Cover, International Dictionary of Films and Filmmakers, Writers and Production Artists, Volume 4, Sara Pendergast and Tom Pendergast, St. James Press, Farmington Hills, MI, GALE, 4th edition, 12 December 2000, ISBN-10: 1558624503, ISBN-13: 978-1558624504.
The late Dr. Thomas Leonard Erskine (1939-2011) contributed the entry on Robert Krasker to the year 2000’s 4th edition of the International Dictionary of Films and Filmmakers and it is one of the more detailed I have come across so far save for his date and place of birth and with whom he entered the industry.
So far as I can tell this four-volume tome has not been updated since 2000 but if it does then I would hope that the editors will make these somewhat minor corrections.
Fact Checks
“Born: Perth, Western Australia, 12 August 1913” – 1913, August 21: Robert Krasker was born in Alexandria, Egypt. His family had stopped over there during a business trip from Australia to Europe and back. 1914, January 28: Robert Krasker’s birth in Alexandria, Egypt, was registered in Perth, Western Australia with the family address being noted as 99 Hay Street, Subiaco, Western Australia.
Robert Krasker began his film industry career assisting and translating for American cinematographer Philip Tannura at Paramount-France in its Joinville-le-Pont studios, named Les Studios des Paramount, and both filmmakers then moved to London in 1931 following producer/director Alexander Korda to Paramount-British to work on Leslie Howard star vehicle Service for Ladies after which Korda invited Krasker to join his new London Film Productions company as apprentice and camera operator for French Director of Photography Georges Périnal.
One of the best sources for a well-researched biographical entry on Australian cinematographer Robert Krasker, BSC, is to be found at the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography.
“Krasker, Robert (1913–1981), cinematographer, was born on 13 August 1913 in Perth, Australia, the youngest of five children. His parents were both French. One of the most celebrated cameramen in British cinema history, Robert Krasker was brought up in Australia and France. After studying art in Paris and photography in Dresden he gained his first job as a clapper boy at the Paramount Studios in Joinville, north-east France. He subsequently moved to England and joined Alexander Korda’s London Films, where he quickly graduated to operator for the company’s senior cameraman, Georges Périnal, on prestige productions such as Rembrandt (1936), The Four Feathers (1939), and The Thief of Bagdad (1940). Krasker remained at Denham Studios after it had been purchased by J. Arthur Rank and in 1943 he gained his first solo credit as lighting cameraman on The Lamp Still Burns, directed by Maurice Elvey. He soon established himself as a major new talent and his artistry contributed a great deal to the considerable improvement in British cinema’s critical reputation during the 1940s….”
The entry was written by Duncan Petrie of the University of York and he is well-qualified to have done so given he’s written at least two major academic journal articles about Robert Krasker, as he attests in this extract from an email:
“I did write about Krasker in The British Cinematographer (BFI 1996) and in an essay entitled ‘Neo-Expressionism and British Cinematography: The Work of Robert Krasker and Jack Cardiff’, in John Orr and Olga Taxidou (eds.), Postwar Cinema and Modernity: A Reader (Edinburgh University Press, 2000), pp. 223-233.
He was one of the giants in British postwar cinematography with films like Henry V, Brief Encounter, Odd Man Out, The Third Man, Trapeze, The Criminal, El Cid, Fall of the Roman Empire.
And of course being Australian he really ought to be celebrated in his home country.”
We’ve only just now been able to read Duncan Petrie’s bio for Robert Krasker as we haven’t had access before.
The National Library of Australia seems to have subscribed to Gale, a research database service granting access to documents via an NLA library card and the eResources page, and we received our own card late yesterday.
If you wish to read the whole entry about Robert Krasker then we suggest obtaining access in the same or a similar way.
Fact checks
“born on 13 August 1913 in Perth, Australia” – Robert Krasker was born in Alexandria, Egypt on August 21, 1913 during a stop-over there by his parents while on a business trip to Europe and back. They registered his birth on January 28, 1914 after returning to Perth, Western Australia.
“His parents were both French.” – We’ve yet to confirm whether Léon and Mathilde Krasker had obtained French nationality after migrating from Romania and the Austro-Hungarian Empire respectively but they did live and study in Paris for some years as child refugees from eastern Europe.
“in 1943 he gained his first solo credit as lighting cameraman on The Lamp Still Burns“ – The old British film industry term ‘lighting cameraman’ was soon to be replaced by the more modern term Director of Photography, DoP or DP for short, and so Robert Krasker effectively received his first DoP commission forThe Saint Meets the Tiger in 1941 followed by The Gentle Sex in 1942 and then The Lamp Still Burns in 1943. Robert Krasker was the youngest ever Director of Photography at the time and that record may still stand.
The Robert Krasker Project 