Escoffier's enthusiasm for chiaroscuro lighting is evident throughout the film, as in a scene when Mike approaches his law-school professor, played by Martin Landau, to ask for a loan. Landau sits at his desk with half his face in shadow, the other half in light. The Chesterfield, one of the clubs Mike frequents, is also filled with shadows, except for the poker tables, which are bathed in a golden light emanating from period light fixtures hanging just above them. Escoffier asked the design team to paint the inside of the lamp covers yellow (they had been white) to make the bounce light warm.
The Chesterfield set was constructed inside a turn-of-the-century building in lower Manhattan that had been empty for several years. "When we walked in, it was a bunch of dilapidated windows on one side and bare concrete everywhere else," recalls Ramsey. "In a matter of days, Rob turned it into a beautiful set. We turned the windows into lights. One entire wall was windows, little leaded-glass panes about 2' by 18" by 4'. Instead of blacking them out, we turned them into light boxes that we could control. When the windows were in frame, we would put [the light] at a level that would allow us to photograph them. When we didn't see them, we would use them to help light the room."
Additionally, Pearson rimmed the room in yellow neon tubing to slightly separate the people from the dark walls. He also used orange felt on the poker tables instead of the traditional green. The tables in each club sported a different color of felt: orange, green or ochre.
In a subtle but very clever move, which perhaps only Russians in the audience will appreciate, Pearson hung an exquisite chandelier in the otherwise ratty, dirty card club run by Teddy KGB. "The best chandeliers in the world come from Russia," says Pearson with a laugh. "Our backstory on Teddy was that he was a fence and [had access to a lot of] stolen goods — so in this old dingy club, there were these beautiful chandeliers. It was a nice lighting device that created sparkles everywhere."
Dahl confesses that real card clubs are actually very brightly lit. "That was the one place where we made a big departure," he says. "Card players don't care what the room looks like, and most are lit with overhead fluorescents. But when you read a script about men playing cards, it seems as if it wants to be a darker, pools-of-light-over-the-tables sort of place, with all that traditional movie stuff. It becomes more like a pool hall. We simply decided to make a more dramatic statement and go with a darker, more atmospheric look. A real card player looking at this movie will probably say, 'Oh, that's a little bit Hollywood.'"
All of the poker clubs in the film are dark and moody — with the exception of the Taj Mahal Casino in Atlantic City, where the filmmakers decided to retain the lights already illuminating the room. Their only addition to the space was a modeling light (designed by Escoffier) to shape the light on characters' faces. Extras in the scene wear more colorful clothing, including a noticeable amount of blue.
Almost every poker game in the film was photographed from a circular dolly track, with the camera constantly orbiting the table. Even though the shots would be edited, the scenes were filmed in one long take to create a sense of continual movement. Escoffier asked grip Gary Martone to build a rig that was attached to the dolly and moved with it. The rig consisted of several different lighting fixtures which could be manipulated to achieve different levels and positions of light. It also offered a motor and a pulley system which was controlled manually to keep the light in proper relationship to the actors and the camera.
Poker, of course, is a fairly static game in which people basically sit around a table, saying little or conversing as talking heads. With so little physical action to work with, it is incumbent upon the director to somehow create a sense of movement. "There wasn't anything spectacular we could do with the camera," admits Dahl. "The important thing was to get the audience to care about the characters. If viewers care about the characters, the game will be interesting."
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