Cinematographer speaks the 'language of images'
Millions of moviegoers have seen the world through Vittorio Storaro's eyes and never realized it. The legendary Italian cinematographer has shot some of the most celebrated films in history -- ''Apocalypse Now" for Francis Ford Coppola, ''Reds" for Warren Beatty, and, famously, ''The Conformist," ''Last Tango in Paris," ''The Last Emperor," and six other films with director Bernardo Bertolucci. Storaro backs up his camera decisions with a passionate aesthetic rooted in years of studying visual arts and literature; it's his belief that the cinematic image is the product of man and mind rather than machinery.
On the eve of his acceptance of the Coolidge Award on Wednesday at the Coolidge Corner Theatre (a special screening of ''Reds" follows on Thursday), Storaro spoke by phone from Rome about his films and his philosophy.
Q: Your father was a movie projectionist. What did you learn from him about your future career?
A: I was very young, between 10 and 14 years old. I can't say I was really learning, but the fact that there was this film running through a machine and I could see it on the big screen, this was fascinating to me. Usually they don't keep the sound up [in the projection booth], so as a little kid I was not getting any sound. I was watching the progress of the images. My first real memory is Charlie Chaplin in ''City Lights." My father brought a very old projection machine to our house and projected it onto a wall, with no sound. So for me the language of images became very, very important.
Q: You've said that the cinematographer is a ''coauthor" of the image. Would you extend that to say that he's the coauthor of the film as a whole? Where does he stand in relation to the director?
A: It is like an orchestra. I can be a great first violin or play the piano, but an orchestra needs a conductor, and that is the director. Cinema is made by different soloists: the writer, the costume designer, the cinematographer, the musician, the editor are all coauthors of the film. But the main author is the director.
Q: As a coauthor, could you talk about the various tools you have at your disposal: film stock, filters, lenses, the color timing, and so on. Do some take precedence over the others?
A: All the tools are important, but mostly it's the light. That's why since ''One From the Heart" in 1980 I've been using a dimmer board. You can control all the light on one single console. It's like playing with an instrument. It's very important that from one single point I can control every light, I can change the color temperature, I can change the intensity.
Q: In ''Apocalypse Now," you used two kinds of light -- natural and artificial -- as a dialectic. How do they symbolize different aspects within the movie?
A: In reading the book ''Heart of Darkness" by Joseph Conrad, I realized that ''Apocalypse Now" was not a war movie. It was about the concept of civilization. Any culture, from the Egyptians to the Romans to the Spanish to the French and Portuguese to the Americans, when they exported themselves into another culture, if they didn't respect that culture, they created an act of violence. So I decided that by using artificial light on top of natural light, I could create my own conflict -- a visual conflict -- in order to tell what war is about.
I knew when I spoke with Francis about the final sequence with Kurtz, that he represented the dark side of civilization, the part that Western culture wants to hide. And Marlon [Brando] was wonderful. I prepared this beam of light, and I said, Marlon, on this side of the beam it's total darkness, we don't see you at all. We can see you only from here on. He tested his hand, his face. And then he acted perfectly in revealing piece by piece, the face of the horror. It was, I think, magical what he did.
Q: How much do you rely on your collaborators?
A: Cinematography is not made only by me. I make all the decisions in this department, but of course the camera operator probably sees the movie for the first time. I had the same crew for 30 years; they did all the Bertoluccis, all the Coppolas, many, many movies. Now most of them are retired, because they're older than me. I was the young one. But the camera operator or the assistant or the consulting operator or the gaffer who takes care of the lights or the key grip, they all help me to express myself in the most simple, best way possible.
Q: Do you feel there are young people who can do these things as well? Or are some of these arts dying?
A: Cinema is changing. Going from analog to digital filmmaking, there are elements that are different. There is no need to know any longer about sensitometry, about chemistry. You need to have more electronic knowledge. But this doesn't mean it's bad: This is what's called progress. Originally we were painting on wood and then we were painting on canvas, and then we invented photography and then cinematography, and so on. More and more, what's important is the idea. I can do it with film or on tape, with one lens or another, with one camera or another. But without that idea, I don't have any personality to transfer.
Q: Do you think digital has as much artistic breadth as film at this point?
A: I did the first experiment with high-definition in Italy, in 1983. And I realized it could be very dangerous, because before then the only person who was able to know the mystery of the image was the cinematographer. Nobody knew if we could see the picture or not [until the film was developed], and that was power. But at the same time, it was a kind of mystery that we don't need any longer. The fact that we can see an image at the same time that we are trying to build an image, at the same time we are thinking of this image, is so important, because we don't have any more of the anguish about whether this picture will turn out or not.
Of course, the other side is that some directors say, ''Who cares? We see the image, don't worry about it, let's record." That's why we see a lot of movies today that aren't really cinema. They just record any kind of story. That's the downside.
Q: If you had had those tools when you were younger would you have done things differently?
A: Honestly, it's rare that I see something that I want to change. There is one sequence in ''The Conformist" I would like to redo, but not because of the technology. The concept was that the leading character is somebody who received a great emotional impact when he was a kid, and he put his real self into his unconscious. So I tried to use darkness separated sharply by light, in order to tell that he was hiding something in darkness. There was a separation through the entire movie. But there's one sequence when he meets for the first time the man who gives him the gun. We shot that toward the end, and I was so relaxed because we had done the entire movie. It was very easy to use this soft light, and I only realized it after we had already filmed two or three shots. I didn't have the strength to tell Bernardo, ''I'm sorry, I was wrong, we have to do it all from the beginning." And today when I see it, I say ''That's a wrong sequence." But the concept was the right concept. I just didn't use it properly. That was a great lesson to me: Even the last day you have to be on top of your idea.
Q: You've worked primarily with four directors: Bertolucci, Coppola, Warren Beatty, and Carlos Saura. Was there an adjustment period?
A: Either you make the decision to follow the story or to follow the director. For example, when Bertolucci offered me ''The Sheltering Sky," I'd just come back from ''Dick Tracy" and I was so tired, I didn't feel like doing it. But Bernardo convinced me to do this movie, and I followed him. And later, step by step, I learned how important was the story and I was very happy that he took me with him on that experience. With Francis Coppola, I didn't know him at the beginning very well. But finally when I decided to do the movie, the experience was so deep. ''Apocalypse Now" was so far away, was so long, so difficult, so expensive, so dangerous. But at the same time, it was so marvelous.
Q: Did working for Warren Beatty offer any special challenges?
A: At the beginning, I had great difficulty with him. With Bertolucci or Coppola, I was used to seeing the movie from outside the characters. Warren is an actor, and he's used to seeing the story from inside the character, so it was very difficult for him to accept a camera move when he was not moving. For me, in the European culture, the camera is its own character -- it's the way that you are writing. So I decided to go inside, tried to see from the characters' point of view. And it was a great revelation. I discovered a world I didn't know. It gave me an incredible balance, to see the same sequence from outside and inside, from the character's point of view or from a director's or a cinematographer's point of view.
Q: Did it affect shooting decisions?
A: A lot. Definitely after ''Reds," I learned much better how to read a script.
Q: Have you ever wanted to direct?
A: I'm a cinematographer. Many times they offer me a movie to direct, but I don't know enough about any other area, the way a director is supposed to. There is so much to be done in cinematography that I keep discovering something every day. Why should I direct?
Ty Burr can be reached at tburr@globe.com.
