Peter Suschitzky’s list of credits is as varied as it is impressive. The Warsaw-born, London-based director of photography’s features include The Rocky Horror Picture Show, The Empire Strikes Back, Mars Attacks! and The Man in the Iron Mask. If there is one continuous thread in the last 13 years of his career, it is his collaboration with director David Cronenberg, which has garnered him Genie Awards for Dead Ringers (1988), Naked Lunch (1991) and Crash (1996). M. Butterfly (1993), eXistenZ (1999) and the forthcoming Spider round out the films on which the two have worked.

The pair came together when Cronenberg was searching for a new cinematographer prior to shooting Dead Ringers. Suschitzky modestly suggests he is unsure how he ended up on the director’s short list. ‘[Projects I had worked on] weren’t his kind of movies,’ the cameraman says. ‘And I’d never seen his movies. I read the script to Dead Ringers and liked it. We met in London, and that started things.’

The spectacle of movies such as Empire and Mars Attacks! might draw larger crowds than Cronenberg’s brand of psychological thriller, but Suschitzky professes a preference for working on a more intimate canvas.

‘There’s not so much machinery,’ he says. ‘You don’t get lost as a number. Ultimately there’s a greater pleasure to be had in working with the director on a medium-to-small picture than on a big Hollywood machine.’

Suschitzky is at the point in his career where he can choose which features to take on, and he says he would rather shoot commercials than commit to a film he is not wholeheartedly behind. But what if Cronenberg called him up with a film idea that sounded totally inane?

‘Of course I would do anything with him, because after a while it becomes like a marriage, and if you betray the marriage, it’s difficult to get back together again,’ the cinematographer says.

Luckily Spider is a project he didn’t have to think twice about. Based on the critically acclaimed 1990 novel of the same name by Patrick McGrath, who also wrote the screenplay, Spider is a project for which Cronenberg, lead actor Ralph Fiennes and producer Catherine Bailey proclaim great passion. It is that passion that enabled Cronenberg, on a budget of only US$8 million, to draw a cast that also includes Miranda Richardson, Gabriel Byrne and Lynn Redgrave, as well as Suschitzky and top local crew members, many of whom date back to 1983’s Dead Zone with the director.

The psychological thriller tells the story of the title character, a boy (Bradley Hall) growing up in London’s East End who believes his father (Byrne) has murdered his mother and replaced her with a prostitute (both played by Miranda Richardson). Scared for his life, he initiates a plan that yields tragic results. Years later, the adult Spider (Fiennes) is released from prison to a halfway house, where he stops taking his medication and begins to delude himself that the caretaker, Mrs. Wilkinson (Redgrave), is the prostitute from the past.

Grimy digs

Spider is a U.K./Canada copro that filmed in and around London for three weeks in August, primarily for exteriors, and then shifted to Toronto’s Cinespace Studio 1 for five weeks of interiors.

Production designer Andrew Sanders (The Sheltering Sky, Sense and Sensibility) has done a remarkable job of recreating the dingy, claustrophobic London halfway house of the script inside the studio. The set is constructed of removable walls and ceilings, and its interconnected rooms include stairways and a foyer. The detail is meticulous, down to the wallpaper and chipped paint, and you can almost feel the grime.

On this, the 22nd day of the 42-day shoot, Suschitzky and crew set up for a shot in Spider’s cramped room, when Cronenberg enters the studio, casually dressed in Dockers, a T-shirt and running shoes. A fan of technical toys, he carries a digital still camera, documenting the production for his personal archive. Both he and Suschitzky admit to jetlag, which Cronenberg combats with multiple cappuccinos, and both nap after lunch.

Exhaustion coupled with the comfort level enjoyed by the crew make it an oddly low-key set, belying the Freudian psychodrama in the film. Among the technicians on-hand are staff from William F. White, which supplies both equipment and technical advice.

Fiennes and Richardson next arrive, relieving stand-ins who have patiently stood on marks while Suschitzky finessed the lighting. Fiennes, in character, looks disheveled and disoriented in a rumpled old trench coat, while Richardson is equal parts matron and trollop in a tight black skirt and cardigan over an open white button-down shirt molded by a peculiarly pointy brassiere. In the scene, Richardson, playing Spider’s interpretation of Mrs. Wilkinson, corners Fiennes in his room, looking to take away his keys. She frisks him tauntingly.

The atmospheric scene, which in the video monitor is colored predominantly by dingy greys, is illuminated by a series of lamps, including the soft source Kino Flo 4BANK Select System. Suschitzky, acting as his own camera operator, shoots the characters from a high angle behind foreground ropes strewn web-like around the room, suggesting the arachnid reference of the title character.

After a couple of takes, a frustrated Cronenberg, sitting alone in front of a monitor and listening on headphones, finally says, ‘Cut – this shot is not working.’

‘We can either go closer or further away,’ responds Suschitzky.

‘Let’s go closer,’ Cronenberg says. Fiennes walks over to the director to discuss the problem with the shot.

Meanwhile, Suschitzky lines up his Panavision Panaflex camera for a lower side-angle two-shot that emphasizes the scene’s erotic tension, and asks for input from Cronenberg, who approves. Fiennes’ face is dark in the shot, with the primary illumination on Richardson’s face and spots on the wall behind. In the subsequent take, Richardson is standing too far to the right of the frame.

‘Peter, it kind of ceased to be a two-shot,’ Cronenberg says. But the next take is a good one. Suschitzky then moves in for close-ups and the actors run through the entire scene again, but with the camera on their mid-sections, and then, on their feet. In between takes, Cronenberg insists Spider is a film of nuances.

Familiarity helps the cinematographer and the director to solve problems this efficiently.

‘We find it very easy to decide what to do with a scene,’ Suschitzky says. ‘It happens quite quickly, because we have a kind of shorthand, and the amount of talking we have to do is minimal. We watch rehearsal and then talk about it and get straight into lighting it out and finding the angles.’

Suschitzky hails from the British system, where he reportedly was the youngest-ever DOP to shoot a feature, the 1966 WWII fantasy It Happened Here. And in the U.K. style a cinematographer is often referred to as the ‘lighting cameraman.’ However, working with Cronenberg, Suschitzky believes his role isn’t so restrictively defined.

‘I like to think it’s more organic, because I often have something to say about the framing as well,’ he says. ‘On this picture, for instance, I’m doing a lot of the framing myself. David will give general indications where he would like the camera, but after that, I think I’m able to do quite a lot.’

If Suschitzky exerts an influence on what is often considered the director’s domain – composition – Cronenberg has the background to add more input to the cinematography than most directors do. Moviegoers might not know it, but Cronenberg was both director and cinematographer on his University of Toronto shorts, some of his early features, and projects he did for television. (In fact, he functioned as writer and editor as well.)

Although Cronenberg has shot at least part of all of his films in Canada, Suschitzky has worked here, in the U.K., and in Hollywood as well. Circumstance had kept him from shooting in his home country for 19 years until production on Spider began, but he soon remembered why he didn’t miss it.

‘The way of working there is not as good as here,’ he says. ‘We have wonderful crews here with a ‘can do, will do’ attitude, and I can’t say that about my experiences in England. In Hollywood, it also works extremely well, but it doesn’t tend to be quite such a relaxed and friendly atmosphere as on David’s films.’