Morris Engel
Morris Engel | |
---|---|
Born | Morris Engel April 8, 1918 New York City, New York |
Died | March 5, 2005 New York City, New York | (aged 86)
Nationality | American |
Known for | Filmmaking, Cinematography, Photography |
Notable work |
|
Movement | French New Wave |
Spouse | Ruth Orkin |
Website | Morris Engel Archive |
Morris Engel (April 8, 1918 – March 5, 2005) was an American
Engel was a pioneer in the use of hand-held cameras that he helped design throughout his features and in using nonprofessional actors in American films, following the example of Italian Neo-realism. His naturalistic films influenced future prominent independent and French New Wave filmmakers.[1]
Career
A lifelong New Yorker, Morris Engel was born in
In 1939 he was asked by his friend
During the war he was a still photographer but he probably was familiar with a handheld 35 mm battery-operated camera developed during the war for combat photography, the Cunningham Combat Camera. The large square camera was mounted a rifle stock, held tightly to the cameraman’s chest by handles mounted on each side, and aimed in the general direction of the action, sighted by a top-mounted viewfinder. With a two hundred foot magazine, it could run for two minutes. The other primary motion picture camera used by the military was the
After the war, Engel and an engineer he met in the service, Charles Woodruff, reconfigured the Cunningham camera into a much smaller camera for civilian purposes. Engel explained, "Designed for me, it was a compact 35mm, hand held, shoulder cradled, [with] double registration pins and twin lens finder and optical system."[6] It used the Cunningham 35mm 200 foot interchangeable magazines which met the camera at the film gate with the lens, motor, shutter, and viewfinder comprising the camera body. Twin lens geared together enabled the viewfinder lens and the camera to be focused together, as on Engel's preferred still camera, the Rolleiflex. Like the Rolleiflex, the viewfinder was viewed from above. Held against the waist, rather than in front of the face, the camera was both steadier and less conspicuous than the Eyemo. "With a simple shoulder belt support," Engel said, "I was armed with a camera which became the heart of the esthetic and mobile approach to the film [the Little Fugitive].[7] This camera was about the same size as the Eyemo, but looked like a giant Ocarina with the camera in the wide part at the top and the smaller curved part below.[8]
In 1950, Engel tried to sell a
Though their first film was a critical success,[10] Engel and Orkin, who had since married, had a hard time finding funding [10] for their next film, Lovers and Lollipops, which was completed in 1956. The film was about a widowed mother dating an old friend, and how her young daughter complicates their budding relationship. Like the first one, Lovers and Lollipops was filmed with a hand-held compact 35 mm camera, with sound dubbed in post-production.
This was followed two years later by the more adult-centered Weddings and Babies, a film about an aspiring photographer than is often seen as autobiographical. This was Engel's first film to have live sound recorded at the time of filming, and is historically the first 35 mm fiction film made with a portable camera equipped for synchronized sound.[11]
In 1961, Engel directed three
He made a fourth feature in 1968
In the 1980s, Engel began taking
Engel died of cancer in 2005.
Legacy
Engel and Orkin's work occupy a pivotal position in the independent and art film scene of the 1950s, and was influential on
Writing in Cassavetes on Cassavetes, biographer Raymond Carney says that Cassavetes was familiar with the work of the New York-based independent filmmakers who preceded him, and was "particularly fond" of Engel's three films from the 1950s. Carney writes that "Commentators who regard [Cassavetes] as the 'first independent' are only displaying their ignorance of the history of independent American film, which goes back to the early 1950s."[16]
Truffaut was inspired by Little Fugitive's spontaneous production style when he created The 400 Blows (1959), saying long afterwards: “Our New Wave would never have come into being if it hadn’t been for the young American Morris Engel, who showed us the way to independent production with [this] fine movie.”[17]
Filmography (complete)
- The Farm They Won (1951 short documentary film)
- The Little Fugitive (1953 feature film)
- Lovers and Lollipops (1956 feature film)
- Weddings and Babies (1958 feature film)
- One Chase Manhattan Plaza (1961 short documentary film)
- The Dog Lover (1962 short film)
- Little Girls Have Pretty Curls (1962 short documentary film)
- I Need a Ride to California (1968 feature film) (released in 2019)
- Peace Is (1968 short documentary film)
- A Little Bit Pregnant (1994 feature documentary video)
- Camellia (1998 feature documentary video)
- Morris Engel Home Movies (various dates, short documentary) (released in 2021)
Exhibitions (selection)
- November 4, 2011 – March 25, 2012 "The Radical Camera: New York's Photo League, 1936–1951" at The Jewish Museum, New York
- August 20 – August 29, 2005 Morris Engel's Weddings and Babies: Newly Preserved at Museum of Modern Art, New York
References
- ^ ISBN 978-1-85043-938-7.
- ^ a b c d e Film Buff Online: In Remembrance – Morris Engel
- ^ Morris Engel bio on The Jewish Museum Archived April 15, 2013, at archive.today
- ^ Joel Schlemowitz, ‘’Experimental Filmmaking and the Motion Picture Camera, Routledge, London and New York, 2019, pp. 153-153
- ^ Richard Koszarski, "Keep'Em in the East" - Kazan, Kubrick, and the Postwar New York Film Renaissance, Columbia University Press, New York, 2021, p. 334 See photos of the camera at "The First Real Combat Camera", American Cinematographer, November, 1942 reprinted in March 2020 at http://we.acs/the-first-real-combat-camera.com accessed 1/31/2023
- ^ Schlemowitz, p. 154
- ^ Schlemowitz, p. 154
- ^ Photos of Engel's camera can be seen on the "Morris Engel" page on Facebook and on Schlemowitz, p. 154
- ^ Koszarski, p. 335
- ^ a b c Morris Engel and Ruth Orkin at Bright Lights Film Journal
- ISBN 978-0-8264-1750-3.
- ^ a b c d e f g Morris Engel Bio from Engelphoto.com Archived February 8, 2005, at the Wayback Machine
- ^ Morris Engel Profile at Turner Classic Movies (TCM).
- ^ New York Times Obituary
- ^ Kracauer, Siegfried. Theory of Film: The Redemption of Physical Reality.
- ^
Cassavetes, John; Carney, Raymond; Carney, Ray (2001). Cassavetes on Cassavetes. London: Faber. pp. 59–60. ISBN 978-0-571-20157-0.
- ^ Sterritt, David. "Lovers and Lollipops". TCM.com. Turner Classic Movies. Retrieved April 18, 2009.
External links
- Morris Engel at IMDb
- Morris Engel official website
- Collected films of Morris Engel on Blu-ray (Kino, 2021)