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

4. Technical Innovation: The Fifties and Sixties

40 Chapter 4 TECHNICAL INNOVATION The Fifties and Sixties Arnold and Richter’s pioneering design remained largely intact throughout the entire production run of the Arriflex 35, up through the manufacture of the final Arriflex IIC in 1979—a remarkable testimony to the strengths of the original conception and engineering of the camera. Additional technical development continued, however, improving the camera’s performance and also flexibility. This chapter will focus on these developments, beginning in the 1950s and continuing through the ’60s. In February 1954, Kling Photo Corporation ran a two-page advertisement in American Cinematographer heralding the new Arriflex Model IIA, which Arnold and Richter had started producing in the previous year. According to Kling’s advertising, the most notable new feature offered by the IIA was its 180-degree shutter, which provided slightly increased exposure times in comparison with the exposure time provided by the earlier, narrowerangle shutters.1 In May 1955, the “Progress Committee Report” of the SMPTE noted that the Arriflex 35 was redesigned so that the pull-down claw had a period of rest before withdrawing from the film, in order to position the frame more precisely, and the report went on to observe that the new model of the camera provided a 180-degree shutter.2 In a 1956 advertisement for the Arri- flex IIA—a camera that “may cost you less to own than it costs to rent other equipment”—Kling drew attention to the camera’s “new type of intermittent mechanism with registration pin action [that] assures absolutely rock-steady pictures in perfect register.”3 In March 1957, Kling advertised the camera’s use of a cardioidal cam to drive the pull-down claw, a design intended to provide the The Fifties and Sixties 41 claw with a stationary period (“dwelling time”) at the end of its movement, allowing it to have “a registration pin action”—thereby assuring, as Kling had noted previously, “absolutely rock-steady pictures in perfect register.”4 Nearly a decade later, the Arriflex company continued to insist that “the famous Arri cardioid movement and precision film gate is still the heart” of the camera ,5 a comment that reflects the ongoing concerns of old-school cinematographers about the Arriflex’s lack of a true registration pin. The professional standard for image steadiness was set by the extremely accurate and reliable registration-pin system of the Mitchell, which guaranteed a very high degree of image stability, with the result that Mitchells remained the preferred camera for plate shots or composite shots in which even the slightest image instability would be visible to audiences (as, for example, when titles shot with a studio animation camera were superimposed over location footage). For ordinary footage, however, Arriflex shots were generally indistinguishable from Mitchell shots. As Denny Clairmont put it, the registration of a well-maintained Arriflex was “much more than good enough.” “Everybody knew,” Clairmont noted, not to use Arriflexes for composite shots. Indeed, during his decade at the rental house Birns and Sawyer, before he co-founded Clairmont Camera, Clairmont had no complaints about Arriflex image unsteadiness.6 As a cinematographer with the Canadian National Film Board judiciously explained, the Arriflex 35, although not the equal of the Mitchell, did not pose any problems of unacceptable registration when employed “under proper mechanical surveillance.”7 This view was widely shared, especially outside Hollywood studios. It was certainly the view, for example, of Paul Lewis, who was involved from the late 1960s onward with a number of influential films made on location that relied on the Arriflex as a principal camera, including the hit Easy Rider (1969).8 Other details of the Arriflex, however, did change. In July 1957, Kling announced the availability of Baltar lenses, long a Hollywood standard, in an Arriflex mount.9 And in May 1958, Kling announced the North American release of another new Arriflex 35 model, the IIB, which came with a stronger handgrip motor, an improved matte box, and a slightly enlarged 400-foot magazine 42 Technical Innovation (which could hold 400 feet of color film or 480 feet of the then thinner black-and-white stock).10 According to Axel Broda, a factory-trained Arriflex technician, the IIB was also quietly fitted with a 165-degree shutter, because of problems that Arriflex cameras had...