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Gordon Willis
Gordon Willis.jpg
Born
Gordon Hugh Willis Jr.

(1931-05-28)May 28, 1931
Died May 18, 2014(2014-05-18) (aged 82)
Burial place Massachusetts National Cemetery
Bourne, Massachusetts
Occupation Cinematographer
Years active c. 1970–2014
Known for The Godfather (1972)
The Godfather Part II (1974)
Annie Hall (1977)
Manhattan (1979)
All the President's Men (1976)
Interiors (1978)
Stardust Memories (1982)
Zelig (1983)
Broadway Danny Rose (1984)
The Godfather Part III (1990)
Awards Academy Honorary Award (2009)

Gordon Hugh Willis Jr., ASC (May 28, 1931 – May 18, 2014) was an American cinematographer and film director. He is best known for his photographic work on eight Woody Allen films (including Annie Hall and Manhattan), six Alan J. Pakula films (including All the President's Men), four James Bridges films, and all three films from Francis Ford Coppola's The Godfather series.

Fellow cinematographer William A. Fraker called Willis's work a "milestone in visual storytelling", while one critic suggested that Willis "defined the cinematic look of the 1970s: sophisticated compositions in which bolts of light and black put the decade's moral ambiguities into stark relief". When the International Cinematographers Guild conducted a survey in 2003, they placed Willis among the ten most influential cinematographers in history.

Career

Early life and beginnings

Willis was born in Astoria, Queens, New York. His parents had been dancers in Broadway theatre before his father became a makeup man at Warner Bros. in Brooklyn. As a child, Willis fell in love with films. He wanted to be an actor and then became interested in lighting and stage design, later turning to photography. For a time he intended to be a fashion photographer, photographing models he knew from living in Greenwich Village. Through contacts of his father's he worked as a "gofer" on various movies in New York.

During the Korean War, Willis served in the Air Force, managing to join the Photographic and Charting Service in a motion picture unit. "I spent four years learning everything I could about making movies," Willis said. After leaving the Air Force a friend helped him to join the East Coast union in New York and he started to work as an assistant cameraman, working his way up to become a first cameraman about thirteen years later. He worked in advertising, shooting numerous commercials, and made a number of documentaries, a discipline that strongly influenced his later style. "You learn to eliminate, as opposed to adding," Willis said of his time making documentaries. "Not many people understand that."

He was a camera operator on the feature documentary Windjammer (1958) filmed in Cinemiracle.

Willis once stated: "I'm a mimimalist. I see things in simple ways ... It's human nature to define complexity as better. Well, it's not." In 1969, director Aram Avakian hired Willis to work on his film End of the Road. This was Willis' first movie.

Making films

Willis went on to work for some of the most acclaimed directors of what is now seen as a golden age of American film-making. He captured America's urban paranoia in three films he shot with Alan J. Pakula: Klute (1971), The Parallax View (1974) and All The President's Men (1976). He collaborated with Hal Ashby on The Landlord (1970), James Bridges on The Paper Chase (1973), and Herbert Ross on Pennies From Heaven (1981); as well as shooting all three of Coppola's Godfather films and working with Woody Allen on a succession of films that included Annie Hall (1977) and Manhattan (1979).

At a seminar on film-making he gave in 2003, Willis said, "It's hard to believe, but a lot of directors have no visual sense. They only have a storytelling sense. If a director is smart, he'll give me the elbow room to paint". He added: "It's the judgment they're paying for." In a later interview he explained that when he started out in films he "did things in visual structure that nobody in the business was doing, especially in Hollywood", explaining: "I wasn't trying to be different; I just did what I liked". When asked by the interviewer how he applied his style to different genres and to working with different directors, Willis answered: "You're looking for a formula; there is none. The formula is me."

Up to the making of The Godfather (1972), Willis mostly used Mitchell reflex cameras with Baltar or Cooke lenses. After that he used Panavision equipment, which he had first used on Klute. Willis went back to using Mitchells on The Godfather Part II (1974), in order to retain the visual coherence of the two films. Asked in 2004 about shooting films digitally, he was skeptical: "The organics aren't the same," he said. "The interpretive levels suffer", adding: "Digital is another form of recording an image, but it won't replace thinking."

Collaboration with Francis Ford Coppola

Originally, Willis turned down the first two Godfather films, until Coppola told him they would not look the same without him. His work turned out to be groundbreaking in its use of low-light photography and underexposed film, as well as in his control of lighting and exposure to create the sepia tones that denoted period scenes in The Godfather Part II. His contributions carefully strengthened the themes of the story, as when shooting Marlon Brando with his eyes hooded in shadow, a piece of lighting design that followed from the fact that Brando's make-up had to be lit from above.

Willis said that it was the color that stitched the Godfather films together. The visual structure of the films was, he said, his, but he gave Coppola credit for hiring him, saying: "I'm not that easy to deal with". He praised the director for the "management hell" of his struggles with Paramount, adding that he was "grateful he could separate the visual structure of these movies from the mess that went on to fashion them".

Collaboration with Woody Allen

Willis' collaboration with Woody Allen began with Annie Hall (1977). Willis described making films with Allen as being so comfortable that it was like "working with your hands in your pockets". On Annie Hall he contrasted the warmth of Annie and Alvy Singer's romance in New York with the overexposure of the film's California scenes, while in Allen's Manhattan he was responsible for what has been called a "richly textured black-and-white paean to the beauty and diversity of the city itself". Willis, whose idea it was to use anamorphic widescreen for the filming, said: "We both felt that New York was a black-and-white city".

Willis also worked on the Allen films Interiors (1978), Stardust Memories (1980), Zelig (1983), Broadway Danny Rose (1984), and The Purple Rose of Cairo (1985). Allen said that working with Willis had helped to improve his technical skills, saying of him: "He's an artist. He's got a great sense of humor--he taught me a lot."

Academy Awards

In the seven-year period up to 1977, Willis was the director of photography on six films that received among them 39 Academy Award nominations, winning 19 times, including three awards for Best Picture. The fact that Willis did not receive a single nomination was a subject of some controversy. His frequent absence from this period's nominees has been ascribed both to his unhidden "antipathy for Hollywood" and his work being ahead of its time. He was once quoted as saying of Hollywood, "I don't think it suffers from an overabundance of good taste". Willis was later nominated twice, once for his recreation of 1920s photography in Woody Allen's Zelig (1983), and then for The Godfather Part III (1990). In 2009, at the inaugural Governors Awards, the Academy chose Willis as the recipient of the Academy Honorary Award for his life's work.

Directing and retirement

Willis directed one film of his own, Windows, in 1980. He admitted the film had been a mistake, and later said of directing that he didn't really like it. "I've had a good relationship with actors," he reflected, "but I can do what I do and back off. I don't want that much romancing. I don't want them to call me up at two in the morning saying, 'I don't know who I am'". He was nominated for the Golden Raspberry Award for Worst Director one year after the film's release.

His last film was The Devil's Own (1997), directed by Pakula. Of his decision to retire, Willis said: "I got tired of trying to get actors out of trailers, and standing in the rain".

Death

Willis died of cancer on May 18, 2014, ten days before his 83rd birthday, in North Falmouth, Massachusetts. ASC president Richard Crudo said: "He was one of the giants who absolutely changed the way movies looked. Up until the time of The Godfather and The Godfather Part II, nothing previously shot looked that way. He changed the way films looked and the way people looked at films."

Legacy

Willis's work became celebrated for his ability to use shadow and underexposed film with a "subtlety and expressivity previously unknown on color film stock", with one critic citing as examples Don Corleone's study in The Godfather and a parking garage in All the President's Men. Willis's friend, cinematographer Conrad Hall, named him "The Prince of Darkness" but Willis himself preferred to talk in terms of "visual relativity", saying: "I like going from light to dark, dark to light, big to small, small to big".

Director Francis Ford Coppola said of Willis, "He has a natural sense of structure and beauty, not unlike a Renaissance artist," while Willis was praised for his capacity to use "painterliness" to define "not just the look but the very meaning and feel of a film".

Filmography

Year Film Director Notes
1965 The Beatles at Shea Stadium Bob Precht
1970 End of the Road Aram Avakian
The Landlord Hal Ashby
Loving Irvin Kershner
The People Next Door David Greene
1971 Little Murders Alan Arkin
Klute Alan J. Pakula
1972 Bad Company Robert Benton
The Godfather Francis Ford Coppola
Up the Sandbox Irvin Kershner
1973 The Paper Chase James Bridges
1974 The Parallax View Alan J. Pakula
The Godfather Part II Francis Ford Coppola
1975 The Drowning Pool Stuart Rosenberg
1976 All the President's Men Alan J. Pakula
1977 September 30, 1955 James Bridges
Annie Hall Woody Allen
1978 Interiors
Comes a Horseman Alan J. Pakula
1979 Manhattan Woody Allen
1980 Windows Himself
Stardust Memories Woody Allen
1981 Pennies from Heaven Herbert Ross
1983 Zelig
1984 The Lost Honor of Kathryn Beck Simon Langton
Broadway Danny Rose Woody Allen
1985 The Purple Rose of Cairo
Perfect James Bridges
1986 The Money Pit Richard Benjamin
1987 The Pick-up Artist James Toback
1988 Bright Lights, Big City James Bridges
1990 Presumed Innocent Alan J. Pakula
The Godfather Part III Francis Ford Coppola
1993 Malice Harold Becker
1997 The Devil's Own Alan J. Pakula

Awards and nominations

Year Award Category Title Result Ref.
1972 National Society of Film Critics Best Cinematography The Godfather Nominated
1974 The Godfather Part II
The Parallax View
Won
1976 British Academy Film Awards Best Cinematography All the Presidents Men Nominated
1979 Manhattan Nominated
1979 National Society of Film Critics Best Cinematography Nominated
1981 New York Film Critics Circle Best Cinematography Pennies from Heaven Nominated
1981 National Society of Film Critics Best Cinematography Won
1981 Boston Society of Film Critics Best Cinematography Won
1983 New York Film Critics Circle Best Cinematography Zelig Won
1983 National Society of Film Critics Best Cinematography Nominated
1983 British Academy Film Awards Best Cinematography Nominated
Best Visual Effects Nominated
1984 Academy Awards Best Cinematography Nominated
1991 Best Cinematography The Godfather Part III Nominated
1990 American Society of Cinematographers Outstanding Cinematography Nominated
1991 Chicago Film Critics Association Best Cinematography Nominated
1995 American Society of Cinematographers Life Achievement Awards N/A Won
2009 Academy Award Honorary Academy Award N/A Won

See also

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