Anthony Mann & John Alton /Film Noir tribute runs 3 minutes

[Aussie Ash]

 

[fuzzynormal]

Well that was awesome.

[Aussie Ash]

Part of the reason they could make these film was the introduction of Kodak Eastmann Super  XX film after WW2.It was rated at around 160-200 ASA which was over 2 stops faster than film of the 1930s.It also was known for its ability to be pushed (underexposing and overdeveloping)It was regularly pushed one stop to 320AS and sometimes two stops to 640ASA like on Citizen Kane. 

[Aussie Ash]

Based on the collaboration between director Anthony Mann and cinematographer John Alton, here are the films they worked on together:

T-Men (1947)

Raw Deal (1948)

He Walked by Night (1948) - Mann directed most of the film but was uncredited

Reign of Terror (also known as The Black Book) (1949)

Border Incident (1949)

Devil's Doorway (1950)

The full movie of "He Walked by Night" is on youtube 

 

[kye]

Not even in 4K!

It's like they've never watched a single YT tutorial on how to make their footage cinematic.

[Aussie Ash]

Even more amazing they were low budget B-movies with shoot schedules under five weeks !

[kye]

23 hours ago, Aussie Ash said:

Even more amazing they were low budget B-movies with shoot schedules under five weeks !

I watched a great video talking about Christopher Doyles contributions in working with Wong Kar-Wai (I'll post below) and there's a great line in there where Doyle basically says (when comparing his films to Hollywood blockbusters)

"I think we have absolutely opposite attitudes to what's film-making.  We make the film we can, they buy the film they think they want" (around 5:00 mark)

When talking about small budgets and tight timeframes these films are often a lot more like my own travel videos than a Hollywood blockbuster.
In my videos I shoot on-location with available lighting and no control over the scene whatsoever.  In some ways I am capturing something that is more authentic, because I'm not constructing sets or rigging lighting that might deviate from the actual location, but this also means I have less flexibility to work around the camera etc (where sometimes cheating things makes them look more normal rather than less), and it requires me to capture things in a way that more authentically depicts the location rather than including/excluding things in a way that's not balanced or authentic.
Obviously these lower budget films are still working with lighting, (probably) closed sets and production design, but they're not constructing everything from scratch on a soundstage in a warehouse in Burbank.

In the video he talks about how because they filmed in real locations the actors were responding to their surroundings in an authentic way, rather than having to pretend they're somewhere that they're actually not:

"The environments that the two worked in dictated the movement, emotion, rhythm, and transformation of those locations into an active force within each film.  The physical surroundings were always used to shape psychological states. Hong Kong becomes the central site of this transformation."

This idea of filming on location and letting the day-to-day (and perhaps moment-to-moment) shooting experience influence the acting and filming reminds me of what Noam Kroll preaches, which (to me) is really the fundamental advantage of the low-budget film.   Wong Kar-Wai sometimes wrote the next days scripts the night before, which means they could adapt to how shooting was going and the weather etc.

With the technological advances (film getting faster and not needing lighting / 16mm cameras that were light enough to use without a tripod / on-location sound then sync sound / digital) that enabled Italian Neorealism / French New Wave / British New Wave / Dogme 95 it's all about it getting smaller/lighter/cheaper, so taking these advantages and then still doing a full pre-production cycle then rigidly shooting to that in prod is really just throwing away much of the new potential that technological advancement has delivered.