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

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

Australian cinematographer and Director of Photography Robert Krasker, BSC made three epic feature films with American director Anthony Mann – El Cid, The Fall of the Roman Empire and The Heroes of Telemark – and the first two were produced by Samuel Bronston from his base in Madrid at Chamartin Studios.

It is likely that Robert Krasker, who grew up between yellow-orange desert and sparkling shallow sea-edge in the remote Shark Bay township of Denham in Western Australia, made his decision to buy a connected pair of apartments in the Andalusian city of Marbella, about this time: my research into specific times and dates continues.

“Robert Krasker, … one of the film world’s masters of color and lighting.”

Krasker had moved into his Sloane Square apartment in the late 1950s after his courageous and remarkable mother Mathilde died and family connections with the western suburbs of London had dissolved.

Did the light and warmth of the Costa del Sol bring psychological and physical comfort and relief from the almost lifelong debilitation caused by malaria contracted in Sudan while camera-operating in 1938 for The Four Feathers and the Type 1 diabetes to which it led?

Samuel Bronston’s “El Cid”, page 38:

THE CAMERAMAN

ROBERT KRASKER, Academy Award-winning director of photography for his memorable lensing of “The Third Man,” is considered to be one of the film world’s masters of color and lighting. He has been lauded for his work on such pictures as “Henry V,” “Romeo and Juliet” and “Trapeze.” Although the Australian-born Krasker has photographed all types of pageantry, he feel that “El Cid” offered his greatest opportunity because of the many real-life settings of ancient castles and towns, as well as the multitude of panoramic scenes.

Links

• The Hollywood Art (via Wayback Machine) – Maverick Gentleman: Samuel Bronston’s Vanishing Empires
• Wikipedia – Anthony Mann
• Wikipedia – Samuel Bronston – “Bronston frequently worked with a regular team of creative artists: the directors Anthony Mann and Nicholas Ray, the screenwriters Philip Yordan and Jesse Lasky Jr., composers Dimitri Tiomkin and Miklós Rózsa, the co-producers Jaime Prades, Alan Brown and Michał Waszyński, the cinematographer Robert Krasker and film editor Robert Lawrence. He also favoured Charlton Heston and Sophia Loren as his leading actors.”
• Wikipedia – Samuel Bronston Productions

Sequences from classic feature films photographed by Robert Krasker, BSC appear in Karel Reisz’s classic ‘The Technique of Film Editing’, 2nd edition, re-issue, 2017

‘The Technique of Film Editing’, Karel Reisz and Gavin Millar, Routledge, 2nd edition, 2 August 2017, ISBN-10: ‎1138419389, ISBN-13: 978-1138419384, ASIN: ‎B012HU8ZBQ.

Next stop on the Robert Krasker research trail is Karel Reisz’ classic book about film editing, The Technique of Film Editing, first published in 1953 and so valued in the industry that secondhand copies of that edition and subsequent reprints have fetched big prices for decades.

The Technique of Film Editing is now in the second reissue of its second edition, updated to account for many of the radical changes in various genres of filmmaking between the mid-1950s and earlier this century.

Karel Reisz was born thirteen years after Robert Krasker, in Czechoslovakia, and went to Britain as one of the refugees rescued by Sir Nicholas Winton.

He wrote The Technique of Film Editing before entering the film industry so its first edition received some valid criticism from industry reviewers, but this second edition has been blessed with some useful material, including three sequences from famous films shot by Robert Krasker: Great Expectations, Odd Man Out and El Cid.

Odd Man Out, Krasker’s first commission from director Carol Reed before The Third Man, is analyzed in a sound editing chapter and not for its cinematography.

David Lean originally chose Krasker to be Director of Photography of his first Dickens film, Great Expectations, and the first scene he worked on was the famous and justly celebrated graveyard scene in the wetlands of Romney Marsh in Kent and East Sussex, below.

Krasker was then poached from Lean by Carol Reed for Odd Man Out based across the studio hallway in Alexander Korda’s Denham Studios.

‘Great Expectations’, opening sequence shot by Robert Krasker, page 199, ‘The Technique of Film Editing’, Karel Reisz and Gavin Millar, Routledge, 2nd edition, 2 August 2017, ISBN-10: ‎1138419389, ISBN-13: 978-1138419384, ASIN: ‎B012HU8ZBQ.

These frames above were selected by Reisz’s co-author and contributors for their educational quality and they ably illustrate Krasker’s editorial eye for cinematic storytelling under former editor David Lean’s direction.

I will be using the same sequence to expand and illustrate Falk Schwarz’s short piece on Great Expectations in my translation of his book Farbige Schatten – Der Kamermann Robert Krasker as Dr Schwarz has not provided his own illustrations.

The third Krasker film selected for The Technique of Film Editing is widescreen colour classic El Cid, directed by Antony Mann with location work shot in Spain followed by studio work in Spain and Italy.

‘El Cid’, shot by Robert Krasker, ‘The Technique of Film Editing’, page 244, Karel Reisz and Gavin Millar, Routledge, 2nd edition, 2 August 2017, ISBN-10: ‎1138419389, ISBN-13: 978-1138419384, ASIN: ‎B012HU8ZBQ.

Again an excellent choice of sequence to illustrate Karel Reisz’s film editing book as well as Krasker’s visual storytelling-based approach to cinematography and I will be using these images—in colour—in my translation of Falk Schwarz’s book about Robert Krasker.

As in Blain Brown’s book Motion Picture & Video Lighting for Cinematographers, Gaffers & Lighting Technicians, Robert Krasker hasn’t received credits for his work in Karel Reisz’s book but then neither have the directors for whom he worked.

Full crediting at the very least the cinematographers and directors would be a damned good default for all books on aspects of film, filmmakers and filmmaking.

Robert Krasker’s Romney Marsh graveyard sequence is often used by film book authors to stand in for the rest of Great Expectations despite the rest of the film being photographed by Guy Green, often with no credit given to Krasker for his rather important part in it.

Links

• Wikipedia – El Cid (film)
• Wikipedia – Great Expectations (1946 film)
• Wikipedia – Karel Reisz
• Wikipedia – Odd Man Out

American Cinematographer: Wrap Shot: El Cid

“Directed by Anthony Mann, and starring Charlton Heston as the legendary 11th-century leader who ousted the Moors from Spain, the $7 million production was beautifully photographed in Super Technirama 70 by Australian-born cinematographer Robert Krasker, BSC….”

Links

• American Cinematographer – Scale and Spectacle: AC In the 1950s – “As theatrical motion pictures faced off with broadcast TV in the 1950s, American Cinematographer covered the surge in new formats.”
• American Cinematographer – Wrap Shot: El Cid – “To combat the lure of the small screen, Hollywood studios brought out some big, impressive guns. Colossal productions came into vogue, with such films as Ben-Hur (1959), Spartacus (1960) and Lawrence of Arabia (1962) taking advantage of a variety of new widescreen/large-format technologies — MGM’s Camera 65, Super Technirama 70 and Super Panavision 70, respectively — to convince moviegoers that bigger was indeed bett­­er.”