Director James Ivory explores a more contemporary era in A Soldier's Daughter Never Cries, a heartfelt familial drama photographed by Jean-Marc Fabre.
A Soldier's Daughter Never Cries is a film that subtly and gently works its charms. An intimate, realistic photographic approach effectively bolsters the satisfying and bittersweet story, which traces the emotional arc of a close-knit family.
The latest film from producer Ismail Merchant, director James Ivory and scenarist Ruth Prawer Jhabvala, Soldier's Daughter mixes a cast of appealing veterans, including Kris Kristofferson and Barbara Hershey, with a delightful newcomer, luminous young lead actress Leelee Sobieski.
The film is based on the semi-autobiographical book of the same name by Kylie Jones, the daughter of James Jones, the soldier-turned-author who penned From Here to Eternity and The Thin Red Line. After achieving success as a writer, Jones moved to Paris, where his daughter was born. The family remained there until Kylie and her adopted French brother were teenagers, and James began to suffer ill health. The clan then moved back to Eastern Long Island, where the Jones children had a difficult time adjusting to the drastic change in cultures.
In Soldier's Daughter, the James Jones character, renamed Bill Willis, is beautifully portrayed by Kristofferson. He looms large over the proceedings as a gruff, foul-mouthed, but extraordinarily loving, understanding and down-to-earth husband and father, who also has the benefit of being financially well-off thanks to the success of his books.
Barbara Hershey plays Bill's free-spirited Italian-American wife, Marcella, an aging beauty who fiercely defends her children from interlopers but who is a bit bewildered by some of Bill's parenting decisions — such as allowing a high school boyfriend of their daughter, Channe (Sobieski), to stay overnight in her room after bluntly asking the couple if they've been sleeping together.
Director Ivory chose cinematographer Jean-Marc Fabre (A Self-Made Hero, L'Age des Possibles) because Pierre L'Homme (Maurice, Jefferson in Paris) was unable to shoot the film when its start date was changed. "Jean-Marc shot a few days of my last film, Surviving Picasso, when Tony Pierce-Roberts wasn't available, and I liked what I saw," Ivory explains. "I also thought it would be good to have a foreigner shoot the scenes after the family moves from Paris to America." The family feels displaced in their new, less glamorous suburban surroundings, and Ivory wanted the audience to see this world through the eyes of someone who was "fresh and not jaded by having lived there and seen it a million times."
Because Soldier's Daughter is a straightforward family tale, Ivory and Fabre determined that visual simplicity should rule the day. The filmmakers chose to shoot in a standard aspect ratio (1.66:1, which will be projected as 1.85:1 in the States) in order to create imagery that would be closer to reality. The cinematographer notes, "I thought that was more appropriate for a family story. This is also a smaller film than the last few Merchant-Ivory productions, so that bolstered our decision to work simply. Plus, we needed to be free to change setups at the last minute in our cramped practical locations."
Of course, the simple setups did not mean that the lighting wasn't handled carefully. "I always try to keep my lighting as simple as possible," Fabre explains. "We used a lot of diffused light that we controlled with flags, because we didn't want the light spilling everywhere." Kino Flos were used extensively for close-ups, especially on the film's women, and although the light was generally soft to start with or diffused, Fresnel sources also played a role. "I tried to use whatever lighting style I felt the scene called for," the cameraman says.
A Soldier's Daughter Never Cries was shot almost entirely on Fuji 250 ASA daylight stock (8651). This decision, says Fabre, obviated the use of HMI lights and lens diffusion. "The Fuji stock is somewhat softer than Kodak and provided enough diffusion," Fabre explains. He adds that practical light sources that appeared in the frame were always reinforced with movie lights.
Fabre notes the decision to use Fuji was not budget-motivated. "The last few Merchant-Ivory films were shot on Fuji, so I decided not to make a change. I normally use Kodak, but I was quite happy with the Fuji 250D daylight stock. It has good color and good highs and lows." Although he found the colors less saturated and the contrast not as great as with Kodak emulsions, Fabre says that the Fuji stock allowed him to achieve "quite nice" skin tones. "The film was all about the characters and their faces. The set decorations and clothes had a lot of contrast and saturation, so having less of both in the stock was actually a benefit," he explains.
Even though Fabre notes that the Fuji film had a tendency to go somewhat greenish and magenta, in the highlights and shadows respectively, he feels that the stock worked well for the film: "Kodak tends to go ed, and in low light it is not so good. I don't know which stocks I'll use in the future, but using Fuji on A Soldier's Daughter was interesting and different."
The Fuji 250D stock was rated by Fabre at 200 ASA. "I did tests with overexposure and overdeveloping and found that a third of a stop of overexposure worked best," he relates. "The Fuji stock's blacks aren't as rich as Kodak’s, so I was careful to be quite generous with the lighting even in dark sequences. The dark scenes were printed down but they were never underexposed. I didn't want to risk the blacks going gray."
Night exteriors and dark night interiors, however, were shot with Kodak Vision 500T 5279. "I didn't like the Fuji 500 film, and the Fuji 250D was a good match for the granularity of the Vision 500T," Fabre submits. "When I mix Kodak's Vision 500T with their 100 ASA EXR 5248, I think it looks terrible, because the definition is so different."
Fabre's main-unit camera was a Panavision Platinum with Primo primes; zooms were used very sparingly. "I mostly used the 35mm and 50mm Primos. The Primos with the Fuji stock was a good combination; the lenses helped to sharpen the Fuji film."
[ continued on page 2 ]