Guiding Light — Vittorio Storaro
How do you explain the impact that Vittorio Storaro, ASC, AIC has made on the art and craft of filmmaking within the boundaries imposed by words on a page?
One traditional measure is the Academy Award for Best Cinematography, which Storaro has taken home three times, for Apocalypse Now (1979), Reds (1981) and The Last Emperor (1987). (He earned a fourth nomination for Dick Tracy in 1990.) Another measure is the fact that this month, the 60-year-old cinematographer will become the youngest-ever recipient of the ASC’s Lifetime Achievement Award, which director and frequent collaborator Francis Ford Coppola will present to him at the ASC Awards in Los Angeles on February 18.
Storaro’s eclectic body of work includes the films The Conformist, 1900, Last Tango in Paris, La Luna, One From the Heart, Ladyhawke, Tucker: The Man and His Dream, Bulworth, Tango and the recent Goya in Bordeaux, as well as the television miniseries Dune and Peter the Great and the opera La Traviata. He also shot the 15-hour documentary Roma Imago Urbis (The History of Rome), which plays at museums around the world, and Captain Eo, an extraordinary 3-D film that played at Disney’s Epcot Center in Florida for years.
Storaro has also been an outspoken advocate for the artistic rights of cinematographers as co-authors of the films they help to create. "Cinema is not an individual art," he says. "It takes many people to make a movie. There is a common intelligence. There is no doubt that the cinema is a language of images, and images are revealed and concealed by light and shadows. Cinema is never reality; as in painting or photography, you make decisions about what to show the audience with the use of space and movement and colors so you are superimposing your interpretation."
He continues, "The editor chooses which images to use and in what order. There is also music, which establishes the mood. What the ear hears affects what the eye sees, and of course, it all begins with the writer. All of these people are working under one director, but everyone is making individual contributions. A movie is a symphony played by soloists. That is why we need co-author rights for cinematographers to protect the integrity of the art."
During the 1970s, when most cinematographers were still describing their craft as "painting with light," Storaro expressed a more complex idea. He maintained that cinematographers write with light and motion, adding that this concept is conveyed in the literal translation of the Greek words for "cinematography." There is more than a semantic difference between "painting" and "writing" with light, Storaro explains: "It is the real meaning of what we are trying to accomplish. It is a visual language with its own vocabulary and unlimited possibilities for expressing ideas and feelings."
Storaro was born in 1940 in Rome, where his father was a projectionist at Lux Film Studio. "My father dreamed of what it would be like to be a cinematographer," Storaro recalls. "He put that dream into my heart." As a youngster, Storaro sat in the booth while his father projected films for producers and directors. He couldn’t hear sound in the booth, so Storaro learned to read the images. When the studio installed a new projector, his father brought the old one home. "My brothers and I painted a wall white and we set up little benches in the garden," he recalls. "My father showed us Charlie Chaplin films, which, of course, were silent."
Storaro began his formal study of photography at the age of 11 at Duca D’Aosta. He graduated at 16, but when he attempted to enroll at Centro Sperimente di Cinematografia, the state cinematography school, he was told that he was two years too young.
Over the next two years, he spent mornings studying at the Italian Cinemagraphic Training Center. "It was a very small school, but it gave me the feeling that I was still a student, and that was very important," he says. "I have always kept that feeling. I am still a student in the sense that there is always something to learn. I am always doing my own research."
During the afternoons, Storaro worked in a photography shop, where he swept the floors, developed countless rolls of film, and was eventually allowed to make and retouch prints. When he was 18, Storaro reapplied to the state film school, but he was told that the rules had changed he would have to wait until he was 20. Storaro convinced the authorities to allow him to apply, but they cautioned that his chances were slim; there were about 500 applicants for only three openings.
Storaro was asked to submit a portfolio of still photos to the judges. He was one of 30 finalists selected to be interviewed. "I was one of the last people they interviewed," he remembers. "It was two o’clock in the afternoon, and there were 10 people seated at a long table questioning me. They were very tired. I was very shy, but I knew that if I failed I would probably end my career retouching other people’s photos or printing pictures on driver’s licenses."
The panel asked their first question, and Storaro spoke uninterrupted for two hours. He was the first of the three applicants selected that year.
Storaro recalls that the national film industry was supposed to hire two graduates from the school each year, and all of his teachers cautioned him that he would probably never get an opportunity to work in the industry. The day after graduation, Storaro was hired as a focus puller on an anamorphic film. He worked as an assistant cameraman on one other film before cinematographer Marco Scarpelli offered him the opportunity to operate the camera on the film Il Mantenuto (1961), directed by the actor Ugo Tognazzi. At the time, Storaro was 21 years old. "From that moment on, I considered the camera to be an instrument, like a pen that you use to draw images," he says. "Operating a camera is mainly about composition and rhythm. I was very happy doing that. I also operated the camera on several commercials; while we were shooting, someone with a watch was timing every pan and zoom. He would say, ’You have four and a half seconds to do that shot.’ It taught me how to make every second count."
After his third film as an operator, the industry in Italy went into a steep decline; instead of producing 300 films a year, it was only turning out about 10. Storaro was too shy to ask cinematographers he didn’t know for jobs. "My mother was pushing me to find work, but by then I realized there was a lot I didn’t know," he recalls. "I learned everything about technology at school, but nobody taught me how to interpret stories. I understood that we should use technology to express ideas. I decided to apply myself to studying art music, literature, painting and philosophy."
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