Born: 10 August 1919, Bois-le-Roi, France, as son of Russian immigrants.

Died: 15 May 2001, Paris, France.

Education: l'IDHEC, Paris, France.

Career: Became intern with dir Roger Leenhardt and asst with dir Louis Daquin. Ph news doc's in Africa.

Awards: 'César' Award nom [1981] for 'Mon oncle d'Amérique'; 'César' Award nom [1985] for 'L'amour à mort'; Camerimage 'Golden Frog' nom [1993] for 'The Baby of Mâcon'; Camerimage 'Golden Frog' nom [1996] & Art FF 'Golden Key' [1997] for 'The Pillow Book'.

France in the 1960s became the cradle of innovative cinematography as faster film stocks, lighter cameras, and a directorial community unafraid to bend or occasionally discard forever the old rules, leveled the Hollywood formalism that ruled post-war film. Among the great French lighting cameramen of that generation, Sacha Vierny has cut his own path. Never in sympathy with the shoot-and-see guerilla tactics of Raoul Coutard, unwilling to follow Jean Rabier into his world of gaudy primaries, more adventurous than the formal Henri Decaë, Vierny has worked so closely with directors, notably Alain Resnais and Peter Greenaway, that he is less a technician than their collaborator.

In the 1950s, with French cinema closed to new talent, Vierny, Resnais, and their colleagues made documentaries under the government grant scheme. Vierny lit Resnais's last short, 'Le chant du styrène', a sponsored film about plastics manufacture turned on its head by his dazzling visuals and a Raymond Queneau commentary written in alexandrines.

Resnais had meanwhile found funding to film Marguerite Duras's script of 'Hiroshima, mon amour', of which Vierny shot the French sections. Vierny's style is already apparent in this film, with its painterly taste for darkness and texture, wide ranges of contrast between scenes, and considerable courage in working with low light sources. At first viewing, the film seemed to many critics disorganized, lacking formal photographic style, even carelessly underlit. Only later did its unifying intelligence become clear.

Vierny went on to shoot 'L'année dernière à Marienbad' in 1961. The photography was no less chancy than on 'Hiroshima, mon amour', but Vierny is philosophical about its technical drawbacks. "The fact that there are diffused images, that we sometimes shot on sound stock, that we are not really satisfied, that we think it's a little hasty, a little botched; is that important?" Resnais had showed the cameraman old newspapers and silent films as examples of the effects he was aiming at. "That the whites flared and the blacks were limpid," said Vierny. "That's what Resnais asked of me."

Vierny did not enter into another long-term relationship with any director until his films with Peter Greenaway. Fascinated with painting and anxious to instill some of the same values into his films as he finds in artists like Vermeer, Greenaway is a challenging collaborator for any lighting cameraman, particularly one like Vierny who shares his taste for saturated colors and low light. Indeed, throughout the 1990s Vierny more than ably served as Greenaway's house cinematographer. His images in 'The Baby of Mâcon' and 'The Pillow Book' are especially resplendent; viewing the latter (the story of a young Japanese woman who develops an appetite for having her body painted) is equal to watching a moving canvas.

Vierny, however, rejects photographic richness for its own sake. "My satisfaction is that the photography is not remarked on too much for itself," he has said. To underline his preference for atmosphere over formal perfection Vierny boasts that he uses neither viewfinder nor light meter. The light meter, he says, is "an instrument that measures essentially the quantities of light, and that doesn't correspond to the feelings I have about my work. What is the use of measuring? The meter will only verify that it's right." Such confidence would be arrogant in any lighting cameraman who had not proved, as Vierny has, his absolute mastery of the art.

[From article written by John Baxter, updated by Rob Edelman, on the Film Reference website.]

Click thumbnails for full-size image

1958        Le bel âge/Love Is When You Make It! [Pierre Kast] b&w; cph: Ghislain Cloquet

1958        Hiroshima, mon amour [Alain Resnais] b&w; ph Japan seq: Michio Takahashi

1959        La main chaude/The Itchy Palm [Gérard Oury] b&w; cph: André Villard

1959        Merci Natercia! [Pierre Kast] b&w

1960        La morte saison des amours/The Season for Love [Pierre Kast] b&w

1961        L'année dernière à Marienbad/Last Year at Marienbad [Alain Resnais] ds/b&w

1961        Climats/Climates of Love [Stellio Lorenzi] ds/b&w

1962        Portrait Robot [Paul Paviot] b&w; cph: André Villard

1962        Muriel, ou Le temps d'un retour [Alain Resnais] c

1964        Aimez-vous les femmes?/A Taste for Women [Jean Léon] cs/b&w

1965        La guerre est finie [Alain Resnais] b&w-c

1965        De dans van de reiger/The Dance of the Heron [Fons Rademakers] scope/b&w

1966        La musica [Paul Seban & Marguerite Duras] b&w

1966        Belle de jour [Luis Buñuel] c

1967        Caroline chérie [Denys de La Patellière] fs/c

1967        La nuit bulgare [Michel Mitrani] c

1968        Le tatoué [Denys de La Patellière] fs/c

1969        La main [Henri Glaeser] c

1970        Bof - Anatomie d'un livreur [Claude Faraldo] c

1971        La vocation suspendue [Raúl Ruiz] 16mm/b&w-c; cph: Maurice Perrimond; b&w footage shot in 1942

1972        Le moine [Ado Kyrou] c

1972        La sainte famille [Pierre Koralnik] c

1972        Les granges brûlées/Suspect of Murder/Suspicion of Murder/The Investigator [Jean Chapot & (uncred) Alain

                    Delon] c

1973        Stavisky... [Alain Resnais] c

1976        Baxter, Vera Baxter [Marguerite Duras] c

1976        Le diable dans la boîte [Pierre Lary] c

1977        L'hypothèse du tableau volé/The Hypothesis of the Stolen Painting [Raúl Ruiz] b&w; 67m

1978        Éclipse sur un ancien chemin vers Compostelle [Bernard Férié] ?

1978        Le fils puni [Philippe Collin] c

1979        Le chemin perdu/The Lost Way [Patricia Moraz] c

1979        Le rose et le blanc [Robert Pansard-Besson] c; cph: Jean-Paul Meurisse

1979        Mon oncle d'Amérique [Alain Resnais] c

1980        Beau-père [Bertrand Blier] scope/c

1982        Les trois couronnes du matelot/Three Crowns of the Sailor [Raúl Ruiz] b&w-c

1983        Clash/The Clash [Raphaël Delpard] b&w-c

1983        Le femme publique [Andrzej Zulawski] c

1984        L'amour à mort/Love Unto Death [Alain Resnais] p/c

1984        Flügel und Fesseln/L'avenir d'Émilie/The Future of Emily [Helma Sanders-Brahms] c

1985        [Zoo:] A Zed & Two Noughts [Peter Greenaway] c; addph: Mike Coles

1987        The Belly of an Architect [Peter Greenaway] c

1987        Drowning by Numbers [Peter Greenaway] c

1989        The Cook the Thief His Wife & Her Lover [Peter Greenaway] tvi/c

1990        Prospero's Books [Peter Greenaway] HD-to-35mm/c

1992        The Baby of Mâcon [Peter Greenaway] p/c

1995        The Pillow Book [Peter Greenaway] s35/c; spec lighting efx: Reinier van Brummelen

1997        Dormez, je le veux! [Irène Jouannet] c

1998        8½ Women [Peter Greenaway] c; cph: Reinier van Brummelen (+ lighting design)

1999        The Man Who Cried [Sally Potter] b&w-c

1953        Das Lied der Ströme/Song of the Rivers [Joris Ivens, Robert Ménégoz, Ruy Santos & Joop Huisken] b&w; doc/90m;

                    cph: Erich Nitzschman, Anatoli Kloschin, Maximilian Scheer, a.o.

1954        Bonnes vacances [Pierre Neurisse & Jacques Nahum] ?; ?/?m; cph: André Dumaître

1954        Le devoir de Zouzou [Jean Vidal] ?

1954        Les chemins qui marchent [Pierre Lary] ?

1954        Neiges [Jean-Jacques Languépin] c; short/20m; cph: Ghislain Cloquet, Georges Strouvé & André Dumaître

1956        Fourrages verts [P. Vetusto] ?; cph: Quinto Albicocco & Félix Forestier

1956        Tu enfanteras sans douleur [Henri Fabiani] b&w; ?/?m

1956        Un mauvais rêve: cancer [Pierre Neurisse & Fabiënne Forgue] ?; cph: Jean Penzer

1957        Le mystère de l'atelier quinze [Alain Resnais & André Heinrich] b&w; short/18m; cph: Ghislain Cloquet

1957        Élèves-maîtres [?] ?; doc/22m

1957        Lettre de Sibérie/Letter from Siberia [Chris Marker] b&w/c; doc/62m

1957        Le chant du styrène [Alain Resnais] ds/c; doc/14m; + small part

1958        L'opéra-mouffe [Agnès Varda (AV)] 16mm/b&w; short/17m; cph: AV

1958        16h.40 - Destination Rio [Jean-Pierre Decourt] ?

1958        Le champion [Jean-Pierre Decourt] c; short/23m

1958        Pablo Picasso de 1900 à 1914 [Fabiënne Tzanck-Forgue] 16mm/c; doc/13m

1959        Le cercle [Arie Mambouch (Arie Ambash), M. Bloch & Nina Mayo (Yael Ambash)] c; anim/12m

1959        Une question d'assurance [Pierre Kast] b&w; ?/520mtr

1959        Paris la belle [Pierre Prévert & Marcel Duhamel] sepia & c; doc/24m; ph footage in sepia (1928): Man Ray , Henri

                    Grignon & Jacques-André Boiffard

1959        Ceux de l'acier [André Vétusto] c; doc/22m

1959        La femme et l'enfant [Pierre Lary] ?

195?        Neuf mois en quelques minutes [?] ?

1960        Bébé prend le départ [Pierre Lary] ?

1960        Une naissance entre toutes [Pierre Lary] ?

1961        Un Paris pour chacun [Chris Marker] ?; ?/600mtr; cph: Pierre Lhomme

1961        Diamètres [Philippe Condroyer] c; doc/27m

1962        Structures [Philippe Condroyer] c; doc/18m

1962        Alpha-bêta-gamma [André Vétusto] c; doc/21m; cph: Claude Lecomte

1962        Conte de neige et de sable [Jean-Jacques Sirkis] ?; short/18m

1963        Quinze mille voisins [Pierre Lary] c; doc/24m

1963        Un mal qui répand la terreur [Pierre Neurisse] ?

1963        Le chapeau de Fortunatus [S. Arié Mambouch & Nina Mayo] b&w-c; short/16m

1964        Un coin sans importance [Pierre Sarry] ?; short/?m

1964        Paris-Balzac - L'envers d'une histoire [André Charpak] ?; doc/10m

1964        Et si c'était une sirène [Jean Schmidt] ?; short/24m

1964        Mayeux le bossu [André Charpak] c; doc/11m

1965        Nur der Nebel ist grau [Robert Ménégoz] cs/c; doc/25m

1966        Aujourd'hui Paris... et demain [André Heinrich] c; doc/?m; cph: Pierre Lhomme, Guy Durban & Yann Le Masson

196?        La chaise longue [Sacha Vierny] ?

1969        L'art roman [Sacha Vierny] ?

1969        Photo couleur [Sacha Vierny] ?

1970        Elle est la qui t'attend [Pierre Lary] c; short/360mtr

1971        On n'échappe jamais [Pierre Lary] c; short/450mtr

1971        L'animal en question [André Pozner] b&w-c; doc/420mtr; cph: Pierre Lhomme

1971        Versailles reçoit Elisabeth Schwarzkopf [Pierre Jourdan] ?; doc/?m

1971        Le fusil à lunette [Jean Chapot] 16mm/c; short/14m

1976        500 grammes de foie de veau [Henri Glaeser] b&w; short/15m

1977        Le conseiller Crespel [Robert Pansard-Besson] c; short/20m

1979        L'état des lieux [François Caillat] c; short/13m

1983        Sans fausse note [Luc Pierre Trouvé] c; comm doc/13m; prod for the SNCF

1983        Réouverture [Luc Pierre Trouvé] ?

1987        Fear of Drowning [Vanni Corbellini & Peter Greenaway] 16mm/c; short/26m

1989        Final [Irène Jouannet] b&w; short/14m

1991        L'autre Célia [Irène Jouannet] c; short/22m

1992        Rosa [Peter Greenaway] scope/b&w; dance film/15m

1995        Autoreverse [Mathias Pulleu-Benguigui] ?; short/11m

1964        Le petit Claus et le grand Claus [Pierre Prévert & Paul Grimault] tvm

1967        La bien-aimée [Jacques Doniol-Valcroze] tvm

1991        A Walk Through Prospero's Library [Peter Greenaway] exp doc/23m/v

1991        Not Mozart/M Is for Man, Music, Mozart/M. Aural and Visual Variations on a Conundrum of the Apotheosis

                    of the Spirit of Mozart [Peter Greenaway] mus exp tvm/29m/16mm; 3 seg: 'M Is for Man', 'M Is for Music' & 'M Is

                    for Mozart'; ep 6-part series 'Not Mozart'

1947        Les dernières vacances/The Last Vacation [Roger Leenhardt] intern; ph: Philippe Agostini

1948        Le point du jour [Louis Daquin] co-asst dir; ph: André Bac

1953        Statues d'épouvante/Le cubisme/L'école de Paris [Robert Hessens; doc] c.asst; ph: Ghislain Cloquet

1954        Pantomimes [Paul Paviot; short] c.asst; ph: Ghislain Cloquet

1954        Tout chante autour de moi [Pierre Gout] c.asst; ph: Georges Delaunay

1955        Nuit et brouillard/Night and Fog [Alain Resnais; doc] c.asst; ph: Ghislain Cloquet