Celebrity Biographies
Douglas Slocombe
Cinematographer Douglas Slocombe has died in his hometown of London at the ripe age of 103. A fall hastened his death. A veteran master of light, his career begins with Ealing comedies and ends with Indiana Jones adventure films. His art put him at the service of a cinema designed for a wide majority.
With almost 80 films, he achieved 3 Oscar nominations, for titles directed by true masters, George Cukor – Trips with My Aunt (1972)–, Fred Zinnemann – Julia (1977)– and Steven Spielberg – Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981) . –. In addition, for Midas in Hollywood, he photographed two other Indy films, Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom (1984) and Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade (1989), this being the last film in which he worked. . With the BAFTAs he was luckier, winning 3 out of 11 nominations.
Douglas Slocombe was born in London in 1913. His first professional link to the world of imaging came with photojournalism, when his camera served as stills for Life and Paris-Match magazines in the years before World War II. Undoubtedly, his dedication was influenced by the fact that his father, George, was a Paris correspondent for the Daily Herald, the city where he spent some years.
Curiously, the outbreak of the war led him to become familiar with the use of movie cameras to make war newsreels. Slocombe, for example, was filming in Warsaw on September 1, 1939, and also in Danzig he took pictures of Goebbels himself. So when the firing of the guns stopped in 1945, he continued with the movie camera, managing to be signed by Ealing Studios, specializing in gentle comedies, thanks to the mediation of Alberto Cavalcanti .
There he began with Al morir la noche (1945), and he stood out for giving black and white photography a realistic tone, which can be seen in titles such as Eight Death Sentences (1949), Gold in bars (1951) and El hombre . dressed in white (1951). With Alexander Mackendrick she got along very well, and she also made Mandy (1952) for him, and already in color, the adventurous Wind in the Sails (1965).
Although Ealing helped him grow, Slocombe sought independence. With his stupendous black and white he was responsible for Freud’s pictures Secret Passion ( John Huston , 1962) and The Servant ( Joseph Losey , 1963). Also without his head studio he delivered the color photography of titles such as The Vampire Ball (Roman Polanski, 1967), The Lion in Winter ( Anthony Harvey , 1968), A Job in Italy ( Peter Collinson , 1969) and Jesus Christ Superstar ( Norman Jewison ), 1973), which give an idea of its versatility, since a vampire comedy, a historical plot, an action film with car chases, the famous Minis, and a modern musical set in the times of Christ.
One of his most celebrated works is undoubtedly The Great Gatsby ( Jack Clayton , 1974), he knew how to give Fitzgerald’s story the romantic and languid tone it required. But his openness to popular cinema never ceased, as evidenced by his work for a 007 film, Never Say Never , and a collaboration with Steven Spielberg that kicked off with his help for one of the scenes in Encounters of the Third Kind (1977), and that he followed with the first three Indiana Jones movies.
In the 1980s, Douglas Slocombe suffered a detached retina, which led to a state of near blindness, which must have been very painful for someone who made a living recording images with a camera. His wife Muriel, whom he married in 1961, passed away in 2013, and they are survived by his only daughter, Georgina.