Vilmos Zsigmond

Vilmos Zsigmond ASC (Hungarian: [ˈvilmoʃ ˈʒiɡmond]; June 16, 1930 – January 1, 2016) was a Hungarian-American cinematographer. His work in cinematography helped shape the look of American movies in the 1970s, making him one of the leading figures in the American New Wave movement.[1][2][3][4][5]

Vilmos Zsigmond, ASC
Vilmos Zsigmond at 43rd KVIFF
Born(1930-06-16)June 16, 1930
Szeged, Hungary
DiedJanuary 1, 2016(2016-01-01) (aged 85)
Big Sur, California, U.S.
OccupationCinematographer
Years active1955–2016
The native form of this personal name is Zsigmond Vilmos. This article uses Western name order when mentioning individuals.

Over his career he became associated with many leading American directors, such as Robert Altman, Steven Spielberg, Brian De Palma, Michael Cimino and Woody Allen.[6][7][8] He is best known for his work on the films Close Encounters of the Third Kind and The Deer Hunter.[5][8][9]

He won the Academy Award for Best Cinematography for his work on Close Encounters of the Third Kind as well as the BAFTA Award for Best Cinematography for The Deer Hunter.[6][7] He also won the Emmy Award for Outstanding Individual Achievement in Cinematography for a Miniseries or a Special for the HBO miniseries Stalin.[5]

His work on the films McCabe and Mrs. Miller, Close Encounters of the Third Kind and The Deer Hunter made the American Society of Cinematographers (ASC) list of the top 50 best-shot films from 1950–97.[10][11] The ASC also awarded him with their Lifetime Achievement Award in 1998.[11][12]

In 2003 Zsigmond was voted as one of the ten most influential cinematographers in history by the members of the International Cinematographers Guild.[7][13]

Life and career

Zsigmond was born in Szeged, Hungary, the son of Bozena (née Illichman), an administrator, and Vilmos Zsigmond, a celebrated soccer player and coach.[6][8][14] He became interested in photography at age 17 after an uncle had given him The Art of Light, a book of black-and-white photographs taken by Hungarian photographer Eugene Dulovits,[15][16][17] but under the Soviet-imposed government of the Hungarian People's Republic he was not allowed to study the subject because his family was considered bourgeois.[6][15][16] Instead, Zsigmond worked in a factory, bought a camera and taught himself how to take pictures, going on to organize a camera club for the workers.[7][14][15] As a result he won the respect of local commissars and was allowed to study cinema at the Academy of Drama and Film in Budapest and received an MA in cinematography.[7][14][15] He worked for five years in a Budapest feature film studio becoming "director of photography."[14]

Zsigmond, along with his friend and fellow student László Kovács, borrowed a 35-millimeter camera from their school and chronicled the events of the 1956 Hungarian Revolution in Budapest by hiding the camera in a shopping bag and shooting footage through a hole they had cut in the bag.[5][6][15] The two men shot thirty thousand feet of film and escaped to Austria shortly afterwards.[6][7][14] In 1958 Zsigmond and Kovács arrived in the United States as political refugees and sold the footage to CBS for a network documentary on the revolution narrated by Walter Cronkite.[5][6][7]

In 1962, Zsigmond became a naturalized citizen of the United States.[18] He settled in Los Angeles and worked in photo labs as a technician and photographer.[7] The first film he worked on in the United States was the 1963 black-and-white exploitation film The Sadist, starring Arch Hall Jr..[7][15] Throughout the 1960s, he worked on many low-budget independent and educational films as he attempted to break into the film industry.[8][14] Some of the films that he worked on during this period credited him as "William Zsigmond", including The Sadist, the classic horror B movie The Incredibly Strange Creatures Who Stopped Living and Became Mixed-Up Zombies,[8][19] and the Second City satirical science fiction movie The Monitors.[20]

Kovács, who shot the 1969 film Easy Rider for Peter Fonda and Dennis Hopper, recommended Zsigmond to Fonda for his 1971 Western film The Hired Hand.[6][7] Later that same year Zsigmond was hired by Robert Altman for his revisionist western film McCabe & Mrs. Miller, which became Zsigmond's breakthrough film and marked his first time working on a major Hollywood production.[6][21]

Over the following decade, Zsigmond became one of the most in-demand cinematographers in Hollywood.[7][9] Some of the major films he shot in the 1970s include John Boorman's Deliverance, Altman's The Long Goodbye, Brian De Palma's Obsession as well as Steven Spielberg's The Sugarland Express and Close Encounters of the Third Kind, the latter of which won him the Academy Award for Best Cinematography at the 50th Academy Awards.[8][15]

In 1978, Zsigmond worked on Michael Cimino’s drama The Deer Hunter, starring Robert DeNiro, Meryl Streep and Christopher Walken.[6][8][9] Zsigmond's visual work on the film earned him the 1980 BAFTA Award for Best Cinematography and another Academy Award nomination.[6][7][8] Zsigmond again worked with Cimino on his 1980 epic Western Heaven's Gate.[6][7]

Zsigmond continued to be in demand in the years that followed, working multiple times with several directors. He again worked with De Palma on his films Blow Out, The Bonfire of the Vanities, and The Black Dahlia.[22] He worked with Mark Rydell on Cinderella Liberty, The Rose, The River, and Intersection.[8][15] He worked with George Miller on The Witches of Eastwick[7] and with Kevin Smith on Jersey Girl.[23] He also worked with Woody Allen on Melinda and Melinda, Cassandra's Dream, and You Will Meet a Tall Dark Stranger.[7]

Zsigmond's television work includes the HBO miniseries Stalin, for which he won the 1993 Emmy Award for Outstanding Individual Achievement in Cinematography for a Miniseries or a Special.[5][11] He was nominated for an Emmy for his work on 2001 miniseries The Mists of Avalon.[5] Zsigmond also shot 24 episodes of The Mindy Project between 2012 and 2014.[11][19][24]

Vilmos' life and career was featured in No Subtitles Necessary: Laszlo & Vilmos, a bio-documentary that aired on PBS's Independent Lens in 2009.[8][25]

In 2011 Zsigmond co-founded the Global Cinematography Institute in Los Angeles, California along with fellow cinematographer Yuri Neyman.[5][8][26] The Institute provides an advanced cinematography educational program for postgraduate students and veteran filmmakers.[26]

He was a longtime user and endorser of Tiffen filters and is associated with the technique known as flashing or pre-fogging, which involves carefully exposing the film negative to a small, controlled amount of light in order to create a muted color palette.[8][19]

Death

On January 1, 2016, Zsigmond died at his home in Big Sur, California at age 85.[5][8] He is survived by his second wife, Susan Roether, and his daughters, Julia and Susi from his previous marriage.[6][7][15]

Awards and honors

Filmography
Main article: Vilmos Zsigmond filmography

See also

References
  1. Bergan, Ronald (January 4, 2016). "Vilmos Zsigmond obituary". The Guardian. London, United Kingdom. Retrieved November 1, 2018. Zsigmond, who won an Oscar for his work on Spielberg’s Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1977), was responsible for the distinctive look of many of the best Hollywood movies of the 1970s, starting with Altman’s McCabe & Mrs Miller (1971).
  2. "Vilmos Zsigmond, cinematographer – obituary". The Daily Telegraph. London, United Kingdom. May 30, 2016. Retrieved November 1, 2018. Vilmos Zsigmond, who has died aged 85, was a Hungarian cinematographer celebrated for his work during the 1970s and 1980s with directors such as Steven Spielberg, Robert Altman and Woody Allen...His camera skills were used to great effect in seminal 1970s works such as Michael Cimino’s The Deer Hunter (1978) and John Boorman’s Deliverance (1972).
  3. "Vilmos Zsigmond, Close Encounters cinematographer, dies at 85". BBC News. London, United Kingdom. January 4, 2016. Retrieved November 1, 2018. [Zsigmond] was also revered as an architect of the American New Wave in the 1970s.
  4. Patterson, John (January 6, 2016). "Vilmos Zsigmond: the cinematographer who transformed how films look". The Guardian. London, United Kingdom. Retrieved November 1, 2018. We think of Zsigmond, who died on New Year's Day aged 85, as one of the leading photographic lights of the Hollywood New Wave.
  5. Anderson, Tre'vell (January 3, 2016). "Vilmos Zsigmond, Oscar-winning cinematographer, dead at 85". LA Times. Los Angeles, California, United States. Retrieved November 1, 2018. Oscar-winning cinematographer Vilmos Zsigmond, revered as one of the most influential cinematographers in film history for his work on several classic films, including "Close Encounters of the Third Kind" and "The Deer Hunter," died Friday.
  6. Bergan, Ronald (January 4, 2016). "Vilmos Zsigmond obituary". The Guardian. London, United Kingdom. Retrieved November 1, 2018.
  7. "Vilmos Zsigmond, cinematographer – obituary". The Daily Telegraph. London, United Kingdom. May 30, 2016. Retrieved November 1, 2018.
  8. Weber, Bruce (January 4, 2016). "Vilmos Zsigmond, Cinematographer, Dies at 85; Gave Hollywood Films a New Look". New York Times. New York City, New York, United States. Retrieved November 1, 2018.
  9. "Vilmos Zsigmond, Close Encounters cinematographer, dies at 85". BBC News. London, United Kingdom. January 4, 2016. Retrieved November 1, 2018.
  10. "American Cinematographer's list of the top 50 best-shot films from 1950–97". theasc.com. American Society of Cinematographers. 1999. Retrieved November 1, 2018.
  11. Leopold, Todd (January 4, 2016). "'Close Encounters' cinematographer Vilmos Zsigmond dies at 85". CNN. Atlanta, Georgia, United States. Retrieved November 1, 2018.
  12. "ASC Awards: Past Nominees and Winners". theasc.com. American Society of Cinematographers. Retrieved November 1, 2018.
  13. Anderson, Tre'vell (October 17, 2003). "Cinematographers pick their Top 11". LA Times. Los Angeles, California, United States. Retrieved November 1, 2018.
  14. Schaefer, Dennis; Larry Salvato (1985). "Vilmos Zsigmond". Masters of Light: Conversations with Contemporary Cinematographers. University of California Press. p. 311. ISBN 978-0-520-05336-6.
  15. "Vilmos Zsigmond, the lighting wizard behind 'Close Encounters,' dies at 85". The Washington Post. Washington, District of Columbia, United States. January 4, 2016. Retrieved November 1, 2018.
  16. Sragow, Michael (August 26, 2010). "Vilmos Zsigmond, the image-master". The Baltimore Sun. Baltimore, Maryland, United States. Retrieved November 1, 2018.
  17. Lacher, Irene (June 16, 2013). "The Sunday Conversation: Vilmos Zsigmond's technique comes into focus". LA Times. Los Angeles, California, United States. Retrieved November 1, 2018.
  18. "Vilmos Zsigmond, Oscar-winning cinematographer, dies aged 85". The Guardian. London, United Kingdom. January 3, 2016. Retrieved November 1, 2018.
  19. Patterson, John (January 6, 2016). "Vilmos Zsigmond: the cinematographer who transformed how films look". The Guardian. London, United Kingdom. Retrieved November 1, 2018.
  20. "The Monitors (1969): Full Credits". TCM Database. Turner Classic Movies. Retrieved May 2, 2020.
  21. Gleiberman, Owen (May 18, 2016). "Cannes Film Review: 'Close Encounters with Vilmos Zsigmond'". Variety. Los Angeles, California, United States: Michelle Sobrino-Stearns. Retrieved November 1, 2018.
  22. Zacharek, Stephanie (January 4, 2016). "Cinematographer Extraordinaire Vilmos Zsigmond Could Light Up the Night, and the Daytime Too". Time. Retrieved November 1, 2018.
  23. Kermode, Mark (June 20, 2004). "Oh, do grow up, Kevin..." The Observer. London, United Kingdom. Retrieved November 1, 2018.
  24. Dagan, Carmel (January 3, 2016). "Vilmos Zsigmond, Oscar-Winning Cinematographer, Dies at 85". Variety. Los Angeles, California, United States: Michelle Sobrino-Stearns. Retrieved November 1, 2018.
  25. "No Subtitles Necessary: Laszlo & Vilmos". pbs.org. Corporation for Public Broadcasting. Retrieved November 1, 2018.
  26. Caranicas, Peter (November 29, 2011). "D.p.'s launch cinematography school". Variety. Los Angeles, California, United States: Michelle Sobrino-Stearns. Retrieved November 1, 2018.
  27. "Camerimage 1997" Retrieved November 2, 2016. Archived November 3, 2016, at the Wayback Machine
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