 A former photo journalist, Douglas Slocombe inadvertently became a cameraman
when he was approached by the American documentarist Herbert Kline to work on
Lights Out in Europe (1940). Slocombe subsequently photographed the German
invasions of Poland and Holland, before returning to England where, on the
suggestion of Alberto Cavalcanti, he worked for the Ministry of Information
shooting newsreels and propaganda films. He divided his time between the Fleet
Air Arm and Ealing studios, the footage he shot on Atlantic convoys being used
by the Ministry and by Ealing as second unit material on films like The Big
Blockade (d. Charles Frend, 1941) and San Demetrio London (d. Frend, 1943).
Slocombe camera-operated for Wilkie Cooper on one film, Champagne Charlie (d.
Cavalcanti, 1944), rather badly by his own admission, before being given the
chance to progress to lighting on the film which more than any other went
against the dominant aesthetic trend at Ealing during the period: Dead of Night
(d. Cavalcanti/Charles Crichton/Basil Dearden/Robert Hamer, 1945), a portmanteau
of ghost stories, photographed by Slocombe and Stan Pavey. Slocombe shot the
framing story in which the protagonists recount their experiences of the
supernatural. Each time the narrative returns to the linking story the room has
grown visibly darker, the lighting more atmospheric and the angles more forced,
with the ceiling apparently becoming lower and lower, trapping the characters in
the nightmare.
For Robert Hamer's Mirror sequence, featuring Googie Withers and Ralph
Michael, Slocombe created an arresting contrast between the bright, sanitised
environment inhabited by the characters and the dark, heavy - but quite
seductive - atmosphere of the 'other' realm beyond the mirror. By way of
contrast, the Golfers sequence, with Basil Radford and Naunton Wayne, is lit in
an appropriate high key style. Pavey, on the other hand, photographed the
darkest episode, featuring a ventriloquist (Michael Redgrave) who is controlled
by his own dummy.
Slocornbe rose rapidly to become Ealing's major cameraman, his assignments
comprising a characteristic mix of realistic dramas and comedies. While many of
these films are representative of the dominant studio style, he was capable of
transcending their limitations in the same way that directors like Robert Hamer
and Alexander Mackendrick stood out against the studio orthodoxy. Despite his
documentary training, Slocombe's ability to use light expressively had been
apparent in Dead of Night and his interests lay in creative techniques:
"Gregg Toland was my hero, I loved the sharpness and contrast of his work."
Slocombe's own versatility is demonstrated across his best work for the studio,
from the gritty realism of It Always Rains on Sunday (d. Hamer, 1947), with its
memorable nighttime climax in a railway yard, through the romantic high key
gloss of Kind Hearts and Coronets (d. Hamer, 1949), to the dark brooding
interiors of The Man in the White Suit (d. Mackendrick, 1951). The Gothic style
of inventor Sidney Stratton's (Alec Guinness) laboratory owes a lot to the 'mad
scientist' genre, but also provides a stark contrast to the luminous white suit
which is made for him with the indestructible fibre he has created.
On his first Technicolor film, Saraband for Dead Lovers (d. Dearden, 1948), a
big budget production starring Flora Robson, Stewart Granger and Joan Greenwood,
Slocombe held out against institutional constraints:
There was the political requirement from the Technicolor front office that
you should light with a very low contrast - they didn't like high contrast - and
you mustn't leave shadows to go black. I didn't like that idea entirely, so I
decided to still go with the full contrast of black and white, but multiplied by
the extra light requirements, of course. Because I thought this film needed a
lot of shadows and so forth. And I discovered on the first day that of all the
colours on the set the black shadows became wonderfully rich and intense - and
so I carried on with these contrasts.
The atmosphere demanded by the story, which was set in 17th-century Hanover,
was of heavy oppression and intrigue. The castle rooms were to be dimly lit with
the street scenes bright by day, but dark and menacing at night. After
discussions with Dearden and production designer Michael Relph, Slocombe decided
to use low key effects throughout:
The Hanover Palace sets were therefore lit in such a manner as to cast large
areas in shadow, usually allowing the ceilings to disappear into inky blackness.
This creation of 'atmosphere' by light and shadow... and careful lighting of
selected colours in the set and costumes of the artistes helped to add another
dimension to the composition of each scene. Some of the Van Dyck paintings at
the National Gallery proved, curiously enough, a particularly useful guide to
set lighting. I was interested to see how this Dutch master allowed his colours
to be picked up by his 'source of light' only (in many cases a solitary window).
The rest of his picture area was allowed to shade off into monochromatic
darkness. The result is that the observer's eye goes immediately to the focal
point the painter desired.
Unfortunately none of Slocombe's subsequent colour films for Ealing,
including The Titfield Thunderbolt (d. Crichton, 1953) and Davy (d. Relph,
1957), the first British production photographed in Technirama, matched the bold
richness of his debut. When Ealing closed in the late 1950s Slocombe freelanced
on a series of routine features before embarking on one of the most innovative
periods in his career. On John Huston's Freud (US, 1962), he combined a variety
of visual techniques, using different stocks and force developing the film to
boost the contrast ratio. The flashbacks were shot through a glass plate
designed to fuzz out all the details except those recalled by the patient, while
the dream sequences have a high contrast, grainy look created by shooting on
positive rather than negative stock and printing from high contrast dupe
negatives. Huston produced a four-hour version of Freud which Universal insisted
on cutting down to two hours, losing much of Slocombe's work in the process.
In both The L-Shaped Room (d. Bryan Forbes, 1962) and The Servant (d. Joseph
Losey, 1963) the action is confined to studio interiors. While the former, set
in a rundown London lodging house, is a minor if atmospheric portrait of the
experiences of a lonely single woman (Leslie Caron) who falls pregnant, the
latter remains one of the classic British films of the 1960s. Losey's
masterpiece, from Harold Pinter's screenplay, centres on a modest but
fashionable town house occupied by a young aristocrat and his manservant. In
keeping with the trends of the period, Slocombe was initially guided by
naturalism:
I always like people to feel that it was real, and the whole point was to
make it look real. The interiors were sets... but I was very careful to make it
look as if daylight was really coming in from the window and everything is lit
that way.
However, the framing and fluid camera movement, including some virtuoso
handheld shots by Slocombe's operator Chick Waterson, move beyond this surface,
delineating the contours of social and psychic conflict which lie at the heart
of the film, With regard to the look, Slocombe continued to refine the high
contrast technique he had used on Freud. This involved developing the Kodak
stock in such a way as to double the approved speed, giving a much greater depth
of field:
Losey had scenes in The Servant playing for four minutes or more, with the
actors moving about from foreground to background. I could keep them in focus
all the time because the speed enabled me to stop right down.
Losey also wanted three visual styles, running into each other as the film
progressed. At the beginning the house is empty, so Slocombe shot these
sequences with a grey tone revealing the bare bones of the building and its
intrinsic coldness. The next phase involved a certain glossy contrast to the
sets of the freshly decorated house with its new furniture and fittings. In the
third and final phase Slocombe used lighting to accentuate particular details -
objects which before had seemed merely pretty or inoffensive had to become
sinister. This section also involved a more expressionistic play of light and
shade with a looming shadow here and there, and is most effective in the
sequences in which Tony (James Fox) and Barratt (Dirk Bogarde), master and
servant, play ball on the staircase and later in the climactic highly stylised
orgy scene.
During the 1960s Slocombe also signed a contract with 20th Century Fox, which
resulted in a series of CinemaScope productions including Alexander
Mackendrick's truncated but underrated A High Wind in Jamaica (UK/US, 1965) and
John Guillermin's The Blue Max (1966). His colour films from the mid-1960s
onwards demonstrate a delicate and sensitive use of soft light, popularised by
newcomers like Billy Williams and David Watkin. Among the highlights are Roman
Polanski's horror spoof Dance of the Vampires (aka The Fearless Vampire Killers,
US/UK, 1967), a sumptuous evocation of Transylvania undercut by the director's
somewhat infantile humour; The Lion in Winter (d. Anthony Harvey, 1968); Travels
with My Aunt (US, 1972); The Great Gatsby (US, 1974) and Julia (US, 1977), the
last distinguished by its low key images and strong blacks which recall
Slocombe's first experience with colour 30 years earlier.
In 1977 Slocombe found himself shooting sequences in India on Close
Encounters of the Third Kind (US) for Steven Spielberg, who subsequently invited
him to photograph Raiders of the Last Ark (US, 1981). This was a new departure
for a cameraman more inclined to subtle, literary based projects than full-blown
action adventures. However, Slocombe relished the opportunity and subsequently
worked on the sequels Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom (US, 1984) and
Indiana Jones and the Lost Crusade (US, 1989).
Duncan Petrie
This entry is taken from Duncan Petrie's The British Cinematographer (BFI, 1996). Used by permission.
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