best to deal with colour. The exotic shots from India, which was bursting with life and still belonged to the British crown, attracted cinema-goers. The financiers’ calculations worked. The English were amazed in the cinema how colourful it looked in the distant colony of Indi, and Korda was able to post good earnings.

The Challenge: Dedication upon the mountain (a digression)

Korda kept a close eye on the European film markets. If something promised success somewhere, he wanted to be part of it. He had a flair for success stories and was not attached to national borders. As an Hungarian who had looked around Europe for a long time, it was easy for him to get into conversation with foreign artists and producers. He had heard that the mountaineer and mountain filmmaker Luis Trenker was looking for a co-producer because he wanted to film the dramatic first ascent of the Matterhorn again. This “battle for the Matterhorn” was decided between an Italian and an Englishman. What could be more obvious than taking the British up the mountain? Korda showed interest.

For the difficult filming on the Matterhorn, Trenker put together a team of camera people who were among the best in mountain film at the time: Walter Riml, Klaus von Rautenfeld and Albert Benitz. When the Matterhorn was first climbed in 1865, the Brit Whymper was the first to reach the summit, but on the descent the tether snapped and four of his team members fell to their deaths. When Whymper returned to Zermatt, he was accused of cutting the rope to save himself. But the Italian rival Carrel (Luis Trenker), who feels connected to Whymper in a mountain friendship, climbs the mountain again and finds the rope: it is torn, not cut.

This story is told in the film The Call of the Mountains: its English version was titled The Challenge. In both films Trenker plays the outdoorsman Carrell. In the German version Heidemarie Hatheyer is in his arms, in the English version Joan Gardner. Trenker speaks Denglisch with a clear accent and also a reverberation in the voice that came from the post-synchronization. In both films he is a rather wooden lover, too old at 45 and too tanned for women 20 years his junior, but in both films he becomes the symbol of the sincere, simple truth-telling outdoorsman. It is not unfunny to see that in the German version the faces of the extras in the inn in Breuil look like the farmers and mountain guides in the Alps, while the inn scenes in the English version bear little resemblance to British extras.

The English film doesn’t bother with the scrambling up the mountain (the German one is 20 minutes longer), reduces the action to the struggle of the mountaineers and saves all the alpine gossip of the German version. However, two differences are symptomatic: in the German version, when Carrell found the torn rope up on the mountain, he tried to hack through part of the rope with his pickaxe. He considers it, but doesn’t do it, because that would prove that Whymper, who disappointed him so much on a human level, cut the rope to save himself. Carrell successfully combats this vile feeling. He doesn’t, but he’s considered it. This human nitpicking is missing in the English film.

What is also missing in the English film is the final image. Whymper and Carrell climb up to the summit again. They both sit in the snow on the Matterhorn, happy with their triumph and are reconciled. England and Italy shake hands. ³⁰ Why is this sequence missing in the English version? In these tense times, wouldn’t you want to shake hands with a German-speaking mountaineer side by side on the highest peak in the Alps? A year before Germany declared war on England?

How was it produced? The English had asked the German cameraman Albert Benitz to direct the work in which the English actors had scenes on the mountain in addition to the mountain shots for the German film. This means that the actors were there, climbed onto the rocks with Trenker and his team and spoke their English text and, if necessary, the same (or a similar) scene was shot again with German text. The cameramen’s mountain shots intended for the German film were also used for The Challenge and edited in between (editing: Edward B. Jarvis).

The result was an English film with unusual outdoor shots that would have been unthinkable with a British team because British cameramen simply had no experience “on the mountain”. Robert Krasker did not film in Zermatt or on the mountain, but only in the studios in Denham as Georges Périnal’s assistant. One of the shortest productions of his career. In any case: the English director Milton Rosmer had little to do. After that he didn’t want to direct anymore: it was his last film.

The Four Feathers: The Misfortune

Anything worthwhile should be replayed, a good team must not be replaced! Kordas London Film Productions made good money on The Drum. Why not another similar story from the same exotic kit? The imitator was called The Four Feathers (1938). A military story about military honour, bravery, courage on the spot in hopeless situations and the heroism of British troops. A colourful spectacle from the colonial heyday of the Empire! Shakespearean actor Ralph Richardson struggles through the hot desert sand. Filming in southern Sudan. Anchorman in the studio was Georges Périnal, Vincent Korda made the (colored) sets, Zoltan Korda roared through the recordings. The tireless Osmond Borradaile traveled to Africa with several cameramen. “You should bring us pictures from the desert, impressive passages from the Nile and its tributaries and breathtaking battle pictures.”

The atmosphere on site was anything but good.

“This was no easygoing travelogue, but a tough and exhausting movie. Our home for three months was a tent in the desert with the temperature at a hundred and fifteen degrees ³¹ …Every day was pure hell. We all got a blast…” ³²

Especially Krasker.

Everyone had been warned about the Anopheles mosquito because it transmits malaria and is particularly prevalent in South Sudan. Anyone who complained of headaches or back pain, shivering and feeling hot and then fever had to be treated immediately by the team doctor. Especially since there are different dangerous forms of malaria. Robert Krasker did not have a resilient constitution: barely 1.70 metres tall, rather delicate, extremely slim, wiry and a little transparent, he paid little attention to his sensitivity and tended to be somewhat careless when it came to his health. Despite all preventive measures such as mosquito nets and mosquito repellent ointments, he became infected. Malaria broke out in him with such violence that the doctor had to have him flown back to England. In London, he was taken to hospital on a stretcher. It took him weeks and months to recover from this attack. The day after he was hospitalized, the film company fired him. ³³

Again it was the desert that played fate. His father had died in the desert of Western Australia. Robert contracted malaria in the African desert in Sudan. Sick and unemployed at first, but alive.

The Thief of Baghdad: End of an era

Alexander Korda hated crisis talk but he also knew that he was walking on thin ice with his productions because his films were not attractive enough for American cinemas and the revenues from British cinemas did not cover the production costs. By the end of 1936 his London Films debt had risen to £1.8 million. ³⁴ When the 1937 film Knight Without Armour ³⁵ was another expensive box-office flop, not even his legendary negotiating skills could avert disaster. The clock on Big Ben, which London Films had chosen as its emblem, approached 12 o’clock ominously. It was no longer five to twelve for Korda, but already five past twelve, and so the insurance company Prudential took London Film Productions and the Denham studios out of his hands.

Film people think differently from bankers and insurers. With a mixture of carelessness, recklessness, nerves of steel, charm, imagination and insouciance, Korda continued to dance on his volcano, had his chauffeur pick him up from his apartment on the roof of Claridge’s Hotel in London in the mornings in a 1937 Rolls Royce and produced the next super production in colour: The Thief of Baghdad (1939). After the two previous epics, now to be a fairy tale from 1001 Nights with the Indian Sabu and the German actor Conrad Veidt in the leading roles. Ludwig Berger initially directed the film, Périnal was the cameraman, Vincent Korda created the sets as usual and Robert Krasker, who had recovered from his malaria shock, sat behind the camera as Senior Assistant Camera.

This fairy tale about the young caliph Ahmad and his love for the sultan’s daughter came up with film tricks that the world hadn’t seen before. A flying carpet, the talking genie in a bottle and a flying horse should attract visitors. When the interior shots were almost complete, the greatest possible emergency happened: on September 3, 1939, Great Britain declared war on Germany.

The patriotic Korda left England. He took the half-finished film to America, hired Canadian Osmond Borradaile again as cameraman, brought more technicians with him from England and made the outdoor shots not in Africa as planned, but in the Grand Canyon and Bryce Canyon in southwestern America. The film premiered in New York on December 5, 1940 in front of an enthusiastic audience. Korda had been lucky again.

When the Oscars were presented in Hollywood in 1940, The Thief of Bagdad received a veritable shower of awards and, as a major surprise, Georges Périnal received this award for his cinematography. The first Oscar ever awarded to a cinematographer working in England went to an Anglicized Frenchman!

The film The Thief of Baghdad was Krasker’s final work for pre-war London Film Productions. In the 1930s, when English cinema was at its peak, there was money, plenty of studio time and charismatic producers. Krasker rose from clapper boy to camera assistant, and then to senior operator, and then to assistant cinematographer. He was allowed to work with one of the best cameramen of his time. Now the moment had come to implement this acquired knowledge in his own work.

Footnotes

1. I follow here Candide Krasker-Anhalt, a distant relative who, in a letter dated May 12, 2009 and a telephone conversation gave this information.

2. In Breton there is the prefix “Kras-”, which means “in the middle”. “Ker” means “city”, so a possible etymology for this name could be: “in the middle of the city”.

3. Literally, “work that makes you sweat,” referring to the stuffy workrooms in which Jews had to work in small businesses. This “sweat labour” became a system because the Jewish companies often only produced the low-quality mass products of textiles, shoes, et cetera for the large factories and were pushed by the factories at even lower prices. Those who did not want to work for such starvation wages were quickly replaced in the small businesses by other Jews from the East, so that this system was renewed again and again. See Endelman, Jews, 2002, p. 135, as below.

4. Todd M. Endelman, The Jews of Britain, 1656 to 2000, University of California Press, 2002, pp. 134, 135, 136.

5. Mark Rubin, 1867-1919, Fontainebleau. He invested in pearls and sheep. See also Rubin, Mark (1867–1919), Australian Dictionary of Biography.

6. From now on Léon Krasker renounced the accent acute on the “e” and just called himself Leon.

7. Letter from Candide Krasker-Anhalt, Munich, May 12, 2009.

8. Hugh Edwards, Shark Bay through four centuries, 1616 to 2000, ISBN 0957754000, 1999, p. 189.

9. Harry Waldman, Paramount in Paris: 300 films produced at the Joinville Studios, 1930-1933, Rowman and Littlefield Publishers, 1998, ISBN 10: 0810834316, ISBN 13: 9780810834316, S. VIII.

10. Harry Waldman, Paramount in Paris: 300 films produced at the Joinville Studios, 1930-1933, Rowman and Littlefield Publishers, 1998, ISBN 10: 0810834316, ISBN 13: 9780810834316, S. XV.

11. Harry Waldman, Paramount in Paris: 300 films produced at the Joinville Studios, 1930-1933, Rowman and Littlefield Publishers, 1998, ISBN 10: 0810834316, ISBN 13: 9780810834316, S. 33.

12. John Alton, Painting with Light, University of California Press, 1995, ISBN 9780520089495, S. XIII.

13. The importance of Alexander Korda for Krasker is shown by the list of films that Krasker photographed for Korda as a director and producer over a period of 18 years: as camera operator – The Rise of Catherine the Great [Czinner and Korda] (1933), The Private Life of Don Juan [ A. Korda] (1934), Things to Come [Menzies] (1935), Rembrandt [A. Korda] (1936), Men are not Gods [W. Reisch] (1936), The Man who could work Miracles [Menzies and A. Korda] (1936), Forget me Not [Z. Korda](1936), I, Claudius [Sternberg] (1937), The Squeaker [Howard] (1937), The Drum [Z. Korda] (1937), The Challenge [Rosmer, Trenker] (1937), Over the Moon [Freeland, Howard] (1938), The Four Feathers [Z. Korda] (1938), The Thief of Bagdad [Berger et al] (1940), Old Bill and Son [Dalrymple] (1940); as Director of Photography – Bonnie Prince Charlie [Kimmins] (1948), The Third Man [Reed] (1949), The Angel with the Trumpet [Hartl] (1950), State Secret [Gilliat] (1949), The Wonder Kid [Hartl] (1949), Cry, the beloved Country [Z. Korda] (1950).

14. Duncan J. Petrie, The British Cinematographer, British Film Institute Publishing, 1996, ISBN 10: 0851705812, ISBN 13: 9780851705811, S. 171.

15. Charles Higham, Hollywood Cameramen: Sources of Light, Indiana University Press, 1970, ISBN 10: 0253138213, ISBN 13: 9780253138217, p. 35.

16. Jack Cardiff, Magic Hour: A Life in Movies, Faber Film, paperback, 2005, ISBN 10: 0571192742, ISBN 13: 9780571192748, p. 32. It is striking in this context that Cardiff never mentions the name Krasker in his autobiography or in the numerous published interviews, although he worked with him on three films, and that Krasker’s serious illness during the shooting of The Four Feathers affected the entire team.

17. About £50 million a week in today’s terms, an unimaginable sum. Prudential was the largest insurance company in Britain and had fabulous profits.

18. Michael Korda, Charmed Lives: A Family Romance, Harper Perennial, 1981, ISBN 10: 0060085568, ISBN 13: 9780060085568.

19. Jack Cardiff, Magic Hour: A Life in Movies, Faber Film, paperback, 2005, ISBN 10: 0571192742, ISBN 13: 9780571192748, p. 36.

20. Jörg Helbig, Geschichte des britischen Films, J.B. Metzler, 1999, ISBN 10: 3476015106, ISBN 13: 9783476015105, p. 65.

21. Sternberg makes no mention of his films’ cinematographers in his memoirs, although Lee Garmes received an Oscar for his work on the 1932 Shanghai Express. Garmes: “Very few directors know anything about the uses of light. Von Sternberg knew a great deal, but even he couldn’t see the necessity for the balance of light and shadow in a shot.”

22. The disaster can be read about in the Josef von Sternberg memoirs Fun in a Chinese Laundry, The Macmillan Company, 1965, ASIN: B0007DW2IS.

23. Jörg Helbig, Geschichte des britischen Films, J.B. Metzler, 1999, ISBN 10: 3476015106, ISBN 13: 9783476015105, p. 69.

24. The Epic that never was, BBC documentary, 1965, by Bill Duncalf (74 minutes), commentary at the end of the film.

25. The Epic that never was, BBC documentary, 1965, by Bill Duncalf (74 minutes).

26. Jack Cardiff, Magic Hour: A Life in Movies, Faber Film, paperback, 2005, ISBN 10: 0571192742, ISBN 13: 9780571192748, p. 49.

27. Justin Bowyer, Jack Cardiff, Conversations with Jack Cardiff: Art, Light and Direction in Cinema, Batsford, 2003, p. 160.

28. Danger at the Doro Pass, Imcone, MC One, 2005.

29. Susanne Marshall, Farbe im Kino, Schüren Presseverlag Gmb, 2005, ISBN 10: 3894723947, ISBN 13: 9783894723941, p. 51.

30. Trenker was Italian or more precisely: South Tyrolean. However, he was regarded as a German and allowed himself to be used by the Nazis without objection.

31. 46 degrees Celsius.

32. Jack Cardiff, Magic Hour: A Life in Movies, Faber Film, paperback, 2005, ISBN 10: 0571192742, ISBN 13: 9780571192748, p. 65, 66.

33. Eyepiece, 1990, p. 25.

34. Jörg Helbig, Geschichte des britischen Films, J.B. Metzler, 1999, ISBN 10: 3476015106, ISBN 13: 9783476015105, p. 70.

35. The film cost £187,000 in September 1936 and was already £300,000 when completed, which would be around £14 million today (2012).

The Robert Krasker Project

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