“There are several aspects of lighting. There’s a broad sweep that’s sort of impressionistic and reasonably realistic, but some of our British cameramen, and the French cameramen, too, were sort of ‘itty-bitty’. George Perinal was considered one of the best cinematographers at the time, but he used dozens of lights— a little bit here, a little bit there— and it didn’t look natural. A big director who had been a cameraman came over from America to do a screen test, and when this director came on set, he said: ‘Are you ready, Peri? Peri said, ‘Yes.’ Then the director said to the gaffer, ‘Kill that one, kill that one…’ and he killed about 10 lights. Watching that was a lesson to me: Simplicity.”
Sophia Loren. Photo by Jack Cardiff
