AC profiles a series of notable filmmaking partnerships that have fostered artistic discovery, personal growth and cinematic innovation.
by George E. Turner, Stephen Pizzello,
Jay Holben and David E. Williams
The adage that "you're only as good as the people you work with" is doubly true when it comes to filmmaking, one of the most uniquely collaborative of all art forms. Perhaps no production position is more representative of this spirit than that of the director of photography, who is charged with the responsibility of rendering and immortalizing the collective efforts of others — effectively creating a personal creative link with each and every person in front of and behind the camera.
Each month, AC explores this dynamic within the context of our feature stories on motion picture, television, documentary, commercial, and music video productions. But in this issue, we decided to specifically profile a series of notable collaborative relationships that have not only produced outstanding work, but inspired others to examine and nurture their own creative partnerships.
Billy Bitzer and D.W. Griffith
Beyond a doubt, the most celebrated director-cinematographer team of the silent screen was that of D. W. Griffith and G. W. "Billy" Bitzer. Over a period of 16 years, this remarkable pair made more than 1,000 movies together. Among these films, which ranged from half-reels to 15-minute one-reelers to 14-reel spectaculars, are many that contributed significantly to the growing art of motion pictures.
David Wark Griffith (1875-1948) hailed from a Kentucky family which had been ruined by the Civil War. The epitome of threadbare gentility, he became a theater critic, magazine writer, playwright and stage actor in Louisville before he went to New York in 1904. Under the name Lawrence Carter, he continued to write and appeared in several plays. Theatrical and literary people of the day were contemptuous of the primitive pictures being made by pioneering producers, but in 1907 "Lawrence Griffith" tried to sell a script of Tosca to Edwin S. Porter, the leading director/cinematographer of the time. Porter turned the script down but hired its author as the leading actor of Rescued From an Eagle's Nest. Griffith continued his efforts in film writing and acting until July 1909, when he was given a chance to write and direct at Biograph Studio. His first directorial effort was The Adventures of Dolly, photographed by the great Arthur Marvin.
During the making of Dolly, Griffith sought advice from a seasoned Biograph cameraman from Roxbury, Massachusetts — Gottfried Wilhelm Bitzer (1872-1944). A sturdy son of German immigrants, the ex-silversmith had begun work in 1894 as a mechanic-electrician at The Magic Introduction Company, forerunner of the American Biograph Company. Soon he was assisting his idol, W. K. L. Dickson, co-inventor of the first Edison movie camera and probably the first American cinematographer. They made the first movies of an American president (McKinley) and covered the Spanish-American War.
Having seen Griffith's acting, Bitzer figured he couldn't "direct a flock of geese," but he quickly became Griffith's right-hand man, initiating him into the rudiments of filmmaking. He was amazed at the innovative ideas that came from his pupil. Their first picture together, A Calamitous Elopement, was released in August. "With this picture, the team of Griffith-Bitzer came into existence," Bitzer said in his autobiography, Billy Bitzer: His Story.
"In all the years we worked together, even after I finally left Biograph with Mr. Griffith, there was never a written contract, only a handshake and our trust in each other."
—Billy Bitzer
Most historians have given Griffith and Bitzer credit for inventing almost every technique that followed: close-ups, cross-cutting for suspense, panning, dolly shots, hand-coloring, and much more. Actually, Edison's first movie, Fred Ott's Sneeze (1894) was a close-up, as was The Kiss, which followed shortly afterward. Edwin Porter used cross-cutting as early as 1902 in The Life of an American Firemen and The Great Train Robbery (1903), which ended with a hand-colored close-up of the robber chief firing his revolver into the camera. It is arguable, however, that Griffith was the finest director of his era, utilizing the most sophisticated methods of filmmaking with the best results, and Bitzer was the perfect man to bring his ideas to life. Critics and exhibitors argued about their work, which in the Biograph period was done anonymously. Some found excitement in its freshness, others were irritated or even angered by its departures from the familiar. More discerning patrons recognized that Biograph had a superior product.
Griffith eventually got at loggerheads with his bosses. One bone of contention was his wish to make longer pictures — later called features — such as were already being done in France and Australia. Biograph wanted only one-reelers. Biograph released his 1911 two-reelers His Trust and Enoch Arden in one-reel segments. In 1913 Griffith told Bitzer, "We are just grinding out sausages, Billy, and will continue to do so as long as we remain here."
Griffith resigned in September and contracted to produce and direct for the Reliance-Majestic program. Bitzer soon joined him, as did most of the leading players from Biograph, including Lillian Gish, Bobby Harron, Mae Marsh, Donald Crisp, Blanche Sweet, Henry B. Walthall and others. The Griffith-Bitzer team had made about 450 Biograph productions. Included were several two-reelers and the four-reel Biblical epic, Judith of Bethulia, all of which Biograph had refused to release. Ironically, they finally saw release in 1914.
During that same year, Griffith and Bitzer filmed the five-reel Battle of the Sexes in New York, then moved to the West Coast to finish the seven-reel The Escape. These were followed by two features, Home, Sweet Home and The Avenging Conscience, and the finest picture of its time, The Birth of a Nation. Released in 12 reels in 1915, the great drama of the Civil War, personally produced by Griffith's own company, stirred controversy and praise in about equal measure. Bitzer invested $7,000 in it and ultimately earned $240,000.
Intoxicated by success, Griffith made the even bigger Intolerance (1919) — his masterpiece, but nevertheless a box-office failure. Its complex intercutting of four stories from different periods of history created more confusion than audiences could handle. Other features followed, including Hearts of the World, The Great Love, A Romance of Happy Valley, The Greatest Thing in Life, The Girl Who Stayed at Home, True Heart Susie and Scarlet Days. Bitzer photographed them all, solo, using the same old Pathé camera he had bought while at Biograph. He was hurt because Griffith brought in a second cameraman — Henrik Sartov — on Broken Blossoms (1919), a poetic horror tale that was their biggest success since Birth. Bitzer worked on several subsequent Griffith productions, including the classics Way Down East (1920) and Orphans of the Storm (1922), but was usually teamed with other cinematographers or passed over completely. Sometimes he didn't report when the studio called. "After we made Way Down East, my part in the making of Griffith films was [that of] just another cameraman," Bitzer recalled bitterly.
In 1926, Bitzer was the principal founder of the International Photographers of the Motion Picture Industries (IPMPI), forerunner of IATSE. Heavy opposition from the studio heads did not augur well for his future.
Griffith made several more silents, but only two talkies — the successful Abraham Lincoln (1930) and the dismal The Struggle (1931). Neither was shot by Bitzer. Both great innovators were considered too old-fashioned to function in the new order.
Bitzer died at the Motion Picture Home in Woodland Hills on April 29, 1944. Griffith, Lillian Gish and Mary Pickford had visited him there. Griffith died on July 23, 1948 in Hollywood.
"Griffith thought only in terms of picture-making," Bitzer once said. "What Mr. Griffith saw in his mind we put on the screen."
— George E. Turner
Joseph Walker, ASC and Frank Capra
A kind fate brought together the great director Frank Capra (1897-1991), and equally great cinematographer Joseph Walker, ASC (1892-1985). Together they made 20 pictures " all of them good, some of them classics.
Walker was the perfect mix of artist, adventurer and technician. He filmed more than 160 feature productions, beginning with Back to God's Country in 1919 and ending with Affair in Trinidad in 1952. Between pictures he invented things, such as a zoom lens in 1922, the famed Williams Composite Process used in hundreds of films, and the variable diffusion lens. He had covered the Mexican Revolution as a wireless reporter. His first picture was made under incredible hardships in the Arctic, where the leading man died when his lungs froze.
Capra, who hailed from Palermo, Sicily, had studied engineering at California Institute of Technology, but left school to join the Army during World War I. He later worked in film labs and for independent producers. In 1921 he directed Screen Snapshot shorts for Columbia, and soon became a first-rate gag man and assistant director for Mack Sennett and Hal Roach. In 1926 he directed his first feature, The Strong Man, for First National.
Two years later he made a feature for Columbia, where he remained until 1939. The project, That Certain Thing, was a romantic comedy with Viola Dana and Ralph Graves, and the director of photography was Joseph Walker.
The little Sicilian bristled with nervous energy. He started the workday early and finished late, leaving everybody exhausted but himself. After the picture wrapped, Walker told production chief Sam Briskin that he never wanted to be assigned to Capra again. Later, when he saw the picture at a theater, he was so impressed with Capra's "touch" that he went back to Briskin and asked to be considered for any future Capra productions. Soon he was teamed with Capra for Columbia's first "A" production, Submarine (1928), with Jack Holt and Ralph Graves. The success of the adventure film led to two more very popular Capra-Walker-Holt-Graves pictures, Flight (1929) and the superb Dirigible (1931).
In addition to action pictures, the director-cinematographer team became noted for making glamorous actresses more beautiful and expressive than ever. Two very different beauties, Loretta Young and Jean Harlow, received a boost up the ladder to stardom in Platinum Blonde (1931). That same year, Barbara Stanwyck also benefitted from highly dramatic roles in Miracle Woman and Forbidden. The starkly realistic American Madness (1932), a story of a bank run during the Depression (which was then at its worst point) gave Walter Huston his finest characterization to date. Spectacular scenes of a mob running amok in a bank are still spellbinding.
The most deliberately artistic of all the Capra-Walker collaborations is The Bitter Tea of General Yen (1933), a controversial drama involving a love affair between an American girl (Barbara Stanwyck) and a Chinese warlord (Nils Asther). Here Walker introduced his new invention, the variable diffusion lens, which was later bought by Mitchell Camera Co. and is still in use. The picture was banned in England, but was selected to open the new Radio City Music Hall. In the next Capra-Walker collaboration, Lady For a Day (1933), the camera focused on the time-worn face of May Robson, whose fine performance as "Apple Annie" earned her an Academy Award nomination.
The surprise hit of 1934 was It Happened One Night, a romantic comedy starring Clark Gable and Claudette Colbert. Little was expected of the picture, much of which occurred on a bus, but the magic touches supplied by Capra and Walker turned it into a classic. Its influence on future movies can hardly be overstated. Broadway Bill (1934), with Warner Baxter and Myrna Loy, a racetrack yarn, was also popular and widely imitated.
Capra's special blend of social satire and humanist philosophy, which he called "Capracorn," jelled in 1936 in Mr. Deeds Comes to Town, which featured Gary Cooper, Jean Arthur and a bigger mob than the bank runners of American Madness. This sequence was a test for Walker, who carried it off with seeming ease. An even bigger challenge was next: Lost Horizon (1937), a great audience favorite in which utopian fantasy and spectacle were added to all the other elements of the "Capracorn" melange. An uprising in China, an airplane crash in the Himalayas, and a stay in the lost paradise of Shangri-La, where life expectancy is more than doubled, gave patrons a memorable vacation from the Depression. A fine cast headed by Ronald Colman, performing in magnificent settings (built at the Columbia Ranch in Burbank) photographed with just the right combination of the fantastic and reality, made it all convincing.
A frantic yarn pitting a screwball household against industrial giants put Jean Arthur, James Stewart, Lionel Barrymore and Edward Arnold into the epitome of Capracorn idealism, You Can't Take It With You (1938). It was, Walker said, "a nightmare to photograph," with four cameras covering a lot of frantic action in a room with only one removable wall. This highly regarded picture was followed by the even more popular " and difficult " Mr Smith Goes to Washington (1939) which pitted Stewart and Arthur against a pack of powerful political nabobs (including portrayals by Claude Rains and Edward Arnold). Mr. Common Man again defeated the establishment for the good of the U.S.A. The long sequence in which Stewart stages a 'round-the-clock filibuster to stall passage of a crooked bill is photographed so imaginatively by eight cameras that it manages to make legislative tactics seem anything but dull.
Capra soon left Columbia, but Walker stayed on until 1952, making 33 more pictures there plus five on loan-out to other studios. One of the latter was for the short-lived Liberty Films, an independent production company set up at RKO Radio by Capra, William Wyler, George Stevens and Sam Briskin. The picture was It's a Wonderful Life (1946), produced and directed by Capra. In this holiday tale, an angel saves James Stewart from suicide and lets him relive his life to prove that he has a lot to be thankful for. Combining the supernatural with small-town family drama and a great deal of film noir style, the picture was regarded as a curio which had little chance of success. However, it emerged as a legendary film that is still a favorite Christmas booking on TV.
It was also the last of the 20 pictures Capra and Walker made together.
— G. T.
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