CAMERAMAN UK DVD review

Let's sum it up right now; Cameraman: the Life and Work of Jack Cardiff makes for hugely entertaining watching and anyone with the slightest interest in its remarkable subject should see it the moment they get the chance. The film's main flaw is that, on a technical level, it's arguably not that great.

Director Craig McCall, working over a period of seventeen years (!) simply isn't able to successfully organise the vast amount of material available to him (to be fair, Cardiff had a very long life, and left behind a great deal of work) and his documentary feels frustratingly rushed, clumsily paced and somewhat unsatisfying. Fortunately for him, even the most incompetent filmmaker would struggle to make Jack Cardiff's story any less than enthralling.

He remains - at the time of writing - the only cinematographer to be awarded an honorary Oscar for a lifetime's achievement. While these are often seen as a sop to someone the Academy's been ignoring, in Jack Cardiff's case it was a little more appropriate after such a remarkable career.

He began as a child actor at the age of four, with parents who worked on the stage and as extras in silent films. Over the years he started with menial jobs, from gopher to clapper boy and finally to a spot behind the cameras, working on the quickie quota pictures churned out in a matter of weeks, where there was never the time to do any more than one take as the studios simply couldn't afford it.

He was lucky enough to learn from some of the greatest in the business at the time, when the British film industry could afford to bring over Hollywood's leading stars and the technical personnel to back them up. And he proved to be in the right place at the right time when Technicolor requested a single British camera operator to be trained on their cutting edge equipment.

A further break came after he was picked by director Michael Powell to work on The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp, the second film from Powell and Emeric Pressburger's legendary production company The Archers. But he arguably cemented his place in cinema history with The Archers' A Matter of Life and Death (aka Stairway to Heaven), the hugely successful romantic WWII fantasy still ranked as the second greatest British film ever made by a magazine poll (for Total Film) more than sixty years later.

Life and Death led to Black Narcissus, the story of psychological tensions in a secluded mountain convent in the Himalayas, whose cinematography netted Cardiff an Oscar - and then The Red Shoes (loosely based on the Hans Christian Andersen fairytale), the film following a ballet dancer torn between love and her commitment to her art. These three productions set Cardiff up to work on a string of successful films through the 1950s and 1960s, working with any number of Hollywood luminaries.

He then moved into directing, at which he proved every bit as adept - his adaptation of D.H. Lawrence's Sons and Lovers earned seven Oscar nominations. He returned to cinematography and continued working until shortly before his death, adding such early 1980s action notables as The Dogs of War and Rambo: First Blood part II to his resume.

It's a staggering career, yet Cardiff - interviewed at various stages from his late eighties to his early nineties - proves voluble and eloquent about virtually all of it, reeling off anecdotes with a laid-back, unassuming civility that comes across as both charming and humbling. ('If anyone asks who I am', he says at Cannes in 1998, 'I just say I used to be a stand-in for Frank Sinatra.')

It's a shame, then, that Craig McCall doesn't seem quite up to doing Cardiff's monumental legacy justice. Cameraman is perfectly watchable, but - to be absolutely ruthless - it feels about as competent as you'd expect from a film made by a largely unknown director on National Lottery money over the course of nearly two decades.

Among other minor sins, the narrative wanders all over the place, clumsily cutting between footage, occasionally for no apparent reason. McCall can't decide how best to use talking heads or establishing shots and ends up giving far too much emphasis to both at the wrong times. One or two films aren't credited, and some contributors aren't introduced until their second or third on-screen appearance; not everyone will instantly recognise Martin Scorcese. It's never enough to spoil the viewer's enjoyment outright, but it does prove frustrating the man couldn't have had a slightly more professional tribute.

The DVD:

Optimum Home Entertainment's UK DVD release of Cameraman (available to buy now) gives the film a solid presentation. Given the varying sources, the image quality was never going to be that special - the interviews seem of more or less standard television quality, but are all still clear and watchable. The older film clips and one or two pieces of recent news footage are in standard 4:3 rather than widescreen, but this is obviously forgiveable. Though the disc isn't remotely demo quality, it still beautifully demonstrates Cardiff's mastery of his craft. The basic stereo track is perfectly serviceable, though strangely Dolby 5.1 is also available.

None of the extras are particularly long, but Optimum have included a fair few, all of some interest. Interview with Craig McCall by Ian Christie (12:51) sees the film historian interview Cameraman's director, where McCall discusses what prompted him to start work on the project and the challenge of putting it together. Jack's Actress Portraits (4:00) has Cardiff talk in slightly more detail about the photographs he took of the more famous female leads he worked with.

Jack's Behind the Scenes Movies (9:59) sees him talk about some of the handheld footage he shot while working on various films in his career. Cinematographer and Director Relationship (11:34) is made of clips of interview footage with various contributors (who also appear in the film) who discuss the title. Working with Three-Strip Technicolour (4:51) is again specific clips of Cardiff and other interviewees explaining a little of the workings of the famous camera. The film's theatrical trailer (2:00) does a perfectly reasonable job, though it seems as choppy as the feature itself.

Jack's Actress Portraits also appears as a gallery of eleven pictures, plus Production Stills, a further eleven behind the scenes photos of both Cardiff's early career and the making of Cameraman.

The biggest omission - which may leave a sizeable minority of people justifiably annoyed - is there are no subtitles on the DVD at all. If this was down to budgetary concerns, why does the disc need Dolby 5.1? Cameraman may be a niche release (though it should be anything but) yet to disregard deaf consumers seems surprisingly callous, particularly given the film was partly funded with public money.

Though it's not quite the send-off the man deserves, it's still surely impossible for any lover of cinema to watch Cameraman and not come away in awe of everything Jack Cardiff achieved. For all its objective flaws, the film does still leave the impression director Craig McCall felt the same way. While some may feel angry the disc doesn't include any kind of English subtitles, which admittedly does seem like a nasty flaw, Optimum's UK DVD release gives the film an otherwise solid presentation, includes a substantial amount of rewarding extra material and comes highly recommended

(Thanks go to Optimum Home Entertainment for facilitating this DVD review.)