The Guardian (03/Dec/1998) - Obituary: Freddie Young
(c) The Guardian (03/Dec/1998)
- keywords: Academy Awards, Alfred Hitchcock, Anna Neagle, Grace Kelly, Jack Cardiff, Laurence Olivier, Michael Powell, Noël Coward
Obituary: Freddie Young
A legend with the lens
Freddie Young, who has died aged 96, was the doyen of British cinematographers. He was a triple Oscar winner - for Lawrence of Arabia, Doctor Zhivago and Ryan's Daughter - and in 1972 was named as only the second Fellow of the British Association for Film and Television Arts; the first was Alfred Hitchcock. Young deserved the honours, for his distinguished career, and as a recognition for the art he had represented for 50 years.
Whatever hand the director plays in the screenplay or in the editing rooms, a talented director of photography adds an indispensable, independent pair of eyes, to which novice directors often owe success and experienced ones learn to respect.
Young provided that alter ego on a hundred movies. By 1972, at just 70, he had recently completed a 15 month slog on David Lean's Ryan's Daughter (1970). On the epic Lawrence of Arabia (1962) his shimmering work had added immeasurably to the film's stature. Young was often called on for big movies, with strenuous schedules, and specialised in period settings.
He joined the industry during the silent era and was first credited as assistant cameraman on Rob Roy (1922). By 1934 he had notched up 25 credits on such forgotten works as The Somme (1927), the farce Up For the Cup (1931) and a popular version of Noel Coward's Bitter Sweet (1933). The following year its director Herbert Wilcox employed Young on the modestly budgeted treatment of the love affair between Charles II and Nell Gwynn.
Anna Neagle (Wilcox's wife) played the title role and in 1937 the team were reunited with writer Miles Malleson on another historical drama, Victoria the Great. This boasted a starrier cast, a bigger budget and the final reel in colour. This and movies such as Goodbye Mr Chips and Nurse Edith Cavell (both 1939), led Young to his first collaboration with film makers of the first rank - Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger.
Contraband (1940), a modest war-time melodrama, was followed by their entertaining piece of propaganda shot in Canada, 49th Parallel. Starring Eric Portman and Laurence Olivier, this prestige movie marked something of a turning point in Young's career. Although it fell to other great cameramen (Jack Cardiff, Christopher Challis) to work on Powell and Pressburger's colour successes, Young was - after the war ended - to make that transition to colour and to work on bigger budgeted films.
The first of these, Gabriel Pascal's Caesar and Cleopatra (1946), was not a happy experience. The huge sets, all-star cast and interminable schedule, proved an apprenticeship in stamina for Lean's similarly profligate Ryan's Daughter. However, it relaunched Young's career and for 25 years he worked non-stop on A movies, often for MGM and for American directors working in Britain.
For one of these, Ivanhoe (1950), directed by Richard Thorpe, he received an Oscar nomination, and followed it with the same director's lavish Knights of the Round Table. Other Americans of greater note asked for him - George Cukor on Edward My Son (1949), and Bhowani Junction (1956), John Ford on Mogambo (1953) and Gideon's Day (1958), Edward Dmytryk on So Well Remembered (1947) and Gene Kelly, who as star, choreographer and director of Invitation to the Dance (1956) relished that professional extra pair of eyes. Notable challenges of the period included Vincente Minnelli's widescreen treatment of the life of Van Gogh, Lust for Life (1956), and the commercial success Inn of the Sixth Happiness (1958), where Young had the task of making Wales double for the story's Chinese setting.
Much of his work was international - Island in the Sun (1957), Solomon and Sheba (1958) - but in 1961 he photographed The Greengage Summer, based on Rumer Godden's novel, where the pastel shaded cinematography enhanced the restrained performances and direction. A year later such British understatement faded as Young, aided by Nic Roeg, battled on locations with Lawrence of Arabia. The desert sequences and the overall grandeur became part of cinema legend and no work brought him greater acclaim.
After Lawrence the romantic The Seventh Dawn and the caper Rotten to the Core must have seemed a rest cure. Not so, Doctor Zhivago (1965) which - as one critic remarked - did for snow what Lawrence had done for sand. Young moved on to a better epic, Lord Jim.
In 1967, Sidney Lumet arrived in Britain to direct a Le Carre novel, retitled The Deadly Affair. He set Young the task of deglamorising London into a murky world for its doomed characters to inhabit. After the characteristic luminosity and energy of earlier films, it looked a glum affair indeed.
Lewis Gilbert - possibly rewarding him for The Greengage Summer, used him (and Bob Huke) on the Bond You Only Live Twice (1967) and at the end of a busy decade he found himself in Ireland with Ryan, before the lavish Nicholas and Alexandra in 1971.
Luther (1973), from John Osborne's play and Permission to Kill (1975) offered shorter stints, as did such TV costume dramas as Great Expectations (1974) and The Man in the Iron Mask (1976). They also offered little challenge and Young - well into his seventies - took it a little easier.
The disastrous The Blue Bird (1976) reunited him with Cukor and he later shot the play Stevie (1978). But his final works as director of photography were less noteworthy - The Sword of the Valiant (1982) and a little later the feeble comedy Invitation to the Wedding.
Surprisingly, in his mid-eighties Young turned director. Arthur's Hallowed Ground (1986) was a modest, personal film starring Jimmy Jewel as a cricket groundsman who determines to protect his pitch against officialdom. It proved a charming coda to Young's career.
Twice married, he is survived by his wife Joan and son David.
