‘It came out of left field,’ Norman Jewison says of his Board of Governors Award from the American Society of Cinematographers, being presented February 16 in L.A. ‘Every year they choose a director or producer that they think has done particularly well, I guess, by the cinematographers that have been involved in their work. And God knows I have worked with a lot of them.’

To say the least. Jewison’s list of cameramen includes Joe MacDonald, Russell Metty, Daniel Fapp, Philip Lathrop, Joseph Biroc, Haskell Wexler, Ossie Morris, Douglas Slocombe, Laszlo Kovacs, Victor Kemper, Jordan Cronenworth, Sven Nykvist, Paul Sarossy, David Watkin and Roger Deakins, and he shares this award in large part with them.

Perhaps standing above the many noteworthy films that have come out of these collaborations is Fiddler on the Roof (1971), an adaptation of the popular musical by Sholom Aleichem and Joseph Stein about a Jewish family at the time of the 1912 Russian pogroms. The film won three Academy Awards, including best cinematography for Ossie Morris.

Brazen approach

The British-born Morris is a true color photography pioneer. His boldly muted palette on John Huston’s Moulin Rouge (1952) so incensed Technicolor that the company signed a disclaimer distancing itself from the film’s look. Morris’ approach on Fiddler was no less brazen.

‘It was all shot through a piece of women’s silk stocking,’ Jewison recalls. ‘He stopped a woman who was walking through Pinewood Studios and asked if he could have a piece of her stocking, and we started to do various tests. There’s nobody today, I think, who would have the guts to shoot the whole picture through a filter [like that]!’

The stocking did the trick, imbuing the film with the burnished period feel the production sought.

When pressed, however, Jewison cites Jesus Christ Superstar (1973), based on the Andrew Lloyd Webber/Tim Rice rock opera about Christ’s final days, as his most visually accomplished film. It was lensed by Douglas Slocombe, another Englishman, whose credits extend back to classic 1940s films such as Dead of Night and Kind Hearts and Coronets. Jewison says Superstar was the last movie to be shot in the TODD-AO 35 process, an anamorphic 2.35:1 CinemaScope clone.

Although he directed only a couple of musicals, Jewison believes the form can still make good cinema. For years he even tried to mount his own production of Chicago, eventually helmed by rookie director Rob Marshall and recently nabbing three Golden Globes.

‘I would have loved to have made it,’ Jewison laments. ‘It was one of my favorite projects. The problem was no one would finance it. If it wasn’t for Harvey [Weinstein, head of Miramax Films] buying the rights and pursuing it, it wouldn’t have been made. Why the studios have given up on musicals, I have no idea.’

Jewison called on Slocombe once again for Rollerball (1975), a sci-fi cult favorite about a futuristic society’s fascination with an ultra-violent underground sport, and again the 62-year-old cameraman amazed him.

‘People were being followed on a 500mm lens at 40 miles per hour,’ Jewison recalls. ‘I don’t know how they did it.’

Jewison began writing, producing and directing various TV programs at the CBC in the early 1950s, eventually moving to New York to direct series and specials for CBS. He was among the group of young directors, including Sidney Lumet (12 Angry Men), Franklin Schaffner (Patton) and John Frankenheimer (The Manchurian Candidate), who made the leap from live TV to film.

He says it’s no accident he has often partnered with veteran cameramen, especially early on, because when he embarked on his 1963 debut feature 40 Pounds of Trouble, ‘I had never exposed a foot of film in my life.’ But he got through the experience thanks to the handholding of DOP Joseph MacDonald, whose resume includes black-and-white classics My Darling Clementine and Panic in the Streets.

On two of his next three films, The Thrill of It All (1963) and The Art of Love (1965), comedies starring James Garner, Jewison had the benefit of shooting with Russell Metty, whose 160-plus credits include Orson Welles’ baroque film noir Touch of Evil and Stanley Kubrick’s Spartacus, which earned him an Oscar.

Then came Jewison’s Oscar-nominated breakthrough The Russians Are Coming, The Russians Are Coming (1966), a Cold War satire lensed by Joseph Biroc, whose big break came on the set of It’s a Wonderful Life when he was promoted from operator to DOP after first choice Victor Milner was fired.

With his directorial chops more honed, Jewison made some noise with a younger cinematographer named Haskell Wexler, whom he refers to as ‘The King.’ Wexler’s realistic, often handheld work on In the Heat of the Night helped capture the racial tensions in the Mississippi town where its murder yarn is set. The film won five 1967 Oscars, including best picture.

The pair followed up with The Thomas Crown Affair, a piece of swinging ’60s eye candy wrapped around a cat-and-mouse romance/heist film starring Steve McQueen and Faye Dunaway. Jewison and Wexler reunited to less effect in 1991 for the Danny DeVito comedy Other People’s Money.

Jewison is also effusive in his praise for U.K. DOP Roger Deakins, with whom he worked on his last two projects, the Ruben Carter biopic The Hurricane (1999) and the HBO cable movie Dinner with Friends (2001). ‘He’s very much in the same vein as Wexler,’ the director says. ‘He’s really a brilliant storyteller and not just a cameraman.’

At age 76, Jewison is showing no signs of slowing down. Speaking from the Toronto office of his Yorktown Productions, he is jet-lagged after returning from a round of casting in London and Paris for The Statement, a $27-million thriller based on the Brian Moore novel about a French Nazi collaborator (Michael Caine) trailed by a would-be assassin.

Frustrated by what Hollywood will and will not finance, the founder of the Canadian Film Centre has for the first time tapped into the local industry for funding, with Serendipity Point Films coproducing along with the U.K.’s Company Pictures and France’s Odessa Films.

Keeping it in the family

And for this feature, to begin shooting shortly, Jewison is assigning the lensing chores to – his son.

Kevin Jewison graduated from film school at USC and worked his way up to first assistant camera and operator. Although the younger Jewison certainly earned his stripes, a little nepotism never hurt – he got gigs on several of his father’s productions, starting with 1985’s Agnes of God, which shot in Montreal and Toronto.

It was a pivotal moment in Kevin’s career, as he got to play first assistant to DOP Sven Nykvist, the legendary lenser of many Ingmar Bergman films. Nykvist took Kevin under his wing, and together they made films all over the world.

Kevin has settled down in France and graduated to cinematographer, lensing the features Un Pur moment de rock’n’roll and La Mentale for director Manuel Boursinhac.

‘And since this picture was being shot in France, I was lucky enough to get him,’ the elder Jewison says.

And does the director think his son will feel intimidated, following in the footsteps of the Morrises, Slocombes and Wexlers and working for his dad?

‘Oh, I don’t think so,’ Jewison responds, laughing. ‘He’ll probably push me around.’

He’s got the look

Cinematography awards won by Norman Jewison and his DOPs

1968: Haskell Wexler wins Best Cinematography from the National Society of Film Critics for In the Heat of the Night

1971: Oswald Morris wins Best Cinematography at the Academy Awards and from the British Society of Cinematographers for Fiddler on the Roof

1973: Douglas Slocombe is recognized for Best Cinematography by the BSC for Jesus Christ Superstar

2003: Norman Jewison is presented the Board of Govenors Award from the American Society of Cinematographers for lifetime achievement

-www.theasc.com