HASKELL WEXLER: AN APPRECIATION

Thursday September 1st, 2016

A man with a camera singlehandedly changed cinema – Haskell Wexler, ASC. Navigating fluid definitions of subjective truth and honest fiction, Haskell was one of the first and most important filmmakers to bring a cinéma-vérité sensibility to narrative visual storytelling. Along with his influential imagery in more than 150 films, Haskell projected an unflinching social consciousness that will continue to speak truth to power even in his lamented absence. Among his many achievements, he saw and incorporated the power and potential of Garrett Brown’s Steadicam early on, he memorably broke the rules in films like Medium Cool – which he also directed – and he leveraged his success in big-time Hollywood filmmaking to continue making personal documentaries that highlighted – and decried – injustice wherever he saw it.
 
Haskell Wexler at Camerimage,
photo by Photointime

Haskell was born in 1922 in Chicago. His grandparents had emigrated from Russia and Poland, and his childhood was informed by the socialist ideals that were a response to World War I and the Great Depression. He attended a progressive school and joined the Merchant Marines, where his ship was sunk by an enemy torpedo off the coast of Africa. After many hours in the water, he and his shipmates made it to shore, where they spent weeks living with the locals. He said that the experience changed him. Upon his return to civilian life, he began to shoot documentaries and training films. ‘I learned how people lived while working in factories, offices, and other places in the real world,’ he said.

After a brief period as a camera assistant, Haskell’s first foray into the narrative as a director of photography was Irvin Kershner’sStakeout on Dope Street, which paved the way for his passion for films with a message. That was followed by America, America directed by Elia Kazan, Mike Nichols'Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, which brought him his first Oscar, In the Heat of the Night with Sidney Poitier, and One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, from which he was fired, eventually sharing an Oscar nomination for the film with Bill Butler, ASC.
 
Still from "In the Heat of the Night",
courtesy of Park Circus

Meanwhile, he continued to make documentaries – 11 with director Saul Landau. Paul Jacobs and the Nuclear Gang earned him an Emmy. Interviews with My Lai Veterans won him an Oscar. Another Oscar came for the Woody Guthrie biopic Bound for Glory and another nomination came for Matewan, a period film about miners and labour unions that was one of many films he made with director John Sayles. He also made commercials with his friend Conrad Hall, ASC.

In 1996, he became one of only a handful of cinematographers to have a star on Hollywood Boulevard. He was named by the International Cinematographers Guild as one of the ten most influential cinematographers ever. And of course he received Lifetime Achievement honours from the ASC and Camerimage. But these accolades were never his raison d’être. He was in his element in the jungles of Nicaragua or the streets of Chicago during the 1968 Democratic National Convention. Those of us who were privileged enough to know him will remember his loyalty, his irreverent and mordant humour, and his burning passion for filmmaking as a tool for countering power and propaganda.
 
Still from "Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?",
courtesy of Park Circus

Irascible to the end of his 93 years, Haskell made films such as Occupy LA and Who Needs Sleep? in his final decade. ‘I think it’s important to know our history, and if you know your history then you try to build on the good parts of it,’ he said in 2010. ‘Particularly now, when things are more critical than ever. Rebellion is brewing all over the world, just on the basis of food and water, not to mention the devastations of war – rape, killing, child malnutrition. Meanwhile, the establishment is continually developing all kinds of ways of avoiding and suppressing awareness and distracting us. Are we here on this planet to live together, to work together, to be part of Mother Earth? Are we here, ready to work? Ready to know one another and to respect one another? Or are we here to compete and to control and to dominate, and to take?’ 
 
David Heuring

FINANCED BY THE MINISTRY OF CULTURE AND NATIONAL HERITAGE OF THE REPUBLIC OF POLAND AS PART OF THE TASK: CO-ORGANIZATION OF THE INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL OF THE ART OF CINEMATOGRAPHY EnergaCAMERIMAGE 2024

CO-FINANCED BY: THE CITY OF TORUŃ AND KUJAWSKO-POMORSKIE REGION

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