| Details | | Publication Date: | 1996-09-01 |
| Size | | Length: | 253 pages | | Height: | 9.8 in | | Width: | 6.3 in | | Thickness: | 1.2 in | | Weight: | 18.4 oz |
Publisher's Note
After acting in early silent films, Jack Cardiff began his long and illustrious career as a cameraman. His astonishing list of credits includes "Things to Come," "The Red Shoes," "The Barefoot Contessa," "The African Queen," "War and Peace," "The Prince and the Showgirl," "Death on the Nile," "Rambo: First Blood," and many more. Cardiff won an Academy award for his work on "Black Narcissus" with Deborah Kerr. "Magic Hour" is a unique record of the development of color cinematography--Cardiff was one of the very first cameramen to use the Technicolor camera. It is also filled with fascinating anecdotes about the stars he worked with--his first encounter with Humphrey Bogart in Africa, Marlene Dietrich's refusal to wear underwear for a bathing scene (she preferred to do it naked), misbehavior on the set by Henry Fonda and Errol Flynn,a and a particularly poignant interlude with Marilyn Monroe.
The 'Magic Hour' is the special light that occurs just at twilight, and a very special light is what cameraman Jack Cardiff brought to films such The Red Shoes, Black Narcissus and The African Queen. In Magic Hour Jack Cardiff details the adventures of his life: on tour on the music-hall circuit with his parents; acting in silent films; being chosen by Technicolor as the first British cameraman to be trained in colour photography; filming with British convoys in the Atlantic during World War II; his big break when Michael Powell asked him to photograph A Matter of Life and Death; his rambunctious exploits with Errol Flynn; and his triumph at the Cannes Film Festival as the director of Sons and Lovers. As a master of light, Cardiff came to photograph some of the most beautiful women in cinema history: Marilyn Monroe, Ingrid Bergman, Sophia Loren, Audrey Hepburn and Ava Gardner, to name but a few. Cardiff's bold and imaginative photography enhanced not only the work of Powell and Pressburger but also that of Hitchcock and Huston, and made Pandora and the Flying Dutchman a cult film.
Industry Reviews
"Every twilight brings a special moment, a brief blur of lengthening shadows, of shifting visual moods as he remains of the day surrender to night's darkness. Much of Jack Cardiff's life has been spent gazing dreamily at this, the 'magic hour' of his title, and pondering the wisdom of Sophocles: 'One must wait until evening, to see how splendid the day was.' As both cinematographer (literally, he who 'writes with movement') and a photographer (he who 'writes with light'), Cardiff knows that his eighties are his own 'magic hour', the perfect time for the cameraman--he who 'paints with light'--to edit the rushes of a life as richly coloured and textured as if he himself had placed the lights, pointed the camera and pulled the focus on each passing day....More than a celebration of cinema's 'dream warehouse', Cardiff's memoir is a striking human document. As the travelogue of a renaissance man, and as proof that everyone's life is their own best screenplay, it is certainly worth a 'magic hour' or two as dusk enfolds the day."
Holden
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