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In Remembrance: Freddie Francis
Freddie
Francis, the two-time Academy Award winning cinematographer has
passed away on March 17, 2007 in Isleworth, England. He was 89.
Born on
December 22, 1917 in Islington, England, Francis worked as a
cameraman and director of British Army training films during World
War II. Following the war, he worked in the British film industry as
a cameraman working on numerous films including three for director
John Houston- Moulin Rogue (1952), Beat The Devil
(1953) and Moby Dick (1956). The 1956 war film A Hill in
Korea marked Francis’s first film as a cinematographer.
Francis quickly
developed a reputation for his striking black-and-white photography
on such films as Room At The Top (1958) and Saturday Night
And Sunday Morning (1960). He won his first Academy Award for
his work on Sons And Lovers (1960).
Francis’s
growing reputation lead to his first directorial effort Two And
Two Make Six (1962). (He had previously directed some reshoots
for the 1962 science-fiction feature The Day Of The Triffids.)
However, Francis’s next several films were genre films for Hammer
and Amicus studios, where his stunning work earned him a cult
reputation while simultaneously closing off offers to work on other
types of films. Today, his films Paranoiac (1962), The
Evil Of Frankenstein (1964), The Skull (1965) and
Tales From The Crypt (1972) are considered classics of the era.
Becoming more
dissatisfied with his inability to break out of the horror genre,
Francis returned to cinematography for director David Lynch’s 1980
film The Elephant Man, shooting the film in his preferred
black-and-white. With the critical success of The Elephant Man,
Francis found his own career revitalized. He would go on to several
prestigious projects including The French Lieutenant’s Woman
(1981), Clara’s Heart (1988) and Cape Fear (1991). He
would reteam with Lynch to shoot 1984’s Dune and 1999’s
The Straight Story, his final film. He would receive his second
Academy Award for his work on the 1989 Civil War drama Glory.
In 1997 Francis
was awarded the International Achievement Award from the American
Society of Cinematographers. |
