Chronicle of a Camera: The Arriflex 35 in North America, 1945-1972

Acknowledgments

ix Acknowledgments My interest in the Arriflex 35 dates from 2004, when I purchased a used Arriflex IIB, manufactured sometime around 1960, to shoot short ends of 35mm film. After a few worn parts were replaced and the camera professionally tuned, I ended up with a fine piece of equipment—albeit a camera whose heyday was in the 1960s and 1970s. My pleasure in using this camera, and my growing recognitions of its capabilities, led directly to my interest in tracing the North American history of the Arriflex 35 from the end of the Second World War up through 1972, the year in which the 35mm Arriflex BL was introduced. Various questions arose as I turned to the available records to explore this history. What were the circumstances in which an Arriflex 35 was typically used? How often were the cameras employed in the production of theatrical films? And, most importantly, did the camera significantly influence filmmaking practices in North America, and did its use appreciably affect film styles and perhaps even film content? The chapters that follow attempt to answer these and other questions. I began my research by working my through the pages of American Cinematographer and the Journal of the Society of Motion Picture and Television Engineers—first, during visits to Southern California, at USC’s Film and Television Library, and later, at Stanford. Going systematically through these journals provided the initial research basis for the project. I also profited from examining portions of the Delmer Daves papers, which are held in Special Collections at Stanford, material that provided an account of the first use of an Arriflex camera to take shots for an American feature film. I have subsequently benefited from the remarkable development of online search capabilities, which x Acknowledgments have allowed me to track all kinds of fugitive references to Arriflex cameras—in much less time and with greater effectiveness than I could have done in library stacks (even though a number of the books and journals that came up in online searches required me to go to their printed versions). The irony is not lost on me that the digital revolution now placing the continuing use of actual motion picture film in jeopardy has also provided me with very valuable tools for my study of film. As grateful as I am to technology, I am still more grateful to a number of people who have helped me in different ways, at different stages in this project. Among those in the film industry with extensive experience in cinematography and production, I am especially grateful to Vilmos Zsigmond and Roger Corman, both of whom tolerated follow-up questions as well as initial interviews . In addition, I’d like to thank Mervyn Becker, Axel Broda, John “Bud” Cardos, Ron Dexter, Howard Ford, Ron Garcia, William Grefé, Don Jones, Gary Kent, Richard Leacock, Paul Lewis, Richard Rush, and Sam Sherman. I should also note that Axel Broda not only restored my own Arriflex IIB but also provided important historical information about Arriflex cameras (including his own experience keeping Arriflex cameras operating in the Philippines during the production of Robert Aldrich’s 1970 film Too Late the Hero). In the film industry more broadly, I’m also very grateful to Franz Wieser, of Arriflex; to Dave Kenig, of Panavision ; and to Denny Clairmont, of Clairmont Camera—all of whom provided valuable historical information and materials. My debts to film scholars and people who have written knowledgeably on film are acknowledged primarily through the endnotes in this book. But I’m also grateful to a number of people in this category who have given me direct advice—especially Charles Eidsvik and David Bordwell, both of whom provided helpful and encouraging responses to an early version of the manuscript. Later on, Charles Eidsvik provided an evaluation of a revised version of the manuscript for the University Press of Mississippi. I would also like to thank Brian Albright, an authority of exploitation films of the 1960s and 1970s, for giving me contacts for a number of people involved in making low-budget films in this period. In addition, I’d like to thank Ron Alexander, who Acknowledgments xi used an Arriflex 35 early in his career and who taught documentary film at Stanford for many years; Beverly Gray, who...