November 28, 2016

Camerimage: tribute to Raoul Coutard by Dick Pope BSC

When certain people die, those who you sadly never met but meant so much to you, in fact meant the world to you, perhaps really long ago when they were young and very much alive and kicking, it's so easy to let things go, to not openly react or respond, but to leave it to others, perhaps read an obituary, or just offer up a 'too bad' or 'how sad' and now let's move on, what's next? But the news last week of Raoul Coutard's death has affected me deeply and I wish to say something because for me he was a god, a master like no other....and since this is Camerimage, the cinematography festival, something needs to be said here.

Back in the sixties Coutard was hugely influential on every young and up and coming cinematographer worldwide, and that includes the recipient of this year's Camerimage lifetime achievement award, Michael Chapman.

In many ways Coutard invented modern cinematography. Back then viewing the films he photographed was like seeing for the first time, a completely new experience, an explosion of new ideas and techniques, a cinematic revolution. Armed with the new and exciting lightweight 35mm Cameflex Eclair, his was a ragged, but incisive restless camera, a vibrant and carefree shooting style like no other. The first film he shot for Godard 'A Bout de Souffle' / 'Breathless' featured this documentary-like staged naturalism and was entirely hand held, I think the first ever. It featured his signature high contrast black and white. It broke every rule. So fresh and young at heart, so free and easy.....and the wonderful light he used to create such beautiful modern skintones....always natural, always right, Coutard was the master of available light.

When he moved to colour it was as if he reinvented colour. Many of us will still remember that experience of seeing Godard's 'Pierrot Le Fou' for the first time. Shot on Eastmancolour in wide-screen 2-perf Techniscope on an Arriflex camera it was at that time mind blowing, totally new and as never see before, lush and rich, yet pastel, soft, natural, completely breaking free from the shackles of bourgeois cinematic convention. Coutard photographed the most beautiful actors of that time. Belmondo, Bardot, Moreau, Jean Seberg, Anna Karina. Through his lens they always looked fabulous, his work with actors always ravishing. In many ways he was the French New Wave and I can't imagine those indelible films or indeed the nineteen sixties themselves without Coutard behind the camera. His influence in what followed, in what happened next, was enormous. His disciples went out there and changed cinematography forever. Thank you Raoul Coutard.    

Goddard's 'A Bout de Souffle' / 'Breathless'

Dick Pope BSC