in terms of innovation and style Boris
Kaufman has to be very very highly placed
in the Pantheon of cinematographers. Certainly to most cinematographers today
he's a name that's known a name that's respected but whose work is not really individualized
Boris Kaufman was the youngest of three
brothers the other two brothers were
filmmakers as well cinematographers
directors the oldest one was Dennis Kaufman
who was born probably about 1895
I think, and he adopted in Soviet era the name Dziga Vertov
and was a theoretician
and director, cinematographer, did a very famous film from 1929 called "Man with a
movie camera"
which was photographed by the other brother Mikhail
who was the
middle brother who was born I think just
a couple of years after Denis and
there's some question when Boris the
youngest son was born if he was born
when some people say he was and all
three sons were born within like 18
months of each other but he may have
been born in 1906 all of them in
Bialystok, Poland which at the time was
politically aligned or possessed by
Russia and then when the first world war
broke out and I guess Germany invaded
they moved to the family moved to Russia
and the two older brothers stayed, 
became very involved with the beginning of the
Soviet era film industry
and became filmmakers and theoreticians
and taught and Boris ended up being sent
to Paris and he studied at the Sorbonne
he did maintain contact with his
brothers who were very much in this sort
of firm it
of Soviet era experimental filmmaking
during the 20s... certainly he must have
been seeing a lot of those films at that time
The early Soviet era was a period
of an incredible technical and aesthetic experimentation,
the medium was really new and, because it was silent, the images
had to carry obviously not just the
visual but the dramatic weight and so it
was filmmaking for a brief several
decades was sort of freed from any sense
of having to have strict narrative
dialogue
and the Soviets and certainly the German
Expressionists but probably
pre-eminently the Soviet filmmakers of
the 20s sort of embraced that nonverbal
aesthetic, preeminent among them of
course we're Pudovkin and Eisenstein and
Eisenstein's first real international
film was Battleship Potemkin from 1925
and it has a lot of visual techniques,
compositions, a selection of camera angles
that are very much part of that
Zeitgeist that we're also being taught at 
the Bauhaus in Germany.
Boris Kaufman grew up in that ambience as did John Vigo.
Boris Kaufman started
his career in France and he did either three or four films
with Jean Vigo who
died very young in 1934 at the age of 29.
and they were very experimental films
they were done certainly the first one
"À propos de Nice", a silent film, was done
very much in that sort of
Soviet era, German expressionist experimental
style, camera style,
with with not a strict narrative... impressionistic
kind of film.
Vigo was spending a lot of time along the Promenade, des Anglais,
along the beachfront there and looking
at the vacation people the sort of sense
of indulgence and entitlement and
decadence that they represented and he
came Vigo came from a very strong
leftist political tradition, his father
was perhaps an actual you know anarchist
and was in jail, he had changed his name
he had a politicized name and he died
under mysterious circumstances in prison
when Vigo was still quite young,
but Vigo was very much privy to, and heir, to that
sort of leftist socialist tradition,
from his father and that
permeates the whole content
of "À propos de Nice" 
and Kaufman obviously had been in a
sympathetic world that I don't know much
about Kaufman's actual politics, but both
of his brothers were you know political
filmmakers in the Soviet Union at the
same time so I mean it was very much in
the air of course at the time, around the world
and the title card for "À propos de Nice" after the title card
lists both Kaufmann and Jean Vigo as co-filmmakers it's a shared card and the
only other time I can think of of ever
having done that was when Orson Welles
shared his card with Greg Tollan for
Citizen Kane so it was kind of it's sort
of a unique thing and it's very
startling when you see it so it's really
a collaboration between the two.
In 1927, I think it was, McCale came to
Paris to visit Boris and brought with
him a small camera called a kinamo
camera which was one of the first very
small sort of handheld portable cameras
it was originally manufactured I think
in 1921 or 22 as a hand-cranked camera
and then a few years later by 1925 I
think that they put in a spring in
awhile and spring and it was very
unusual in that it was extremely
lightweight it was only about six inches
high and it didn't even really look like
a camera looked like a little leather
box and so it was very easy to sort of
just hold it in your hand and shoot and
people wouldn't be aware that you you
were actually using a camera so Kaufman
had this small camera and he and Vigo
were able to go out on the promenade in
Nice and basically shoot dozens and
dozens of people without being noticed
and that little camera that they had the
key nominal camera was really unique in
that it
did not have to be threaded you did not
take up a roll of film and thread it
through you know the the sprockets and
into the gate and everything you'd open
it up plug the thing in and I think it
was like a 35 meter cassette and you
could just close it up and shoot and
then reload it even you could put
another cassette in in the open light
you didn't have to go into a dark room
so they were able to continue shooting
not only was the camera basically
invisible but they could they could
reload it and keep shooting you know
when they found something it was very
interesting and when you look at "À propos de Nice", 
it's startling how close
the camera is to a lot of these people I
mean it was basically shot handheld they
could have been more than 2 or 3 meters
away from some of the people they were shooting.
That sense of being so close to
the subject is something that it seems
to me is not just there from the
beginning in Kaufman's work but it's all the way through
and if you look at
just the way he used close-ups in the later films
even, as late as say:
"The Fugitive Kind" (1960), or in 
"Long Day's Journey Into Night" (1962)
but particularly in "12 Angry Men" 
when you get into the intense close-ups...
there is, a kind of hankering back or an
evocation of the way he used the camera at the very beginning of his career
You see it in "À propos de Nice" you see
it a little bit in "Zéro de conduite" but you
see it in the feature you see it in "L'Atalante"
 I mean there are scenes in "L'Atalante"
where you feel the camera is right
on top of Dita Parlo and Michelle Simone
the scene in the barge and Michelle
Simone's broom where he's showing her
all of the artifacts that he's collected
from around the world the cameras
literally right on top of them you know
I obviously it was a set there's no way
they could have got a camera in life in
there that was part of the set that they
did but it feels in terms of its sense
of a claustrophobic space and the way
the camera was used and the kind of
stuffed tight compositions in there that
you are in an actual space and thus in
in that very severe winter and you see a
lot of traffic a sense of changing light
and changing you know space it almost
has a documentary feel and that sense of
light and dark is a strong element all
the way through Kaufman's work and you
see it even in something as documentary like "À propos de Nice".
Of course it's
much stronger by the time you get to "Zéro de conduite"
which is you know a fictional
film and has a lot of interiors where
the lighting of course was able to be
controlled a lot more you know very bold.
It is sort of an indication I think of
just how meticulous even at that earlier
point a Kaufman was to place the lights
as carefully as he did and lighting such
specific small areas even in that film
was something that was not generally
done I mean
a lot of the European films especially
of that time had a more general kind of
lighting you look at most of the Renoir
films from the early sound period and
they they're not that nearly that
dramatic so I think that Kaufman even
from very early on was was somewhat anomalous.
When Vigo died he was sort of
a very promising director and Kaufman
even though he had worked on a few
documentaries before Vigo he kind of got
his teeth you know with Vigo and when
Vigo died in October of 1934
I think Kalman still very young was cast
adrift and he righted himself very
quickly and and throughout the 30s he
worked with a large number of French
feature film directors and had what
looked to be like a very major career in
the French film industry when the war
broke out he was drafted and he served
briefly with the French army until you
know France had France surrendered and
he somehow escaped I don't know how but
he somehow got himself to Canada and for
a brief period of time he worked in
Canada for the film board doing
documentaries under John Grierson and
some time in 1942 he actually came to
the United States and he settled in New
York and he started making a number of
documentaries and shorts in New York
some of which were I think wartime
propaganda films in 1947 he did a very
highly esteemed almost feature-length
film for the United States Information
Service called "Journey into Medicine" and
on the basis of that and a couple of
other films he established I think some
sort of you know legitimate credits in
the New York filmmaking system
eventually that led him to Elia Kazan as
my understanding that when Boris Kaufman
met with Kazan he was able to show him
some of his documentary work which
obviously especially filmed like "Journey into Medicine" which I do think that
Kazan saw shows great sophistication in
its lighting and yet it has a
documentary reality to it and I think
that combination of documentary reality
and control stylization and lighting
technique appealed to him very very much
he wanted him to see "L'Atalante"
but there was no print available in the
United States and it's too bad in a way
because what could have been more
perfect bridge you know for Kaufman
between you know a film that takes place
on a barge on the waterways and then
hoboken New Jersey on the docks and and
on the waterfront you know I mean
there's there's a there's a thread there
is a the threat of water and boats you
know linking the to the in a very
beautiful way and I am merely supposing
this but my own sense is that some of
the sense of space and the sense of
poetry that is in "L'Atalante" and the
controlled use of light percolates
through into "On the Waterfront" there's a
certain irony to the fact that he
actually hired Kaufman because Kaufman was
the youngest of three brothers the other
two of whom were... communists
living and working in Soviet Russia at a
period when in the American film
industry the house and American Affairs
Committee was purging - attempting to
purge Hollywood and the irony of course
is that one of the friendly witnesses to
the committee was Alya Kazan and you
know I mean he
two had to deal with that for the rest
of his career even up to when he got the
honorary Academy Award so there's a
tremendous irony that it was a confirmed
anti-communist testified anti-communist
who hired this Polish - Russian cinematographer,
who must have been on
the FBI's radar anyway you know because
of his two brothers, living in New York
and yet he hired him I mean it's sort of
a delicious aspect to it that it's kind
of like Nixon going to China it took
somebody like Kazan to give an outsider
like Boris Kaufman the ability to jump
into the the American feature film
mainstream and jump in he did it turned
out that was his first American studio
feature film "On the Waterfront" and he
got a nomination and subsequently he got
an Academy Award for that.
He stayed in New York he as far as I know he never
actually came to Hollywood he never shot
a film outside of New York even "The Fugitive Kind"  which nominally takes
place in Mississippi was shot you know
very close to New York City he was a
real New Yorker he lived in a village he
lived on West 9th Street and he was
had an accent from what I've been told
by several actors who have worked with
him he was very quiet, methodical, he was
not a self-promoter, he was very focused
on his work obviously there's a very
strong European aesthetic in his work
which has nothing to do with the
American studio tradition in other words
we think of American cinematography from
the 30s 40s as having a certain style
there's a certain MGM style of Warner
Brothers grittier style I kind of you
know romantic sort of very gauzy style
we think of paramount films during
authorities a lot of and there were
certain American cameramen who were
under contract to specific studios
during those days like Shamu I had a
long-term contract with 20th Century Fox
and there were sort of house styles you
know I mean not just in terms of the
cinematography but in terms of costumes
in terms of subject matter even and
Kaufman was totally outside that world so
Boris Kaufman sort of worked within a
his own sort of very small and very
intense pressure cooker and that
pressure cooker had a lot to do with
intense theatrical drama that either
came directly from theater pieces or had
a kind of theatrical quality to them for
example "Baby doll" was an original
screenplay that Tennessee Williams did
but the film itself feels like a theater
piece you know I mean in terms of just
the formality of the dialogue I mean
it's a lower depths kind of environment
like "Fugitive kind" but it has its own
kind of like dark down-and-out poetry to
it he photographed seven films for
Sidney Lumet and three films for Elia
Kazan and that constitutes a large
percentage of his known body of work so
it was a very sort of tightly kind of a
nuclear kind of environment that he
worked and it was very compact and very
tight and very intense and I can't think
of another cinematographer working in
American mainstream films that was that
specific in terms of the kind of films
he did the nature of the films and then
also in terms of the physical aesthetic
way that he worked with lighting in the
use of the camera, it was very very individual.
The sense of physical space
streets buildings and everything I think
have always been very important to the
way Kaufman worked in the New York films
for example what we normally think of as
establishing shots of building skylines
and things like that they're not normal
shots they're intensely
present and dramatic hot highlights and
dark shadows you know real chiaroscuro
and everything the city feels almost
like a character that is something that
I think Kaufman did everywhere at the
beginning of "12 Angry Men"
The view opening shots the exterior establishing
shot of the court building the shot from
inside coming from the Rotunda up to the
to the walkway and with people crossing
and then panning over and going down the
hallway to the jury room I mean it seems
like well it's sort of throw away but
it's really not because there's there's
a tremendous sense of animation and in
12 Angry Men when you get inside the
jury room
the opening shot itself is... absolutely startling.
Now, part of it is very
theatrical in terms of the staging
you're introduced to all of the
characters but the the way the camera is
used to do that and the moves that
happen are really extraordinary
a lot of what we see in 12 Angry Men and
I think embodies a Kaufman style is in
the compositions more than the lighting
when they come into the jury room which
is a six and a half minutes long it's a
high angle across a fan at one end of
the room Jack warden comes in and tries
to turn on the fan and then as he walks
away the fan will turn on the camera
booms down and starts to move down the
table and during the course of the next
five and a half minutes
it moves basically through most of the
room back and forth and we are
introduced to different groups of the
jurors and we also get a strong sense
right away that Henry Fonda is the one
carrier this seems to be outside he
immediately goes to the window and he
stands there it's an amazing shot it has
very tight compositions a lot of the
moves are not terribly complicated moves
but they're all very meaningful and I
think that shot even though the meson
send the choreography the actors
obviously was something we met you know
and created I think there was a real
dialogue between him and Kaufman about
how to do that as we go through the film
and we see an increasing use of two
shots tightly composed four shots a
variety of angles down the length of the
table where we see six and eight people
stacked up I think those are really
Kalman's compositions
I mean lunette coming out of TV and
working on a small screen and working
with multiple cameras where you could
not get one camera in and get those kind
of closely observed shots and we know
from several decades work that that's
exactly the kind of presence that
Kaufman created I think that's very much
very much Calvin's contribution and then
as we get toward the later part of the
FAL
where it's a little bit darker and we
get slightly more dramatic lighting on
the actors nothing like what he did
before and certainly nothing like what
he was doing after and in fugitive kind
but it does it it has you know def and
it sort of hints that it you know it's
Calvin's lighting as you go through the
movie and it gets you know more and more
jurors start to you know vote for
acquittal though and it gets later in
the day and then the rain comes in and
they turn the light on it does have an
evolution in the lighting style the
walls become darker the shadows become a
little bit stronger the the close-ups
especially the very tight close-ups when
you get in toward the end when there's
some very tight close-ups with
wide-angle lenses and the lighting has
sort of a break across the forehead you
know where you have a little shadow
there and the backgrounds tend to fall
off a little bit more there is a
progression in the lighting style but
it's not much and I think one of the
reasons that it didn't evolve more is
because I think probably Lew met being
his first film probably didn't have the
courage to let Kaufman do that my I've
this pure supposition on my part but on
the basis of Kaufman's work before and
after I would say that that is not the
choice he would have made I think that
lumad wanted the jury room to look much
more open one of the the things that
cinematographers always try to avoid
unless they're trying to make us Terry
comment is use wide-angle lenses for
close-ups and medium shots because of
the distortion and especially back in
the 50s when the lenses were not
designed by computers yet and they
tended to have more sort of aberrations
perspective and chromatic aberrations
already built in it was very dangerous
to use a wider angle lens for a close-up
and
yet Kaufman seem to you know walk that
razor edge between it being arresting
and making you feel very present with
the shot and it's sort of putting you
off I'm absolutely convinced that the
the choice of lenses and the kind of
configuration of those shots very much
must have been what Kalman was doing you
know the I think he made those choices
and in other interviews no met you know
later in his life talks about having
chosen lenses and he felt that he knew
lenses from the TV days and everything
and he talks about using you know longer
lenses for close-up and selective depth
of field and things like that but that
is actually not what you are seeing at
all in 12 Angry Men you're seeing
absolutely the converse of that you were
actually seeing wide-angle lenses in
close with the deep focus behind him I
mean something that Toland did and
George Barnes did you know decades
before but even there it was done
differently I mean the you look 12 Angry
Men
isn't it it's the use of the single
shots and even two shots a lot of times
there is so strange I mean it's not the
way you would think that a Hollywood
film would be photographed at that time
it's not the conventional sort of
compressed perspective and it kind of
throws you into that that moment into
being with that actor you certainly see
it all the way through the fugitive kind
the the close-ups of onam on Yanni and
of Brando in there he uses a little
diffusion on her sometimes you know you
cut in you see it's a slight sense of
diffusion but they're not flattering
long lens portrait lenses
that he used the cameras in very close
to them the fugitive kind is such a
standalone film I can't think of
anything else like it inside of the
Canon of American studio films and I
think it's one reason why it failed so
miserably at the time of the release I
think it was so against the the the
tenor of the times that people did not
know what to make of it
the lighting when Prandtl comes in to
the town in is kind of beat-up jalopy
and it's raining and he turns a corner
and there's this unbelievable strong
backlight that's behind a tree or
something see shafts of this light
penetrating through the rain and the fog
it literally is you know I mean the
fugitive kind was based on Tennessee
Williams play Orpheus descending and I
mean literally when you first see Brando
coming in here in that car and it's like
he's descending into you know into an
infernal there inside that car and it's
that one shot already kind of puts you
inside the space of the film Fugitive
kind seems to have real physical space
the cars the the the general store so
much of it looks and feels like our
gritty you know sort of small southern
space but none of it is photographed in
a way that looks anything other than
incredibly stylized I think there is an
evolution in Boris Kaufman's lighting
particularly I mean the compositions
there's you know very dramatic
compositions and the kind we find all
the way through his career but the
lighting has evolved from film to film
to the most refined and specific kind of
use of almost dots of light I mean some
of the night seems a character Brando
will move two or three inches or mignon
II will move two or three inches out of
one light into another light and even
some of the close-ups that are static
there is such a small Nimbus of light
around the face the forehead the hair
will be dark the the the neckline will
be dark or if there's light there
there'll be a hard Barsad I'll cut
through it
the back walls will have a hard almost
far
film-noir cut through them I'm very
controlled lighting that you would think
would make it seem so artificial but
again and this is what Coffman says he
wants to do he wants to get inside the
characters and inside the emotional
dynamic one of the sort of abiding
truths I think in the work of Boris
Kaufman is you never feel he was doing
any kind of trick either in the lighting
the composition the camera movement it
was all to serve what he felt was the
emotional state of the film and because
these characters are sort of basically
so overheated and so dramatic and urgent
in their needs that the lighting serves
that I mean if the lighting had been
more realistic if the lighting had been
more documentary if the day scenes in
the store even had actually had Windell
light coming in so you felt the outs I
never feel the outside light coming in
that story I mean obviously it was a set
but it's lit from inside you know
there's nothing real about it and that
was a very brave choice to have done to
the film I mean there are people that
have said that Boris Kaufman worked very
slowly but he's also been defended by
Kazan I think saying you know that it
takes a long time to write poetry and as
a cinematographer when I look at the
lighting in the fugitive kind and I see
how specific it was and how many small
lights he used every light whether it's
a big lighter a small light has to be
set and controlled and it takes time and
if you're lighting with two lights or
three lights a fairly large lights and
you cut them in a certain way to control
them a little bit that's working a lot
faster than if you're working with
fifteen or twenty or twenty five lights
and I think in a lot of these scenes
Kaufman was working with dozens of
lights
just small little things that were
sooted just to get a little just a small
you know just a small Nimbus of light
and there are a couple of scenes where
he he is so in control of the light and
essentially wants the light to make such
a contribution that he actually changes
the light within the shot and Lou Matt
had has talked about about that in an
interview and the first time is tonight
that Brando has come back from the joint
and there are lights on in the store but
it is there's a lot of darkness a lot of
shadow and very controlled light there's
a hard cross light on Ottoman Yanni you
know a lot of times it's just a little
Nimbus of circle of light other times
it's a cross light and it changes even
within scene her key light and brando's
key light will change not dimming from
one light to another but as you change
the angles instead of maintaining a
consistent key the key itself will
change which is a very deliberate device
obviously that Kaufman is doing and
there's a scene as Brando is talking to
her in this long scene where he's
standing up against behind him it's a
low angle and there's a wall behind
there with Windows and Brandel starts to
tell the story about what it's his life
is like that he's really a bird that
can't land and it's a beautiful
Tennessee Williams sort of monologue
which could have been absolutely deadly
but within the shot as you're watching
it the light starts to go out on Brando
and his face gets darker and the glass
from behind the walls behind him get
darker as well but the glass starts to
light and there's light coming through
the glass and then a light comes up on
Brando's face it's totally unreal I know
and this was obviously something this in
and and Lumet admits that he couldn't
know that Kalman was going to do this
there was something Calif mini plan
and when Lumet expressed certain and
anxiety about it he said we're gonna do
it again and he wouldn't tell them that
exactly when he did it but he later
toward the end of the film there's any a
reverse light change on her where she
started in the dark and the light comes
up on her and wall behind her slowly
gets to be lit and at first you think
maybe it's just you know a street had a
streetlight effect a headlight effect
from a car this passing or something no
it's just a light change that that he
dimmed up in the shot and those are two
are the ones that that Lou Matt talks
about there are other smaller ones that
are more subtle I think throughout the
film I mean I think that there are a lot
of dimming effects that are going on all
the way through the film you know stir
ro Vittorio Storaro talks a lot about
using dimmer boards and and doing light
dimming effects as the camera moves
around
well Kaufman was doing them in fugitive
kind within the shot without changing
the axis or the angle and you can
actually see them they're very small
changes
I think looking at it now there is such
an integration I think the
cinematography the performances the the
absolute poetry in the screenplay itself
are all of a piece it seems to me a film
that is as as bold and as daring and
everything that it does as a fugitive
kind is is really ripe for re-evaluation
for me as a cinematographer and I think
for any cinematographer that that is
discovering Kaufman and I think in a way
he is just now really starting to be
discovered as we're getting very
high-quality remastered DVDs of some of
his work you know it's earlier versions
of it have suffered visually now we're
actually seeing how strong how beautiful
and poetic the work is I think he is
standing out in a very individual way as
an artist that and the work still seems
so fresh and so new it's so different
than what other cinematographers were
doing it at you know at the same time
and I think it one of the reasons it's
so individual is obviously because of
who he was his character as a human
being I think his aesthetic training
obviously but that he was not part of
what can I say a large he was an
outsider I think he was even an outsider
in France I mean you know he came from
Poland and grew up a little bit in
Russia he went to France as a young man
he worked there for what twelve or
fifteen years became a war refugee was
in Canada he came to the United States
struggled in New York for a number of
years I don't know that he was up he was
sort of a man without
country in an odd way and I think it it
it helped prepare the ground or the
fertile soil for for him to have a very
specific and a very individual aesthetic
he wasn't part of a group or part of a
larger body like a lot of the Hollywood
or even some of the New York
cinematographer WA cinematographers were
I think in a lot of ways he was sort of
a world unto himself
you
