A list hopefully enjoyable to the reader of those films I judge to be some of the most sublime in their photography. This more than likely omits some crucial films, to that I bring my sorries, but these titles are just those that first came to mind. In today's digital climate the visual success of movies can depend on many more people than the director of photography, such as digital post-production artists. So this list is dedicated more to the celluloid era.
In the finest of stream-of-consciousness traditions these are presented in no particular order:
The Oscar-winning cinematography of Black Narcissus by Jack Cardiff is awe-inspiring in its metaphysical color and light. The Oscars are given via democratic vote, so it comes to no surprise that too often mediocrity is triumphant, but this film certainly provides an exception to the rule.
Fellini's classic 8½ was lensed in crisp black & white by the best-cinematographer-you-haven't-heard-of, Gianni di Venanzo. A sublime example of cinema photography which is spellbindingly brilliant without drawing too much attention to itself.
No unpretentious film buff can give a list of finely photographed films without mentioning Mario Bava, master of macabre imagery. While Bava's Black Sabbath is a better film, the phantasmagorical images in his Kill Baby Kill! are just terrific in their saturated colors and peculiar camera-movements. The spiral staircase visual motif used in such films as Antonioni's Identification of a Woman and the Francis Bacon bio Love is the Devil makes a dazzling appearance here. Kill Baby Kill! is one beautiful Imagi-Movie, to quote Forrest J. Ackerman's term.
The visuals in Carl Theodor Dreyer's silent classic The Passion of Joan of Arc when viewed on a big screen look like living supernatural sculptures carved out of marble. Rank among the most unusual film images I've witnessed. Thank Dieu for the Blu-ray.
This list had to have at least one example from the work of Sacha Vierny, who had one of the strongest signature styles of any cinematographer. The son of a jeweller, his style is to make the pale images shine to the point feverish overexposure. The one I've chosen is Peter Greenaway's Prospero's Books. Vierny was given carte blanche to go all out with this one. Pretentious as hell, but includes glossy, at times grotesque imagery to the point of exhaustion. The image above is a spot-on example of Vierny's way of lighting faces.
One of the most stunning (long) takes on black & white photography, Mikhail Kalatozov's propaganda film I am Cuba features a long array of intoxicating images and acrobatic how-did-they-do-that camera movements, which much later inspired Gaspar Noé's Irreversible. The endlessly experimental d.p. Sergei Urusevsky at times uses an ultra-wide 8mm lens, which gives a hallucinatory near fish-eye effect.
One-of-a-kind near-masterpiece from Antonioni, L'Avventura possesses a hard-to-explain style of reflecting and commenting on the psychological states of its characters through the visuals. In interviews Antonioni himself took the most credit of the film's visual success. Who are we to blame him.
