48th NYFF 2010: Craig McCall’s Cameraman: The Life and Work of Jack Cardiff

Cameraman: The Life and Work of Jack Cardiff, directed by Craig McCall, is a tour of the work, more than the life, of Cinematographer Jack Cardiff. It is definitely better suited for Turner Classic Movies than a theatrical or even DVD release. Perhaps the best part of Cameraman is that it gets to highlight so many films of such quality, giving much credit to how brilliant and prolific Jack Cardiff actually was. His collaboration with Michael Powell and Emeric Pressberger in films like The Red Shoes, Black Narcissus and A Matter of Life and Death comprise about one third of the running time. The latter of those three will be screening alongside this documentary at the festival.

McCall does a decent job of shaping the film as a tour of cinematic history as it applies to Cardiff, rather than a biography of the cinematographer. He stays away from narration, and instead goes with interviews. The first hand approach helps a lot. It’s much better to hear the stories from Cardiff and fellow filmmakers than Ben Mankiewicz or Robert Osborne. We hear from Powell, Martin Scorsese (obviously. But where’s Bogdanovich?), Kirk Douglas, Lauren Bacall, Charlton Heston, Thelma Schoonmaker, Richard Fleischer, Alan Parker, Peter Yates, Freddie Francis and others.

Cameraman: The Life and Work of Jack Cardiff premieres at the New York Film Festival as a Special Event on Friday October 8 at 6:30pm at Walter Reade Theater. I’d say you can wait to watch this one on Netflix or TCM, but it screens with Pressberger/Powell’s A Matter of Life and Death (1946), a film I would not pass up the chance to see on a big screen.