Along with star Lauren Bacall, producer John Calley, and legendary indie producer Roger Corman, cinematographer Gordon Willis will receive an honorary award this year from the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. Bacall, Corman, and Willis will be awarded honorary Oscars, while Calley gets the Irving G. Thalberg Memorial Award. As part of the Academy’s new rules, the four will be presented with their awards in November at a newly established event. All four seem worthy recipients for an honorary award, but I was most happy to see Gordon Willis’s name on the list. Willis has been Oscar-nominated twice for best cinematography — for Zelig in 1983 and Godfather III in 1990 — but, he has never won in competition.

One of the most influential cinematographers from the 1960s and 1970s, Willis was responsible for the visual design of some of that era’s best films. If you fell in love with Diane Keaton alongside Woody Allen in Manhattan, chances are you were really under the spell of Willis’s highly romantic black and white cinematography; if you long for the old New York of Don Corleone’s youth in The Godfather, Part II, it’s because Willis imbued these scenes with an irresistible nostalgia by depicting them in golden or sepia hues. According to many, it was Willis who introduced the idea of sepia-tone as visual shorthand for period pieces that take place “back in the day.” If you love the films of the Film School Generation (early 1960s – 1980), then you have been affected by the work of Willis whether you realized it or not. Cinematographers are often called directors of photography, or DP’s, and in Willis’s case, he truly did direct the visual look of the films he photographed – though always within the framework of the director’s interpretation of the material.

THE MOST ROMANTIC SHOT IN A VERY ROMANTIC MOVIE, 'MANHATTAN.'

The son of a makeup artist for Warner Bros., Willis was born in New York City – a city that he has endlessly photographed to great effect – in 1931. He was originally interested in acting and worked a couple of years in summer stock, which pushed him in the direction of stage design and lighting. After a stint in the United States Air Force, he worked as an assistant cameraman and cinematographer on documentaries and commercials before landing his first feature-film assignment in 1969 – End of the Road, a film directed by Aram Avakian that captures the zeitgeist of the late 1960s. Shot in Massachusetts, the film began Willis’s career-long preference for working on the East Coast, especially in New York City.

Within a few years, Willis was shooting for many of the directors who would come to define the era, forming long-lasting relationships and embarking on multi-film collaborations with Francis Coppola, Alan Pakula, and Woody Allen. Arguably most famous for the low-key lighting of the original Godfather films, Willis also shot The Parallax View, Klute, All The President’s Men, Bad Company, Annie Hall, Interiors, The Purple Rose of Cairo, Pennies from Heaven, and Zelig, among others.

I have learned a great deal about cinematography from the documentary Visions of Light, produced in 1992 by the American Film Institute. A film buff’s dream, this historical overview of cinematography features interviews by many directors of photography who eloquently articulate the history and craftsmanship of their profession. While talking about the groundbreaking and unsurpassed work of the Film School Generation, Conrad Hall – another legendary cinematographer – called Willis “the Prince of Darkness” for his expertise in shooting expressively in extremely low levels of light. Last July, fellow Morlock R. Emmet Sweeney called Bruce Surtees “the Prince of Darkness” in his wonderful post on the impressive work of that cinematographer, but Hall’s spontaneous use of the nickname in Visions of Light has really stuck to Willis.

THE SUFFOCATING LOW-KEY LIGHTING OF 'THE GODFATHER,' WITH THE DON'S EYES IN SHADOW.

Willis’s work with underexposing is best evidenced in The Godfather in which the film’s somber low-key lighting evokes the secretive atmosphere of the criminal underworld. In contrasting the bright, warm exteriors of the wedding scene that opens the film with the meeting in Don Corleone’s office that occurs just a few minutes later, the idea is suggested that beneath the surface of that familiar-looking family celebration with the wedding cakes, laughing kids, and party dresses, is an underworld of dark deals and murderous secrets. The light, airy exteriors are the polar opposite of the shadowy interiors that are suffocating and airless. Willis’s lighting for Brando as Don Corleone is particularly effective. Using top lighting, he often casts the Don’s eyes in shadow, hiding them from the viewer so we cannot identify with or relate to him. Because of that trick of the shadows, he remains a distant but sinister figure – at once an elderly grandfather who enjoys playing with his grandkids and a feared mob leader who orders the murder of human beings.

The idea of light and dark/good and evil was discussed by Willis, Coppola, and production designer Dean Tavoularis before production began, so the creative team was on the same page. They also decided that the film would have a classic look without the zooms, camera movements, and helicopter shots prominent in films at the time. But, it was Willis’s decision to go very low with the lighting levels and to cast Brando’s eyes in shadow. Paramount executives were not happy with the lighting, especially as it looked in the daily rushes. During one session, producer Robert Evans – whose penchant for partying with recreational drugs was notorious – allegedly remarked, “What’s on the screen? Do I have my shades on?”

THE BRIGHTLY LIT NEWSROOM OF 'ALL THE PRESIDENT'S MEN'

The lighting in the first two Godfather movies was discussed at length in Visions of Light and in other sources, adding to the stature the films have earned over the years. Less discussed but equally as impressive is his work on other classics of the period, including All the President’s Men. Overall, the effect of the lighting in Alan Pakula’s famous political thriller is unglamorous, even grimy, so we are apt to take it for granted. But, it also uses the opposing contrast of dark and light to underscore a theme. The bright, slightly blue-tinged lighting in the Washington Post newsroom emulates the ugly glare of fluorescents so familiar to the daily grind of office life. Yet, despite the gritty glare, the brightly lit newsroom is an appropriate arena for information to be uncovered and interpreted and for the truth to be brought out in the open.

CONTRAST THE EVERYDAY WORLD OF THE NEWSROOM WITH THE OMINOUS PARKING DECK, WHICH IS THE UNEARTHLY DOMAIN OF DEEP THROAT

The newsroom is in sharp contrast to the heavily shadowed parking garage scenes where Bob Woodward meets Deep Throat. There, Deep Throat’s identity is hidden in the deep black shadows, and information has to be carefully wrestled from this source shrouded in dark mystery and political intrigue. There are only three scenes between Robert Redford as Woodward and Hal Holbrook as Deep Throat, but they are so memorable, they dominate my memories of the film. Redford as Woodward is also shot in low-key lighting, but there is a warmness to his skin tones that is “more human” than the way that Deep Throat is depicted in blackness. When the audience sees Deep Throat for the first time, he is an ominous dark figure standing next to a pillar in the echoing gloom of the parking garage, illuminated only by the flash of a cigarette being lighted. During the game that the two play in which Woodward painstakingly extracts information from him, not only are Deep Throat’s eyes hidden from us but most of his face is imperceptible. We cannot easily read his face or expressions to discern his true motives or intentions, and this makes us as uneasy as Woodward. The scenes are creepy because of the way they are shot – with long shots of a cavernous space that dwarf Redford and low-key lighting in which Deep Throat roams the shadows like a ghost — not because of the dialogue or the action onscreen.

DEEP THROAT, A GHOST IN THE SHADOWS

One of my favorite films from the tail end of the Film School Generation is Pennies from Heaven, a 1981 anti-musical directed by Herbert Ross in which Willis served as cinematographer. The opposite of the upbeat musicals of the Golden Age in which optimism and cheerfulness prevail, this largely forgotten film deliberately undermines the idea that romance is the key to a good life and a happy ending. In my favorite scene, Willis beautifully recreates Edward Hopper’s painting Nighthawks at the Diner, with star Steve Martin as the man who drinks coffee next to the red-haired woman in the glare of the diner’s interior. With high-contrast lighting and deep shadows, Willis perfectly captures this iconic image of loneliness and alienation.

WILLIS CAPTURES 'NIGHTHAWKS' PERFECTLY -- AN ICON OF ALIENATION AND LONELINESS

Cinematographers are the unsung heroes of the film industry, and they are rarely singled out for special awards from the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, especially in recent years. The exception was during the early years of the Golden Age when Technicolor films were still a marvel to behold. During the 1930s, cinematographers such as W. Howard Greene, Harold Rosson, J. Arthur Ball, Oliver T. Marsh, Allen M. Davey, and William Cameron Menzies received special plaques or scrolls for mastering the Technicolor process and for their contributions to the advancement of color cinematography. Menzies was honored for his color work on Gone With the Wind in 1939, but after that, no cinematographer was acknowledged with a special award until 2000, when Jack Cardiff won an honorary Oscar as a “master of light and color.” Cardiff also directed films, though his best work was as the director of photography in such films as The African Queen, The Magic Box, Fanny, Ghost Story, and a strange, forgotten movie that I like, The Avalanche Express. I hope I didn’t forget a cinematographer who fell through the cracks of my hastily put-together research, but the main point is the general lack of Academy recognition for cinematographers and other craftspeople. However, last year, veteran art director Robert Boyle won an honorary Oscar, and together with Willis’s award, this may signal a change in focus for the Academy, which seems to be in the process of reinventing its awards and the telecast that showcases them.

Unfortunately, one of the Academy’s new ideas for their telecast is to drastically reduce the time spent commemorating the recipients of honorary Oscars, which is the reason for establishing the new event in November where Willis, Bacall, Calley, and Corman will receive their awards. I am guessing that this means that there will be few or no clips used to sum up an honoree’s career and accomplishments. I thought that last year’s Oscar telecast was dismal because there were not enough clips and too much emphasis on insipid production numbers and the mediocre tunes that are continually nominated for Best Song. Jerry Lewis won an honorary Oscar last year, and there weren’t nearly enough clips to illustrate his comedy style or his contributions as a director. Likewise, Boyle’s work as an art director was not adequately showcased. I don’t know how the Academy expects to explain the career of someone like Willis, whose life has been spent in images, without showing an appropriate number of clips of his influential work.

Instead of relying on the Academy, I might spend the autumn watching the films photographed by Gordon Willis so when the awards are telecast next year, I will understand exactly why he deserved his award.

* Thanks to Myidolspencer for inspiring this blog post.