I have encountered more than a little misinformation, disinformation, untrue facts and bizarre untruths in the course of researching the Australian cinematographer and Director of Photography Robert Krasker, BSC so it is rewarding when I find documents by the makers of the films upon which he worked, such as this pamphlet by the Two-Cities production company which commissioned Krasker to film Laurence Olivier’s Henry V.
Unfortunately only three pages of The Theatre Guild’s pamphlet are currently available for viewing at Internet Archive: the production credits page and the front and back cover.
Nonetheless the production credits page has already proven to be an invaluable testament to two key members of the film’s camera department, Director of Photography Robert Krasker and Camera Operator Jack Hildyard.
I have observed some confusion in dictionaries, encyclopaedias and other books and magazine articles about Henry V and its makers, about whom its cinematographers actually were.
Often, for example, both Robert Krasker and Jack Hildyard are mistakenly credited as joint cinematographers for Henry V whereas Krasker is clearly the Director of Photography and Hildyard is definitely the camera operator as attested to by this pamphlet.
According to Dr Falk Schwarz, this is the full complement of Henry V‘s camera department:
Director of Photography: Robert Krasker; Camera Operator: Jack Hildyard; Assistant Camera: Norman Foley, Irvin Pannaman; Focus Puller: Freddie Ford; Clapper Loader: Jim Body.
Just one more thing…
Speaking of fact checks, one fact I really want to check with primary sources or at least good quality secondary sources is whether Robert Krasker, BSC was also Head of the Camera Department at Two Cities Films as some publications I’ve come across have asserted.
That would make two British film production companies for which he was camera department head with the other one being RKO-British as attested to by the British Fim Institute’s Sight and Sound magazine.
Images of more pages found on the Web from Laurence Olivier’s Presentation of Henry V by William Shakespeare in Technicolor pamphlet:
I’ve been searching for more pages from the pamphlet as I’d hoped they would contain an explanation of the colour and set design decisions made by Olivier and his art director, choices that received some degree of criticism over the years including, according to Dr Falk Schwarz, from Robert Krasker himself.
In Henry V, the problem was to present Shakespeare in the modern visual idiom. We couldn’t use the normal technique of ‘cutting’ a scene into short sequences because that would have ruined the soliloquies. So we had to make the picture ‘flow’ with the words.”
– Robert Krasker 1
Despite the fame and acclaim won by Laurence Olivier’s production of Henry V, and the high praise awarded to Robert Krasker for his cinematography to this day, the two never worked together again.
And so the style was found and the shooting script made. Robert Krasker, who was a very brilliant lighting cameraman, frankly never took to the style at all; each time I showed him a new set he would look at it, shrug and say ‘Looks terribly phoney’.
– Laurence Olivier 2
Something similar occurred with Krasker and director David Lean on the set of Great Expectations which was to be their second film together after the success of Brief Encounter. The opening sequence Krasker shot for the former wins high praise to this day but Lean fired him immediately afterwards, believing the legendary Australian not to be up to the task of photographing the rest of the latter.
We can only imagine the brilliant work Krasker might have made of Olivier’s subsequent Shakespeare adaptations, Hamlet and Richard II, just as we can only imagine what he could have done with Lawrence of Arabia and other David Lean films.
Fact Checks
- “Robert Krasker—The Director of Photography” – Correct.
- “Jack Hildyard—Operating Cameraman” – Correct.
Links
- Wikipedia – RKO Pictures – RKO-British aka RKO British Productions was a division or spin-off of RKO Pictures aka RKO Radio Pictures.
- Wikipedia – Two Cities Films
Footnotes
- Kevin Desmond, A Glimpse of Krasker, Eyepiece, London, Part 1: September 1990, Part 2: November 1990, page 25.
- Laurence Olivier, Bekenntnisse Eines Schauspielers, ISBN 10: 3362002722, ISBN 13: 9783362002721, 1988, page 155; Laurence Olivier, Confessions of an Actor: An Autobiography, Simon & Schuster, 1982, ISBN 10: 0671417010.
The Robert Krasker Project 