Itinerant Cameraman

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Itinerant Cameraman is the story of how Walter Lassally struggled to fulfil his life's ambition to become an internationally renowned director of photography on feature films, and his varied and often entertaining efforts over the past thirty-five years to survive and progress in this precarious industry. He describes the tricks of the trade of a lighting cameraman in a highly readable style, with many examples of how this business is always posing new challenges. Walter Lassally has worked on documentaries and short films - such as Sunday by the Sea (1952), Thursday's Children (1953) and Every Day Except Christmas (1956) - as well as on features and made-for-TV movies on four continents, ranging from A Taste of Honey (1961), Electra (1961), Tom Jones (1962) and Zorba the Greek (1964) to Oedipus the King (1967), Something for Everyone (1969) and Memoirs of a Survivor (1980). Two recurring themes are the merits of colour versus black-and-white and the obstacles placed in the path of a cameraman who loves to operate the camera himself. He describes the technical and aesthetic problems of working under difficult conditions far from the home base, as well as the joys and the problems of working with such stars as Anthony Quinn, Charles Bronson and Raquel Welch. The collaboration with eminent directors, such as Lindsay Anderson, Tony Richardson and Michael Cacoyannis, is covered in some detail, as is his creative association with the team of James Ivory and Ismail Merchant on a string of successes including The Wild Party (1974), Heat and Dust (1982) and The Bostonians (1983). Itinerant Cameraman is fully illustrated with work- and scene-stills of many of the productions concerned, as well as some rare photos from the author's personal collection.