Nestor Almendros
(Nestor Almendros Cuyas)
(1930–92), b. Barcelona, Spain
Almendros was a beloved citizen of world film, a tender gentleman, a man of several languages, and an invaluable aid to many diverse directors. His book, A Man with a Camera, is as worthwhile as the movies he worked on, and so is the documentary Mauvaise Conduite (83), about gay life in Cuba that he photographed, cowrote, and codirected with Orlando Jimenez Leal. Yet Almendros is in this book because he was a very good director of photography, self-effacing yet inventive, and happiest if he could serve good directors.
Few cinematographers have demonstrated what I would call a singular creative character—John Alton comes to mind, Gregg Toland, Raoul Coutard perhaps. These are cameramen without whom certain careers and even genres might not have been the same. Yet photography is not that difficult, and not even that influential or decisive—I suspect that music and even editing have more effect on what we feel about a film than photography. The image is so fundamental and so wonderful in and of itself, but it is a given: every day, all over the world, millions of people take wonderful or useful pictures. Is it so remarkable that a few hundred people do it for movies?
In other words, I do not want to exaggerate Almendros as cameraman. He served several directors very well—Truffaut, Rohmer, Barbet Schroeder, Robert Benton. But do we know by their look or feel that, say, Mississippi Mermaid, The Aviator’s Wife, Reversal of Fortune, or Nadine are not by Almendros? I trust not, for he did shoot Nadine (87). Equally, I find it hard to make claims for a consistent photographic personality in films as varied as Places in the Heart, My Night at Maud’s, and Two English Girls. I am moved by the look of those films, but not convinced that Almendros brought more than appropriate skill and understanding to them.
There are two films where the photography is more forceful: Sophie’s Choice (82, Alan J. Pakula), with the sickly-saintly paleness of Meryl Streep’s face as she recollects; and Days of Heaven (78, Terrence Malick), with many miracles of natural light on the prairie, a movie in which—to my mind—photography has seeped into areas abandoned by the director. Days of Heaven is photographed to death. It is to the great credit of Almendros that he so seldom earned that rebuke.
He went to Cuba in 1948 and became an active cineaste there, photographing and directing many short films in what was a time of creative ferment. He studied at the University of Havana, at New York’s City College, and at Centro Sperimentale in Rome, all in the 1950s. From the early sixties on, he worked as a cameraman in Europe and in America.
He did these for Truffaut: The Wild Child (69); Bed and Board (70); Two English Girls (71); The Story of Adèle H. (75)—with a good sense of the Caribbean; The Man Who Loved Women (77); The Green Room (78); The Last Metro (80); and Confidentially Yours (82).
Then for Rohmer: an episode for Paris Vu Par … (64); La Collectioneuse (66); My Night at Maud’s (69); Claire’s Knee (70); Love in the Afternoon (72); The Marquise of O (76); Perceval le Gallois (78); and Pauline at the Beach (82).
And for Benton: Kramer vs. Kramer (79); Still of the Night (82); Places in the Heart (84); Nadine (87); and Billy Bathgate (91).
Beyond those, Almendros worked on The Wild Racers (68, Daniel Haller and Roger Corman); The Valley (72, Schroeder); La Gueule Ouverte (74, Maurice Pialat); General Amin (74, Schroeder); Cockfighter (74, Monte Hellman); Mes Petites Amoureuses (75, Jean Eustache); Maîtresse (76, Schroeder); Des Journées Entières dans les Arbres (76, Marguerite Duras); Madame Rosa (77, Moshe Mizrahi); Goin’ South (78, Jack Nicholson); The Blue Lagoon (80, Randal Kleiser); Heartburn (86, Mike Nichols); Nobody Listened (87, which he cowrote and codirected with Jorge Ulla); and the “Life Lessons” episode for New York Stories (89, Martin Scorsese).
