Product Description

Experience the dazzling story of cinematography as seen through the lenses of the world's greatest filmmakers and captured in classic scenes from over 125 immortal movies. Discover Gordon Willis's secrets of lighting Marlon Brando in "The Godfather" and Greg Toland's contributions to "Citizen Kane." Hear William Fraker on filming "Rosemary's Baby," Vittorio Storaro on his use of color and light in "Apocalypse Now" and much, much more. From black and white to Technicolor, silent to "talkie," glittering Hollywood musical to film noir and art film to blockbuster, this critically acclaimed masterpiece presents movies in a new and unforgettable light!

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #5654 in DVD
• Released on: 2000-05-09
• Rating: NR (Not Rated)
• Aspect ratio: 1.33:1
• Formats: Black & White, Closed-captioned, Color, DVD, NTSC
• Original language: English
• Number of discs: 1
• Running time: 92 minutes

Amazon.com
Visions of Light is not just for film buffs. In fact, if the presentation of the Oscar for Best Cinematography is your cue to take a bathroom break from the Academy Awards, then this exhilarating documentary will help you see movies in a whole new light. Named Best Documentary by the National Society of Film Critics as well as several film-critic associations, Visions of Light traces the history and illuminates the art of cinematography. It profiles the cameramen who pioneered the visual language of cinema (such as D.W. Griffith's cameraman Billy Bitzer and Gregg Toland, who shot Orson Welles's Citizen Kane), as well as the masters they influenced, among them Néstor Alemendros (Days of Heaven), Vilmos Zsigmond (McCabe and Mrs. Miller), and Gordon Willis, the affectionately nicknamed "Prince of Darkness" who shot the Godfather films.

From Birth of a Nation to Blade Runner, from Gone with the Wind to GoodFellas, this feast for the eyes spans nearly a century with sequences from more than 125 movies made immortal by the artful use of light and shadow to realize the director's vision. William Fraker, who shot Rosemary's Baby, recalls filming the scene in which Ruth Gordon's sinister character is seen in a bedroom talking on the phone at the far end of a corridor. Director Roman Polanski suggested that Fraker move his camera so her body would be concealed by a door and audiences could only see her back. Fraker remembers later watching this scene in theaters and seeing the audiences shift in their seats trying to peek around the door. --Donald Liebenson

From The New Yorker
This documentary, directed by Arnold Glassman, Todd McCarthy, and Stuart Samuels, is much more fun than its college-catalogue title suggests. The movie is cheery, convivial, and swift: for ninety minutes, stunning images, drawn from all eras of movie history, pass before us, and we listen to a couple of dozen veteran cinematographers speaking about what they do. The craftsmen are a likable and unpretentious bunch, and it's easy to share their delight in the achievements of their colleagues and masters: the film is a joy to look at. (The clips are taken from the best possible prints, and they're all shown in their original aspect ratios.) Movie-lovers can argue with some of the filmmakers' choices-the near-total exclusion of images from Westerns is the most serious flaw-but, in a strange way, that's part of the picture's charm. It has the power to revive senses that have been dulled by the crushing predictability of recent movies. The cinematographers interviewed include Allen Daviau, Caleb Deschanel, Haskell Wexler, John Bailey, and the late Nestor Almendros (to whom the film is dedicated). -Terrence Rafferty
Copyright © 2006 The New Yorker

Customer Reviews

Visions of Light-a must have DVD!
Working in the film business here in Los Angeles, it's easy to understand my appreciation for all aspects of film production. However, there are many people who don't unerstand the knowledge needed to get an image on film. Visions of Light is an incredible look into the world of cinematography, and the artists who have lit some of the most beautiful faces and film sets of the past 100 years. When I received this DVD, I wasn't expecting any "added footage", any "supplemental material." I was simply expecting a DVD that was enjoyable, entertaining, and somewhat educational to watch. In a nutshell, it delivered beyond my expectations. This DVD contains wonderful clips from some of the most popular and most beautifully photographed films of the past century. It includes interviews with an array of cinematographers giving behind the scenes stories of their careers and films that they have shot. Technically, don't expect this DVD to test your home system with incredible explosions and flawless picture quality. The clips are dated and the quality of sound and picture ranges from very good to incredibly dated. No one can expect a clip from 1930 to look THAT good, yet this DVD manages to present even the oldest clips in their greatest beauty. If you are a big fan of films, or you love the art of cinematography, or you simply have a curiousity on how films are made, then this DVD is a MUST HAVE. It is put together very well. It is incredibly entertaining, with wonderful film clips and interviews that will introduce you to the artists responsible for some of the greatest and most memorable films in history. Buy Visons of Light and it will surely be one of you favorite DVD's to watch. Enjoy!

Study of lights and shadows is visually enlightening
"Director of photography. The person in charge of lighting a set and photographing a film. Also known as 'first cameraman,' 'lighting cameraman,' or 'cinematographer,' he is responsible for transforming the screenwriter's and director's concepts into real visual images." From Ephraim Katz's Film Encyclopedia.

This collection of film clips and interviews with various DPs (director of photography) and camera operators such as Allen Daviau, William A. Frakeman, Haskell Wexler, and Nestor Almendros reveals their influences, the period during which they worked, what techniques were evolving, and anecdotes. Clips from about two hundred or so films are examined.

Yes, as Ernest Dickerson says, cinematography's the way one responds to light. Initially, there was just a director and cameraman, the director in charge of the actors, the cameraman in charge of everything else. And the stationary cameras didn't give them much to do, but of course that changed over time with the camera dollies and booms, and later, handheld cameras, made more effective by Steadicams, whose inventors won a special Oscar in 1977 in the technical field. But camera movement gave the DP greater ability to achieve his visual triumphs.

Other than the Katz quote, DPs were to tell the story visually and to make actors and actresses more handsome and prettier but to enhance special features. Actresses like Marlene Dietrich and Greta Garbo required special attention, but boy, did they sparkle! Dietrich's cheeks were made narrower with the lighting used in Shanghai Express. And small wonder Harold Rosson made Jean Harlow prettier in Red Dust--he even married her (lucky guy!) after her husband Paul Bern committed suicide.

This takes a chronological history of lighting, from the silent era up to the late 1980's, and puts it in context with the history of film. For example, the role of cinematography changed with the advent of sound. According to cinematographer John Bailey, the 1920's were the golden age of cinematography because at the time, the camera was unencumbered by sound and all devices accompanying verbal dialogue storytelling. And when anamorphic 2.35:1 widescreen came to be used, DPs had to find some way to use that extra space on either side, as they did with Lawrence Of Arabia, like the scene of Lawrence, having rescued Qaseem, who is greeted by one of the boys, riding towards him. And with the gradual independence from the studio system, previous errors such as flaring lenses were deliberately used as new techniques.

My favourite era is the film noir era, which borrowed from the German Expressionism of the 1920's. Sparse lighting, slashes of light, dark shadows, dense rarified vocabulary of visual information, low angles define the characteristics of such films as The Killers, Out Of The Past, and Touch Of Evil. It's stark black and wide, hardly any greys.

But other uses of dark or darkly lit techniques were shown with the candlelit sequence in Grapes of Wrath, a clip from Fat City, and the accurate capture of period dramas, where there was no electricity and so thus families relied on light from windows.

As for best uses of technique, the pure visual accident in In Cold Blood, where Robert Blake's character is speaking to the chaplain about his father, and the light reflecting off the pouring rain on the window shone on Blake's face, making it look as if he were crying.

This collaboration between the American Film Institute and Japan's NHK Television is ideally for film students/buffs and for moviegoers of a more intelligent and inquisitive calibre, which I hope will comprise of enough people.

Will ramp your appreciation of cinematography to new plane.
Will ramp your appreciation of cinematography to new plane. I felt priveledged to see through the eyes of the cinematographers whose interpretive visions become our filmic memories. You will understand at a new level the mix of man, machine and method that give us the larger than life illusions that carry the cinematic message to an eternal place we always carry with us. This is a must for any aspiring cinematographer and/or filmmaker.

Cinematographer/Filmmaker