VILMOS ZSIGMOND: AN APPRECIATION

Thursday September 1st, 2016

Vilmos Zsigmond’s journey from a small town in Hungary to Hollywood success against all odds has inspired thousands. Gifted with a discriminating eye and an insightful humanity, Vilmos created images that echo though all our films, serving as a constant reminder of the power of cinema. Although his humility was palpable, he also carried within a quiet but fierce confidence in his judgment, and unrelenting focus on the task at hand.

As a young man in Hungary, he recalled, he was transfixed by the passing countryside he watched for hours through train windows. In that memory we can see two of his lifelong obsessions: moving pictures and travel. Restrictions on his freedom to travel – even to Czechoslovakia to visit a girlfriend – chafed. A talented still photographer, he organised a camera club at the factory where he was employed and taught co-workers to make home movies. He studied at the Academy for Theater and Film Art in Budapest and was soon surreptitiously filming Soviet tanks in the streets with a borrowed camera, documenting the ruthless Hungarian uprising. Often told in the world of cinematography, the story is no less astonishing: with his friend Laszlo Kovacs, he risked his life to smuggle 30,000 feet of film over the border to Austria.
 
Vilmos Zsigmond,
Camerimage Archive

Their hope was that the footage would make it to the outside world and bring help. But when Vilmos told the story, he never presented himself or Laszlo as heroic or brave. Rather, he was simply a cameraman, doing what cameramen do. He always remembered the simple kindnesses that other people performed along the way. Upon reaching the USA, Vilmos spent time in refugee camps, learned English, and depended on the generosity of Americans like the pastor who took him in in Evanston, Illinois. He never lost sight of the dream, eventually finding work in film labs and shooting low-budget films for a decade. In the early 1960s, you could hire Vilmos, a camera, and an estate car full of lights for $100 a day. High-end Hollywood filmmaking still seemed out of reach.

Another turning point was McCabe & Mrs. Miller directed by Robert Altman. The picture was a chance for Vilmos to work at a higher level in the filmmaking business, but he did not play it safe. Famously, he pre-flashed the film and used natural light to deliver a unique texture and patina that is still studied and emulated by cinematographers almost 50 years later. People always asked Vilmos about the technical steps he took to achieve the look. There was no doubt that he was a technical master, but the real secret was in the creative attitude he brought to his work – his belief in the power of cinematography to deliver emotion and his willingness to take calculated risks to make it happen.
 
Still from "Deliverance",
courtesy of Park Circus

His career took off, and his imagery became part of the foundation of what is now known as the American New Wave. Breaking the grip of big-budget, traditional Hollywood studio films, Vilmos and his peers combined the best of traditional studio cinematography with a fresh, more personal sensibility. The results are now considered great cinema. Deliverance, The Long Goodbye, The Deer Hunter, and Blow Out, along with more than 100 others, are his legacy. Great honours came his way, including Oscars, the ASC Lifetime Achievement Award, and the Corvin Chain, an honour named after a medieval king of Hungary that is given to ethnic Hungarians at the highest levels of the arts and sciences.
 
Still from "The Deer Hunter",
courtesy of Tamasa

To those lucky enough to call him their friend, Vilmos will be remembered as warm, generous, thoughtful, tireless, and quick to laugh. His support for Camerimage, at its inception and ever since, has been absolutely crucial to the festival’s success. Vilmos loved the casual interaction with young filmmakers that Camerimage offers. He was forever excited about his next project and the opportunities for visual expression he saw in the script.

Despite the vast distances, geographic and otherwise, that Vilmos travelled in his life, in some ways he always remained the boy staring out of the train window, mesmerised by the moving pictures. And he is still teaching us, through his matchless images and his example, how to be filmmakers. 
 
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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