IEC
GREAT CINEMATOGRAPHERS
#1: 2004
#2: © Photo by Thys Ockersen
FREDDIE FRANCIS
Born: 22 December 1917, Islington, London, England, as Frederick William Francis.
Died: 17 March 2007, Isleworth, Middlesex, UK.
Education: North Western Polytechnic, Kentish Town [Engineering].
Career: At school, a piece he wrote about films of the future won him a scholarship to the North Western Polytechnic. After studying engineering [which he had hoped would be romantic but turned out to be a qualification to serve in an ironmonger's shop], he began his film career in 1934 as an apprentice to feature stills photographer Louis Prothero [at Shepherds Bush Studios], for whom he set up lighting and carried 10" x 8" cameras. Joined Gaumont-British as clapper-loader in 1936, then at British and Dominion Studios, Elstree, and Pinewood Studios as c.asst. During WWII he worked with the Army Kinematograph Service at Wembley, where he worked on many training films. After the war he became c.op with London Films.
Also active as director of feature films, tv and commercials [e.g. for Moulinex (1979)].
Was member [later honorary member] and president [1998-2000] of the BSC.
His son Kevin is a film producer.
Appeared in the doc's 'The Vampire Interviews' [1994, Ted Newsom], 'Flesh and Blood: The Hammer Heritage of Horror' [1994, Ted Newsom], '100 Years of Horror: Maniacs' [1996], '100 Years of Horror: The Count and Company' [1996], '100 Years of Horror: The Frankenstein Family' [1996] & 'Behind the Camera' [1999, Richard Blanshard; for BBC-tv].
Awards: BSC Award [1960] & 'Oscar' AA [1960; b&w] for 'Sons and Lovers'; BSC Award [1980] & BAFTA Film Award nom [1981] for 'The Elephant Man'; BSC Award [1981] & BAFTA Film Award nom [1982] for 'The French Lieutenant's Woman'; 'Oscar' AA [1990], BSC Award [1990] & BAFTA Film Award nom [1991] for 'Glory'; BAFTA Film Award nom [1993] for 'Cape Fear'; BSC Lifetime Achievement Award [1997]; ASC International Award [1998]; NYFCC Award [1999] & Camerimage 'Golden Frog' nom [1999] for 'The Straight Story'; 'Manaki Brothers' Film Camera Festival, Bitola, 'Golden Camera 300 for Lifetime Achievement' [2000]; Evening Standard British Film Awards 'Special Award for Lifetime Achievement' [2000]; Camerimage Lifetime Achievement Award [2002].
GO TO FILMS
GO TO FILMS & TV AS DIRECTOR
Freddie Francis: 'I got a lot of fun out of being a cameraman, but obviously directing is more interesting. One thing wrong with being a cameraman in Britain is that from the financial point of view you have to keep working all the time and you often have to work with people whose work, frankly, doesn't excite you. When I got the opportunity to direct I decided to try it and if I wasn't excited with what I did, well, that would be my own problem and no one else's. But basically I love making films. If someone asked me now to photograph a film I still would.' [From 'The Horror People' by John Brosnan, 1976.]
#1: "The Skull" [1965]
Obituary: The American film critic Pauline Kael wrote: "I don't know where this cinematographer Freddie Francis sprang from. You may recall that in the last year just about every time a British movie is something to look at, it turns out to be his." That was when British cinema was once again bursting upon an unsuspecting world and Francis was photographing, in black and white, such films as Joseph Losey's 'Time Without Pity', Jack Clayton's 'Room at the Top' and 'The Innocents', Jack Cardiff's 'Sons and Lovers' and Karel Reisz's 'Saturday Night and Sunday Morning'.
Francis became director of photography with 'A Hill in Korea/Hell in Korea'. After 'The Innocents', he turned to direction, partly because he wanted to direct and partly because, as he said, as a cinematographer if one wasn't constantly working one didn't earn enough, and he didn't want to have to work with directors for whom he didn't have any regard. Aside from photographing Karel Reisz's 'Night Must Fall', he did not return to cinematography until 1979.
He directed 'Two and Two Make Six', an innocuous little comedy, ("I decided to do a film with a script I didn't much like. Stupidly, I thought that I could make a good movie anyway. But, of course, you can't.").
In 1962 he directed the Hammer horror film, 'Paranoiac', whose success brought him more projects from Hammer Studios, and later Amicus, which he took to acquire a reputation as a director. Unfortunately, he became typecast as a horror director, a genre for which he said he had no particular affinity and, indeed, never watched horror films. His technique was probably the equal of the great horror director, Terence Fisher, who was working at Hammer at the same time, and he has his fans, but it is generally considered that his output was inconsistent, ranging from the very good to the execrable.
Much of his success he attributed to the fact that "these films are 99% visual... most of the films that I do, these so-called psychological thrillers, depend on the ability to tell one's stories with the camera." (He considered 'The Skull' was one of his best films visually.) But there were some pretty disastrous productions and he returned full time to his first love, cinematography, when he shot, in stunning black and white, David Lynch's 'The Elephant Man'.
His achievements as a director, variable as they were, did not go unnoticed by his peers: Martin Scorsese is quoted as saying that he wanted him to photograph 'Cape Fear' because: "The main thing was Freddie's understanding of the concept of the gothic atmosphere... He understands the obligatory scene of a young maiden with a candle walking down a long hall towards a door. 'Don't go in that door!' you yell, and she goes in! Every time she goes in! So I say to him 'This has to look like The Hall', and he understands that." Francis's desire to shoot the film arose out of his memory of the atmosphere of the original 1962 version. "Anybody can photograph a film - you can just put lights on and make an exposure. I want the challenge of creating an atmosphere and the right frame for the director."
As a photographer, Francis always considered himself to have had three mentors - the great cameraman, Freddie Young, who he considered to not only have influenced him but the entire British industry, John Huston and Michael Powell. Francis's career involved a relatively high degree of filming in black and white and, to some extent, his reputation was founded on it. He later remarked that he really didn't know anything about color: "I still photograph things in black and white, but the fact that it's color stock means they come out in color. I know that sounds rather facetious ... but I prefer to think in terms of light and shade than in color."
He always saw his role as cameraman as of being of service to a director: in his young days, he said, he heard too many cameramen tell directors that they couldn't produce the effect they wanted: Francis always produced whatever was required, only warning the director that it might take a little longer.
Francis rarely discussed the look of films with directors, since he tried to work with colleagues who were on the same wavelength anyway, and as he pointed out, he would read a script and it would already be photographed in his mind.
In later years, he felt that the lenses became too sharp - "all the magic is gone today" - and hated special effects ("I only did 'Dune' because it was David"). When asked, in a Guardian interview in 1995, how he learnt his craft he replied "By doing it": in his case, "doing it" produced some of the finest examples of the cinematographer's art, for which many directors must be forever grateful. [From obituary written by Sheila Whitaker on the Guardian Unlimited website, March 20, 2007.]
| FILMS | |
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1955 |
Moby Dick [John Huston] c; 2uc/2ud (live whaling) + sfx ph (models) (+ co-c.op); ph: Oswald Morris |
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1956 |
Dry Rot [Maurice Elvey] b&w; 2uc; ph: Arthur Grant |
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1956 |
A Hill in Korea/Hell in Korea [Julian Amyes] b&w |
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1956 |
Time Without Pity [Joseph Losey] b&w |
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1957 |
The Scamp/Strange Affection [Wolf Rilla] b&w |
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1958 |
Next to No Time! [Henry Cornelius] c |
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1958 |
Virgin Island/Our Virgin Island [Pat Jackson] c |
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1958 |
Room at the Top [Jack Clayton] b&w |
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1959 |
The Rough and the Smooth/Portrait of a Sinner [Robert Siodmak] started the prod, but was replaced by Otto Heller |
|
1959 |
The Battle of the Sexes [Charles Crichton] b&w |
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1960 |
Sons and Lovers [Jack Cardiff] cs/b&w; 2uc: Nigel Cedric Huke |
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1960 |
Never Take Sweets from a Stranger/Never Take Candy From a Stranger [Cyril Frankel] Hammerscope/b&w |
|
1960 |
Saturday Night and Sunday Morning [Karel Reisz] b&w |
|
1961 |
The Innocents [Jack Clayton] cs/b&w |
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1963 |
Of Human Bondage [Kenneth Hughes, Henry Hathaway (started film, but was replaced) & Bryan Forbes (fill-in for 1 week)] b&w; co-addph; ph: Oswald Morris |
|
1964 |
Night Must Fall [Karel Reisz] b&w |
|
1977 |
Short Circuit [Andrzej Jasiewicz] c; short/6m |
"The Elephant Man"
|
1979 |
The Elephant Man [David Lynch] p/b&w |
|
1980 |
The French Lieutenant's Woman [Karel Reisz] c |
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1982 |
The Jigsaw Man [Terence Young] c; addph: James Devis |
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1982 |
Memed My Hawk/The Lion and the Hawk [Peter Ustinov] c |
Exec prod Dino De Laurentiis [left], prod Raffaella De Laurentiis, David Lynch & FF - "Dune"
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1983 |
Dune [David Lynch] tao35 (+ 70bu)/c; 137m & 190m; 2uc: James Devis & Frederick Elmes |
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1984 |
Return to Oz [Walter Murch] c; uncred cph; ph: David Watkin |
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1985 |
Code Name: Emerald/Deep Cover [Jonathan Sanger] c |
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1986 |
Brenda Starr [Robert Ellis Miller] c; cph: Peter Stein |
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1987 |
Dark Tower [Freddie Francis (as Ken Barnett) & Ken Wiederhorn] c |
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1988 |
Clara's Heart [Robert Mulligan] c |
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1988 |
Her Alibi [Bruce Beresford] c |
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1989 |
Glory [Edward Zwick] 35mm (+ 70bu)/c; 2uc: David Wagreich |
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1990 |
The Man in the Moon [Robert Mulligan] c; 2uc: Peter Norman |
[Left] with dir Martin Scorsese - "Cape Fear"
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1990 |
Cape Fear [Martin Scorsese] p/c; uncred addph: Geoffrey Erb; uwph: Pete Romano; vfx ph: Paul Wilson; remake of film (1961, J. Lee Thompson; ph: Sam Leavitt) |
|
1991 |
School Ties [Robert Mandel] c |
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1993 |
Calliope [Alun Harris] c; short/15m; superv lighting cons; ph: Alvin Leong; prod Royal College of Art |
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1993 |
Princess Caraboo [Michael Austin] c; 2uc: Kelvin Pike & Eddie Collins |
[Right] with dir Bob Hoskins - "Rainbow"
|
1994 |
Rainbow [Bob Hoskins] HD (Sony HDC-500)-to-35mm/b&w-c |
|
1998 |
The Straight Story [David Lynch] p/c; aph: David L. Butler & David B. Nowell |
|
2000 |
Ghosthunter [Simon Corris] c; short/20m; ph cons; ph: Gavin Struthers |
| TELEVISION | |
|---|---|
|
1961 |
The Horsemasters [William Fairchild] 2-part ('Follow Your Heart' & 'Tally Ho') tvm; addph: Ray Sturgess; ep of 'Walt Disney's Wonderful World of Color' |
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1982 |
The Executioner's Song [Lawrence Schiller] 2-part tvm/240m; 2uc: Reed Smoot; also released theatrically (97m) |
|
1989 |
Peter Cushing: A One-Way Ticket to Hollywood [prod: Kevin Francis, a.o.] doc/b&w-c/90m |
|
1990 |
The Plot to Kill Hitler [Lawrence Schiller] tvm |
|
1993 |
A Life in the Theater [Gregory Mosher] tvm |
| MISCELLANEOUS | |
|---|---|
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1936 |
The Marriage of Corbal/Prisoner of Corbal [Karl Grune] clapper-loader; ph: Otto Kanturek |
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1937 |
Cotton Queen/Crying Out Loud [Bernard Vorhaus] c.asst; ph: Eric Cross |
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1939 |
The Stars Look Down [Carol Reed] c.asst; ph: Ernest Palmer |
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1945 |
Read All About It [Roy Baker; short] stills asst; ph: John Wilcox & Peter Newbrook; prod Army Kinematograph Service |
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1946 |
The Macomber Affair/The Great White Hunter [Zoltan Korda] c.asst 2u (Africa); ph: Karl Struss |
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1947 |
Night Beat [Harold Huth] c.op; ph: Václav Vich |
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1947 |
Mine Own Executioner [Anthony Kimmins] c.op; ph: Wilkie Cooper |
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1948 |
The Small Back Room/Hour of Glory [Michael Powell & Emeric Pressburger] c.op; ph: Christopher Challis |
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1949 |
Golden Salamander [Ronald Neame] co-c.op; ph: Oswald Morris |
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1950 |
The Elusive Pimpernel/The Fighting Pimpernel [Michael Powell & Emeric Pressburger] c.op (as Ken Barnett); ph: Christopher Challis |
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1950 |
Gone to Earth [Michael Powell & Emeric Pressburger; the USA version 'The Wild Heart/Gypsy Blood' has add scenes dir by Rouben Mamoulian] c.op (as Ken Barnett); ph: Christopher Challis |
| FILMS & TELEVISION AS DIRECTOR | |
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Directed ep of the tv-series: |
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1961 |
Two and Two Make Six/A Change of Heart/The Girl Swappers [ph: Desmond Dickinson & Ronnie Taylor] |
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1962 |
The Day of the Triffids/Invasion of the Triffids/Revolt of the Triffids [uncred add seq; d: Steve Sekely] ph: Ted Moore |
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1962 |
Vengeance/Over My Dead Body/The Brain/A Dead Man Seeks His Murderer [ph: Bob Huke] |
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1962 |
Ein Toter sucht seinen Mörder [ph: Bob Huke] German-language version of 'Vengeance' |
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1962 |
Paranoiac [ph: Arthur Grant] |
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1962 |
Nightmare [ph: John Wilcox] |
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1963 |
The Evil of Frankenstein [ph: John Wilcox] |
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1964 |
Dr. Terror's House of Horrors/The Blood Suckers [ph: Alan Hume] 5 seg |
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1964 |
Hysteria [ph: John Wilcox] |
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1964 |
Traitor's Gate [ph: Denys Coop] |
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1964 |
Das Verrätertor [ph: Denys Coop] German-language version of 'Traitor's Gate' |
|
1965 |
The Skull [ph: John Wilcox] |
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1965 |
The Psychopath [ph: John Wilcox] |
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1965 |
The Deadly Bees [ph: John Wilcox] |
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1966 |
They Came from Beyond Space [ph: Norman Warwick] |
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1967 |
Torture Garden [ph: Norman Warwick] |
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1968 |
Dracula Has Risen from the Grave [replaced dir Terence Fisher] ph: Arthur Grant |
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1968 |
The Intrepid Mr. Twigg [short/36m] ph: Aubrey Dewar |
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1969 |
Mumsy, Nanny, Sonny and Girly/Girly [ph: David Muir] |
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1969 |
Trog [ph: Desmond Dickinson] |
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1970 |
Gebissen wird nur nachts - Happening der Vampire/The Vampire Happening [ph: Gerard Vandenberg] |
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1971 |
Tales from the Crypt [ph: Norman Warwick] 5 seg |
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1972 |
The Creeping Flesh [ph: Norman Warwick] |
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1972 |
Tales That Witness Madness [ph: Norman Warwick] |
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1973 |
Craze/Demon Master/The Infernal Idol [ph: John Wilcox] |
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1973 |
Son of Dracula/Young Dracula [ph: Norman Warwick] |
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1974 |
Legend of the Werewolf/Plague of the Werewolves [ph: John Wilcox] |
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1974 |
The Ghoul/Night of the Ghoul/The Thing in the Attic [ph: John Wilcox] |
|
1977 |
Golden Rendezvous/Nuclear Terror [finished (uncred) by F. Francis; d: Ashley Lazarus] ph: Ken Higgins |
[Left] with actor Timothy Dalton - "The Doctor and the Devils"
|
1985 |
The Doctor and the Devils [ph: Gerry Turpin & Norman Warwick] |
|
1987 |
Dark Tower [co-d (as Ken Barnett) + ph] see Films |
|
1995 |
Guilty Silence [was in development for Little Venice Pictures, UK] |
