Respuesta: Fotografía Cinematográfica
Pongo aquí un mini-artículo que publiqué días atrás en
Cinematography.com.
Disculpad que no lo traduzca, pero yo creo que se entiende (si alguno necesita ayuda, no obstante, que me lo diga):
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A big commercial and critical failure, George Stevens’ “The Greatest Story Ever Told” was shot circa 1963, but remained unreleased for another two years. MGM spent millions of dollars on this version of the life of Jesus, which went severely so over budget that such directors as David Lean and Jean Negulesco came to shoot some scenes to help his fellow director to finish the picture on time. It may not be the best movie about Jesus (I consider Nicholas Ray’s own “King of Kings” to be the superior one), but Stevens’ version has some amazing cinematography. And as it was usual for epics at the time, the film was shot in Ultra Panavision 70 (5-perf 65mm anamorphic with 1.25x1 squeeze), and both released in 70mm flat screens or curved Cinerama screens.
Cinematographer William C. Mellor died from a heart attack while shooting it, and was replaced by Loyal Griggs, with whom Stevens was familiar from “Shane”, made ten years before. Instead of going to the places where the depicted events were supposed to have had took place, or going to any other foreign country (for instance, Ray’s picture was shot in Spain, while Zeffirelli’s famous 1977 TV version was shot in Tunisia and Morocco), the filmakers decided to stick to the USA, shooting most of the film in south Utah or north Arizona, in the Colorado River area, and accurate or not, it gives the film a very distinct look.
Location exterior work is really impressive in terms of camera placement and composition, taking full advantage of the 2.76:1 frame, and it gives the film a really classic and epic look. Not even some obvious hand-painted matte paintings to insert old buildings on the landscapes detract from the experience. Interiors, all of them shot on sets, are also full of classic blocking with wide-angle lenses, with every actor carefully positioned on each frame. Close-ups are barely used, as the tremendous definition of the Ultra Panavision 70 format when projected on the big screen made them less necessary.
But what makes this picture very interesting from a contemporary cinematographer point of view, is how dark much of the footage looks. Stevens, who started his career as a director of photography, Mellor and Griggs lit many sets with a lot of contrast, hard sources and very little (if any) fill light. And since they were shooting with the only film stock available back them (I believe it was Kodak 5251, with a speed of 50 ASA in tungsten light), the parts of the frame unreached by the lights are really, really dark. They never pursued realism or a naturalistic look, just a very stylized and heavy threatrical look, but it is so atmospheric and overwhelming at times that it almost looks like a horror picture. Even the color palette is very muted, dominated by blacks, grays and browns. Very different stuff than most epics from the era.
But they not only took risks when shooting in the soundstages, some location work is really impressive as well not only in terms of framing, but also because they went as far as letting the actors play complete scenes in silhoutte, backlit or with the backgrounds correctly exposed, with no artificial lights used on the subjets in the foreground, which is more common these days, but very interesting for a big-budget production shot in 1963.
Of course, there are some odd shots here and there, typical from the era (i.e. close-ups shot in studio mixed with location footage), and even the crucifixion scene was shot in the soundstage for some reason and it looks exactly like that, but “The Greatest Story Ever Told” contains some amazing cinematography and shows some really nice Hollywood’s craftmans at their best.