[Late last year, in preparation for a podcast appearance of my wife’s, we watched Yankee Doodle Dandy (1942), and through it were introduced to the groundbreaking cinematographer and all-around amazing American James Wong Howe. So this week I’ll AmericanStudy a handful of contexts for Howe’s exemplary life, leading to a post on that podcast!]
On three layers to Howe’s genuinely groundbreaking career in cinematography.
- Technical innovations: Both of those hyperlinked articles (as well as the one I’ll add later in this sentence) detail just some of Howe’s countless innovations and achievements as a cinematographer; I can’t possibly do justice to any of them, much less all of them, in one paragraph here. So I’ll note perhaps the most singular and striking example: deep focus cinematography is considered one of the most pioneering film techniques of the 20th century and is almost always associated with Gregg Toland’s certainly impressive work on Citizen Kane (1941); but Howe had used the technique a decade earlier for the first sound film on which he worked, Transatlantic (1931). I’m no expert (but my wife is and she agrees with this point), but to my mind there’s no cinematographer, and perhaps no film artist of any kind, who more influenced the arc of cinema across the 20th century than did James Wong Howe.
- The cinematographer’s roles: It’s impossible to separate those specific innovations and influences from Howe’s equally striking, and for many directors and other film folks controversial, views of cinematographers’ roles in the filmmaking process. He articulated those views most clearly in his 1945 essay “The Cameraman Talks Back,” published in Screen Writer magazine in response to criticisms of “brilliant cameramen” from film critic and novelist Stephen Longstreet in the same publication. On the second page of that essay in particular, Howe details four expansive areas on which “the cameraman confers with the director,” and it seems that he put those philosophies into practice as his career developed, leading to a reputation as a perfectionist who would at times berate other members of a film crew if they didn’t adhere to his vision. I’m no fan of anyone berating anyone else, but again, I’m not sure we can separate this layer from the first one.
- Support for minority artists: Moreover, while Howe may have sometimes made work difficult for some of his coworkers, he consistently made the profession more accessible and successful for fellow cinematographers, especially fellow minorities. No artist better reflects that inspiring influence than John Alonzo, the first Mexican American cinematographer to be inducted into the American Society of Cinematographers (ASC). Eight years before his own groundbreaking work on Chinatown (1974), Alonzo was mentored by Howe on the set of Seconds (1966), a sci fi horror film directed by John Frankenheimer and starring Rock Hudson. As Alonzo tells the story (in the Shooting with Multiple Hand-Held Cameras section of that article), “Howe said, ‘Can you follow your own focus?’ I told him I could and he basically responded, ‘Well, don’t screw it up, kid, or you’re in trouble.’” Sounds like the former semi-pro boxer Howe was always a bit of a pugilist, but also one who lifted people up rather than knocking them down.
Last Howe context tomorrow,
Ben
PS. What do you think?
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