A lab in Vienna processed their film, but none of the Western TV networks were interested in buying it; as far as they were concerned, the revolution was old news. The duo eventually sold the film for enough money to pay the lab bill. Later, they heard that their footage had been sold to CBS Television for $100,000. It aired for the first time five years later in a famous documentary narrated by Walter Cronkite, and has since been shown many times.
Zsigmond migrated to the United States in January of 1957 as a political refugee. He spent a month in a refugee camp in New York and then moved to Chicago, where he was sponsored by the Lutheran Church. "The weather was brutally cold, and one of the other refugees, Joseph Zsuffa, a documentarian and novelist, was working on a script for a short film," he recalls. "Joseph spoke and wrote English. I moved to Los Angeles with him in 1958, certain that I would shoot his film. I always believed I would become a cinematographer in Hollywood."
After arriving in L.A., Zsigmond got a job in a laboratory, where he processed color film and made black-and-white prints for professional still photographers. He says he learned to speak English "one word at a time." Zsigmond worked weekends and nights for producers who were making educational and training films.
It took him about five years to find work in the motion picture industry. His first projects were "B" films for drive-ins. They were usually filmed in 16mm Techniscope and blown up to 35mm CinemaScope. "I owned a 16mm Arriflex camera and lenses, which I modified for Techniscope," Zsigmond recalls. "I also owned lights. Everything I had fit into a station wagon. For $100 a day, you got my equipment and my services as a cinematographer."
By the early 1960s, Zsigmond had found a niche in the TV commercial industry with Gus Jekel, a cutting-edge director who owned a company called Film Fair. His timing could not have been better, because TV commercials were transitioning from hard to soft-sell, and talented cinematographers were generally given time and gear to craft "looks." These directors of photography included such ASC greats as Haskell Wexler, Conrad Hall, and William Fraker, who helped popularize a more interpretative form of film-making by using soft light, long lenses and combinations of filters. Zsigmond discovered that small nuances could make a big difference in the emotional impact of a TV commercial. "I think it was really the return of an old look," Zsigmond says. "Chaplin's cinematographer used soft light until the studios went to a more stylized hard light. The commercial directors wanted a more natural, softer look. Kodak helped, because around that time they were coming out with more sensitive films.
"Haskell [Wexler] was the first 'Hollywood' cameraman who noticed my work," Zsigmond says. "I shot a movie called Futz! [in 1969], and it got terrible reviews. The audiences hated it, but Haskell contacted me and told me the photography was good. He was very encouraging, which was important to me."
A few years later, Zsigmond got another type of support from Harry Wolf, who served several terms as ASC president. "Harry took an interest in me and gave me honest advice," Zsigmond says. "After one film I did, he told me that my work was too slick, and I really appreciated that. Everyone needs somebody who is willing to tell them the truth; otherwise, you never get better. Cinematographers are interesting people because there generally are no secrets or jealousies. I think it is the same with musicians and painters.
Zsigmond shot his first mainstream Hollywood feature, The Hired Hand, for Peter Fonda in 1971. That same year, Robert Altman was interested in having Zsigmond shoot McCabe & Mrs. Miller. Altman asked to see some of the cinematographer's work, so Zsigmond showed him Prelude, a short film he'd shot for actor/director John Astin.
Fortunately, Altman liked what he saw, because Zsigmond had nothing else to show him. The Hired Hand wasn't cut yet, and he was still shooting Red Sky at Morning — at that stage of his career, he considered those films to be the best he'd shot. "[Altman] created an incredible mood," Zsigmond recalls, "and a big part of it was that he surrounded himself with great actors. None of them were big-name stars at that time. We had extras living in houses and tepees that we'd built as sets. They did their own cooking and bathed in the bathhouse we built for the movie. There was a still which was a prop in the movie, and they used it to make real moonshine."
After McCabe & Mrs. Miller, Zsigmond graduated to shooting medium-budget movies, including Brian DePalma's Obsession. "We shot that picture for $800,000," he recalls. "I did it for a percentage of the profits, and that's the only movie where I ever made money when my salary was based on profits. It was really fun making those movies in the 1970s, because it was very a experimental time and the directors had tremendous freedom. It was their movie."
Zsigmond made his biggest breakthrough on Steven Spielberg's Close Encounters of the Third Kind (AC Jan. '78). He recalls that when he heard his name announced as the winner's at the Academy Awards ceremony, he felt as if electricity was shooting through his body. "It was like a dream," Zsigmond says. "I still remember walking up those steps, knowing that 80 million people were watching on television. It was the first time I felt that I belonged."
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