'Godfather' Cinematographer Gordon Willis Dies at 82
Gordon Willis, the acclaimed cinematographer behind the Godfather trilogy and such Woody Allen films as Annie Hall, Manhattan, Broadway Danny Rose and Zelig, has died. He was 82.
Richard Crudo, the president of the American Society of Cinematographers, confirmed the news Sunday night. No other details were immediately available.
Willis’ credits also include Klute (1971), The Paper Chase (1973), The Parallax View (1974), The Drowning Pool (1975), All the President’s Men (1976), Comes a Horseman (1978), Allen’sInteriors (1978), The Purple Rose of Cairo (1985) and Stardust Memories (1980)
Willis received Oscar nominations for Zelig and The Godfather: Part III and earned the ASC’s Lifetime Achievement Award in 1995. In 2010, he was awarded an Honorary Oscar “for unsurpassed mastery of light, shadow, color and motion.”
He was given the nickname “The Prince of Darkness” by fellow cinematographer Conrad Hall for his daring use of using as little light as possible.
Willis was on the leading edge of a new wave of cinematographers in the 1970s who were changing film in radical ways. In The Godfather, he masked Marlon Brando’s eyes to conceal his thoughts from the audience.
"I still can’t believe the reactions," he said in an interview with the ASC before he received their highest honor. “People said, ‘You can’t see his eyes (Brando’s).’ Well, you didn’t see his eyes in 10 percent of the movie, and there was a reason why. I remember asking, ‘Why do you have to see his eyes in that scene? Based on what?’ Do you know what the answer was? ‘That’s the way it was done in Hollywood.’ That’s not a good enough reason. There were times when we didn’t want the audience to see what was going on in there (Brando’s eyes), and then suddenly (snaps his fingers), you let them see into his soul for a while.”
Later in his career, Willis worked on The Money Pit (1986), The Pick-Up Artist (1987), Bright Lights, Big City (1988), Presumed Innocent (1990), Malice (1993) and The Devil’s Own (1997).
"No one showed more with less," screenwriter Christopher McQuarrie said on Twitter.
Willis’ father was a make-up man for Warner Bros. in Brooklyn during the 1930s. He wanted to be an actor but soon became interested in stage lighting and set design, and he began shooting still pictures for a stock company.
Willis was assigned to a U.S. Air Force motion picture unit for four years during the Korean War, when he did documentaries and training films. In 1956, he returned to New York, where he worked as a freelance assistant cameraman in television.
Willis’ first feature was End of the Road (1969), starring Stacey Keach. Loving and The Landlord followed the next year; The Godfather would be his seventh film in a busy three-year span.
In the ASC interview, Willis was asked why so many of the films that he and Allen made together were produced in black-and-white.
"It was a natural decision for Manhattan,” he said. “I’ve always perceived New York as a black-and-white town. Zelig was appropriate as a black-and-white period piece. Stardust Memories was a retrospective story, and Woody felt it would be nice in black and white. I think he just liked material which went with black-and-white film.”
Photo: Everett Collection
