The concept of overlaying digicam lenses with silk stockings to offer an earth-toned high quality within the 1971 movie Fiddler on the Roof needs to be credited to the cinematographer Oswald Morris, moderately than the director Norman Jewison (obituary, 23 January).
Earlier than taking his customary week’s vacation earlier than the beginning of a brand new mission, Jewison requested Ossie to provide any color model exams he thought match. As he and I recounted within the co-authored memoir, Huston We Have a Drawback, Ossie was going through nothing however brown: in folks’s garments, their homes and their particular person faces. “It was like placing varnish on a portray,” he mentioned.
Remembering the success he had utilizing silk stockings on Goodbye, Mr Chips, Ossie dispatched a colleague to Zagreb, who triumphantly returned with a wriggling mass of girls’ stockings within the largest sizes; these obviated seams and offered tops that gave the widest canvas as digicam gauzes. He then shot hundreds of toes of take a look at movie, rushed the reels by a London laboratory inside 36 hours, and was prepared for Jewison on his return.
There was no response on the primary reel, a kind of “mmm” on the second and, on the third, a burst of “Gees”. “Ossie, that’s it! That’s the best way our Fiddler ought to look!” exclaimed a delighted Jewison. After that, Ossie may do no flawed, and something he recommended was agreed with out demur. Ossie’s sensible ingenuity on Fiddler deservedly received him the cinematography Oscar that 12 months, despite the fact that the much-favoured The French Connection was in the identical body.
