Thomas: Don’t let’s spoil everything, we’ve only just met.
Jane: No, we haven’t met. You’ve never seen me.
- Blow Up
電影一向以來最重視導演和演員, 但不難想像攝影這個崗位在電影的重要性. 畢竟一部電影理論上除攝影外, 其他可以什麼都沒有. 不過少有電影攝影師能在一部電影中有獨當一面的地位, 本港的杜可風(Christopher Doyle) 可算一異數, 但在王家衛執導下, 整 crew 人好像都是獨當一面. Carlo Di Palma + Michelangelo Antonioni 這對拍擋更難得.
當我才剛開始愛上電影和 Antonioni, Carlo Di Palma剛於七月九日辭世, 享年 79歲. Carlo Di Palma和 Antonioni發跡於五, 六十年代, 其中最重要作品非 Blow Up (春光乍洩) 莫屬. 整部電影無論在音樂, 服裝, set design, 攝影等各方面, 捕足住六十年代反叛氣息. Blow Up 跟 Godard 的 Breathless 和 Truffaut 的 Jules et Jim 標誌電影和整個世界的青春浪潮.
Blow Up 比 Breathless 和 Jules et Jim 最重要的是其背後的深層思想. 男主角為攝影師, 在一張公園風景照片畄印時, 好像發現了一些東西, 但看不到是什麼(應說成什麼也看不到, 只是男主角自己懷疑 “有” 些東西). 男主角回到那公園, 竟發現有一具屍體. 但當早上警察來到時, 那具屍體已不存在了.
是眼睛看錯, 還是攝影機?
那具屍體已 “不存在”了.
結局, 男主角看到一班青年人在打網球. 畫面上是 “看不到” 那個網球, 從畫面看他們只在打空氣.
在攝影, 複製, 數碼技術發達的今天, 究竟信畫面還是眼睛? Carlo Di Palma和 Antonioni在當年已對此發出疑問.
再想一想早前走過凌晨的中環, 中環凌晨的無人寂靜, 不禁使我懷疑日間看見的只是 “陽具(phallus)” 和 “玻璃” 反射出來封閉式幻像. Antonioni 和 Carlo Di Palma 在 Blow Up 中, 探討的不只是映像, 電影, 更能捕捉現代都市映像(image/ representation)和實體(real) 兩者的失衡.
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偶爾走過 izzue或其他 boutique, 不難發現其實他們也很 60s. Agnes b門外永遠也有 French New Wave 的照片, Bauhaus也名為 “Bauhaus”, izzue招牌人頭s logo更直接抄 Andy Warhol.
所有boutique都好 stylish, 好 60s, 好似Andy Warhol.
Andy Warhol, Carlo Di Palma, Antonioni等人有關映像, 複製等當時新技術, 新思潮的探討, 後世承襲他們的, 也只有他們的 “映像” 和 “複製” 而已.
Thomas: Don’t let’s spoil everything, we’ve only just met.
Jane: No, we haven’t met. You’ve never seen me.
- Blow Up
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Carlo Di Palma, who has died aged 79, was one of those Italian cinematographers who, like the masters of light of the Renaissance, gained the respectful title of maestro . He first won international recognition in 1964 as director of photography on Michelangelo Antonioni’s first colour film, The Red Desert, and worked on the same director’s Blow Up (1966), filmed in London. Later, in New York, he was cinematographer for 11 Woody Allen films, from Hannah And Her Sisters (1986) to Deconstructing Harry (1997).
Di Palma was born into a poor Roman family; his mother was a flower seller on the Spanish Steps. After showing an early interest in photography, he was a non-credited assistant on the sets of two pioneering neo-realist films, Luchino Visconti’s Ossessione (1943) and Rossellini’s Paisà (1946).
He worked as an assistant cameraman to one of the first maestri of postwar Italian cinematography, Gianni Di Venanzo, and, in 1956, was his cameraman for the film that Francesco Rosi co-directed with Vittorio Gassman of the actor’s stage performance as Edmund Kean. Hearing of his death, Rosi said that, with his use of colour, Di Palma had ”opened a new chapter in the history of the cinema”.
His first credit as cameraman had been in 1954, on a routine costume picture. His first critical attention, as director of photography, was for Florestano Vancini’s The Long Night Of ’43, which won the best directorial debut award at the 1960 Venice Festival. A tormented love story about a married woman (Belinda Lee) and her former boyfriend (Gabriele Ferzetti, the actor from L’avventura) during the first months of Mussolini’s puppet fascist republic of Salo, it featured the camera work of Di Palma’s nephew Dario, capturing the foggy greys and whites of writer Giorgio Bassani’s Ferrara.
Di Palma undertook the photography for two other directors making significant debuts in the early 1960s, Elio Petri and Giuliano Montaldo. Pier Paolo Pasolini, who had been one of the scriptwriters of Vancini’s film, asked Di Palma to be his cameraman for the trial tests for his directing debut, Accattone, though another cinematographer shot the film.
Di Palma had met Antonioni when Di Venanzo was shooting Il Grido and Le Amiche, and, in 1963, they got together to study the possibility of making The Red Desert in Technicolor. The film was shot at locations around Ravenna, where, that winter, there was often unwanted sunshine, and Di Palma had to explain to Antonioni that the artificial fog he had chosen played havoc with the colours of the interiors. Visiting the set, I found Di Palma engaged with technicians in painting the grass yellow. ”Michelangelo loathes the greens,” he explained.
Less revolutionary, but equally stunning, was the use of colours in Di Palma’s next chore for Antonioni. For a segment of The Three Faces (1965), his photography did something to convey the inner qualities behind the inexpressive face of the rather pathetic ex-Empress Soraya of Iran’s screen test.
More important, of course, was Blow Up, where photography was at the centre of the story. After using a deep-focus lens on The Red Desert to obtain two-dimensional effects, in Blow Up Antonioni told Di Palma he wanted ”to lengthen the perspective and give the impression of space between people and things”. Di Palma loved this kind of challenge, and was able to help the director get the effects he wanted.
On the set of The Red Desert, a relationship had developed between him and its star, Monica Vitti, who felt the need for a change in her private, as well as public, image. Under his guidance, she moved towards comedy, and it was in The Girl With A Pistol (1968), by the top-notch Italian comedy director Mario Monicelli (for whom Di Palma had already been director of photography on the visually dazzling, medieval comedy L’armata Brancaleone, 1965), that Vitti was turned into a box-office comic star to rival the likes of Gassman and Ugo Tognazzi.
The relationship with Vitti led to Di Palma’s debut as a director, with another comedy for the actor, Teresa La Ladra (1972). He went on to direct her in several other lighthearted films but, though professionally competent, they did not turn him into an auteur. His mastery of visuals - in another film for Vitti’s comic talents - was better served in 1970 under the more inspired direction of Ettore Scola, Dramma Della Gelosia.
In 1981, Di Palma worked on Bernardo Bertolucci’s Tragedy Of A Ridiculous Man and, once again, with Antonioni on Identification Of A Woman (1982). Later in the 1980s, he began his 10-year collaboration with Woody Allen, which he described as ”the most enjoyable period of my professional life”.
He was director of photography when Allen was exploring his European-style auteur fetishes, to which Di Palma was able to add some authentic visual thrills, as in such titles as Mighty Aphrodite (1995), Everyone Says I Love You (1996) and the last one they did together, Deconstructing Harry, in which one suspects that Di Palma might have contributed to the wonderful gag of Robin Williams as the actor ”out of focus”.
In the 1980s, Di Palma married Adriana Chiesa, admired in international film industry circles as an exporter of Italian films. As a couple, whether in New York or Rome, they had many friends. She nursed him through his final illness.
· Carlo Di Palma, cinematographer, born April 17 1925; died July 9 2004
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