Kasia Taras
Alchemy. About the Art of Cinematography
Authenticity, that is Nestor Almendros and Zygmunt Samosiuk
I do not remember when I saw the first film with Nestor Almendros' cinematography, but it must have been Days of Heaven (1978) by Terrence Malick, with brilliant production design by Jack Fisk. It is no surprise that Almendros was awarded an Oscar for this film.

Nestor Almendros has always been characterized by humility towards the reality, manifesting itself, among others, in the preference of natural light. Maybe it is a standard today but let us pay attention to a small detail - the passage of time and technological advance. It used to be more difficult in the past. There are two legends connected with Almendros and light, one of which I had an opportunity to verify last year. However, I will allow myself to start from the unverified one. Almendros and Nykvist are perceived as the cinematographers who were trying to minimize the usage of artificial lighting. Maybe one day someone will estimate precisely whom of the two was first? The second legend refers to the way Almendros was setting light when he had serious problems with eye-sight. He was exposing his hand or face to the lamp light. Jack Fisk not only confirmed this, but also showed it to me.

Still from Days of Heaven"
Tadeusz Lubelski in his “Encyclopedia of Cinema" (Kraków 2003, p. 24) calls AlmendrosNestor Almendros cooperated with Truffaut and Rohmer. It is no wonder that he found common ground with the author of Claire's Knee (1970). Rohmer aimed in cinema at “copying the natural beauty of the world" (see T. Lubelski, “The New Wave. On an Adventure of the French Cinema", Kraków 2000, p. 290). And here comes another reason for which I admire his cinematography, although I do not fancy the New Wave so much. Almendros is a master of suggested eroticism, with which Rohmer's self-confident of their values women lure indecisive and scared of their charisma men - as it is in My Night at Maud's (1969), in which the character (Jean-Louis Trintignant) prefers his marriage with Francoise (Marie-Christine Barrault), whom he “imagined" as a wife, to a relationship with Maud (Francoise Fabien), who really enthralled him. Rohmer's men almost always run away, in the best case into flirtation - as it was in Claire's Knee. Almendros could also authenticate with his cinematography the story of a crazy love in which the state of being in love is more important than the object of this love - such situation can be found in The Story of Adela H. (1975) by Truffaut. Adela Hugo (Isabelle Adjani), a daughter of a great writer, falls into madness but she cannot let go as this love's illusion is the only thing she has. She loves as this is the only way to deceive her loneliness. Almendros conveyed very beautifully and extremely convincingly how little separates love from madness and that each love can turn into madness. Cinematography in this film is very normal, taking into account that this is a story of a “bad" love. And this love is bad as it gave nothing to the female character. A diary was written but only unfulfilled artists believe in the value of sublimity.

Susan Sontag and Nestor Almendros, photo: http://www.cinematographers.nl
Nestor Almendros was not only a cinematographer, he also co-directed extremely critical documentaries about Castro's regime which he became familiar with while living in Cuba for some time: Mauvaise Conduite (1984) and Nadie Escuchaba (1987). He joined being a committed filmmaker (there are even two awards named after him, one given to filmmakers fighting for human rights) with creating advertisements for Armani and Calvin Klein. He knew Susan Sontag.

As it comes to Zygmunt Samosiuk, the second character of the given article, first there was Story of a Sin (1974) by Walerian Borowczyk. The film turned out to be far better than the novel in which Żeromski encapsulated too much - a scandal, a story of a saint harlot and serious thoughts about Polish philistinism. Borowczyk planned to “illustrate" the novel and not adapt it, and the whole crew, with Zygmunt Samosiuk in the lead, fulfilled the task perfectly. Their Story of a Sin is stylish and poisonously beautiful, as expected from modern art. And we could talk endlessly about graphic inspirations of the director, the cinematographer and the production designer, Teresa Barska. Let us consider the scene of the first sexual intercourse of Ewa (Grażyna Długołęcka) and Łukasz (Jerzy Zelnik): the experienced lover shows the inexperienced (and head over heels in love) girl an illustration of how their intimate contact is supposed to look like. And this picture seems to be the most important as thanks to it we discover what Borowczyk wants to tell us about. About the most dangerous, love agalmatophilia. What she considered a feeling and to which she devoted her freedom and life (and some other lives too), was jus tan experiment for him.

Still from "Golem"
Zygmunt Samosiuk co-worked with such different directors as Piotr Szulkin (Golem - 1980, The War of the Worlds. Next Century - 1981), Janusz Morgenstern (To Kill This Love - 1972) or Andrzej Trzos-Rastawiecki (Record of a Crime - 1974 and ... wherever you are, Mr. President... - 1978), and his cinematography proves that he was a master of different genres - science fiction, modern story or even stylization for a documentary.

Yet sometimes he was a true Maestro. Every time “the beauty of dying", "fin de siecle", "the twilight of culture" or simply naivety had to be shown - as it is in Story of a Sin, but also in The Gorgon Case (1977) by Janusz Majewski, the visual side of which most probably organized by photographs from a crime scene (the film was inspired by an authentic story, widely commented in the interwar period; i.e. Boy-Żeleński wrote about it) published in “Secret Detective" magazine. Janusz Majewski became familiar with the annuals of “Secret Detective" during the II Word War, he found the magazine in the attic while looking for something to read as he had read all books from his parents' library. I came across this periodical some time later, I also found it in the attic, in my grandma's house (see “I am fascinated with what has passed - an interview with Janusz Majewski by Katarzyna Taras, “The Cinema" 4/2006). As you can see, some reading matter just can't be avoided.

Still from "The Gorgon Case"
“Beautiful dying", “the decline of culture", “the twilight of the epoch", all these expressions are connected with decadence. Zygmunt Samosiuk was taking truly decadent cinematography. And no one will be equal to him. You do not have to be fond of Dagny by Haakon Sandoy (1976), but you have to appreciate the way of picturing Krakow's bohemia. You do not have to be a fan of Dulscy (1976) by Jan Rybkowski - although it is an immensely intelligent, even breathtaking, adaptation of Zapolska's drama - yet it is difficult not to give in to women filmed by Samosiuk, especially the tart played by Irena Karel and as if cut from a modernistic stained glass Danuta Rinn. To women, but also to the city which was an equal character of the story, a common feature in a modernistic play.

Zygmunt Samosiuk was working with directors who can be called the painters of the cinema, which is not always related to their education but rather to the way they work on a set, and to how their films “look like". Borowczyk used to be an active artist, thus this cooperation is not surprising. Samosiuk also co-created with Andrzej Wajda who discovered him while watching footage about State Agricultural Farm. The director was impressed by the cinematographer's speed of rearranging the camera - they were filming snow and the whole footage was about getting prepared for winter. They made Hunting Flies (1969), but most importantly The Birch Wood - a successful experiment to narrate Iwaszkiewicz by means of Malczewski - “It is the saddest to die on a bright spring day. To leave when such extraordinary things are happening in the nature. For me Jacek Malczewski, with his pictures of death waiting outside a window, was a painting counterpart of this phenomenon." (see “A. Wajda. Films", Warsaw 2006, p. 80). The film about death having Malina's (Emilia Krakowska) body, a lush country girl, whose vitality makes Stanisław's (Olgierd Łukaszewicz) erudition and education defenseless and useless. Because we are all defenseless in the face of death. Death as a sensual woman - how un-Polish it is, how much in Has' style, how decadent - it was Stanisław Korab-Brzozowski who described death as if it was a female lover.

Later on there was Landscape After Battle (1970), in which film Samosiuk's cinematography were as if getting into a viewer's blond circulation - for it must be difficult to forget the clash between the texture of characters' (played by Daniel Olbrychski and Stanisława Celińska) delicate faces and the texture of walls. He managed to portray the real beauty of an encounter of a man and a woman who met in inhuman circumstances.

Samosiuk co-created also The Inn (1983) by Jerzy Kawalerowicz, in which he portrayed not so much the world that passes but the one which does not exist anymore, which had to be created from the scratch for this particular moment. And so it was.

Still from "Landscape After Battle"
Another director-painter is the abovementioned Janusz Majewski. Apart from The Gorgon's Case, they created a TV series Queen Bona (1980) and Barbara Radziwiłłówna's Epitaph (1982). Jan Lenica suggested Zygmunt Samosiuk was a cinematographer of an adaptation of Insatiability planned by Majewski. Nevertheless, Majewski-Samosiuk duet is, above all, Lesson of a Dead Language (1979), in which film they managed reconcile the beauty of Art Nouveau photography with exhumation sequences styled on authentic pictures from the fronts of the I World War.

“Authenticity" is a perfect word to characterize Zygmunt Samosiuk's cinematography. Story of A Sin was shot (allegedly) in authentic interiors and locations of Łódź and Pabianice, and on the walls in these authentic interiors (allegedly) authentic paintings from the epoch were hung.

Authenticity was equally important for Nestor Almendros. The Marquis of O (1976) by Rohmer was shot in natural interiors and locations. In Confidentially Yours (1982) by Truffaut, in order to make the light look like in film noir, on which genre the movie was styled, the stubborn Spaniard of French origin found Fresnel lanterns from the 50. in a French movie company (see T. Lubelski, “The New Wave...", p. 305, 201).

Thus, I know why I like their cinematography the most. Because they were trying to get closer to what seems to be unachievable in cinema.