Interview by Alessandro Chiodo CCS
The interview is part of the Casa Chiaroscuro Venezia 82 project, curated by Alessandro Chiodo. We would like to thank our sponsors and friends Canon, Frame by Frame and Fotodiego.
At the latest edition of the Venice Film Festival, we met Manuel Dacosse, cinematographer of The Stranger by François Ozon, in competition. The film, based on Albert Camus’s novel of the same name, is now showing in Italian cinemas. I read the book many years ago and remember it as something close to an extended interior monologue — centred on an emotionally detached man who engages with the present through sensation rather than feeling or social obligation. A cinematic adaptation seems almost impossible to imagine, which is why I was so curious about your approach. In this film, so much is communicated through the actors’ expressions, the images, the light, the way the characters are photographed. How did you come to the project?
You’ve captured the film very well. Working with François Ozon is quite natural for me – we know each other well, and we’ve made four films together. François asked me to read the book. When I reread it, my first impression was of a strong, harsh light. François wrote the screenplay and we talked about it a great deal. My initial concern was that the film might feel a little slow: nothing much happens – there is just a young man walking, looking, a mother who dies… Simple things, but you gradually settle into this kind of storytelling. We wanted to keep the approach very simple. At first, the idea was to shoot everything in a static way, with fixed shots, but then François decided to move the camera. The underlying commitment to simplicity remained, though. From the start, François did not want to use voice-over – which runs throughout the book – even though he kept coming back to it, because the writing is extraordinary. In the end, he brought it in at a couple of moments, since some passages were so powerful and beautiful that leaving them out would have been a shame.
I know you don’t say yes to every project – that’s something I heard from a mutual friend. Your filmography includes some quite raw, uncompromising films. How did you come to this one?
Yes, for now I do have the luxury of choosing – I’m not sure that will always be the case. If I make two feature films a year, I’m happy. I don’t work in advertising, I’ve never been part of that world. The odd job comes my way occasionally, but I generally turn it down. I like to choose – the screenplay first, of course, and then the director. I’ve known François Ozon for a long time, so when he calls, it’s always, needless to say, something very interesting.
Also because, as you say, your collaboration goes back a long way – four films together. He knows he can get from you what he wants.
Yes, and vice versa! (laughs). What’s wonderful is that François Ozon always attracts great actors. Actors are also happy to work with him. He has a remarkable instinct for editing and is the kind of director who can cut a scene even if it cost a great deal to shoot. He’s capable of making that call, and confident enough to do so. Not every director is.
What is he like on set?
He works fast! Because he has no patience! François operates the camera himself, so I focus purely on the lighting – most of the time. On other projects I operate the camera too, but with François the framing is out of my hands.
You’ve got the director on the camera!
Exactly. He sets up the shot and says, ‘Let’s go!’ And I might not be ready. So I always have to stay ahead of him. My gaffer and I have to move very fast.
So, basically, do you work with a single-camera setup?
Yes, mainly a single camera. For The Stranger we had two cameras on the truck, and in some scenes we did use both – the beach sequence, for instance, because we were working against the clock: a two-hour window of sunlight to shoot the entire scene. Sometimes one camera is on the Steadicam and the other on a dolly or a tripod, so we can switch quickly between them.
In my view, the film evokes the Nouvelle Vague – the cinema of Robert Bresson or François Truffaut – while at the same time having a fully contemporary language. In the film, a period piece and a contemporary film seem to coexist. What was the visual idea? What were the references behind its language?
François has his own influences, and I have mine. I’m a great admirer of Janusz Kamiński. The first major decision was whether to shoot in black and white or in colour – that was really the foundation of the whole project. When we decided on black and white, I thought: I need to rewatch Schindler’s List. I love that film, I love its light; it tackles a complex subject and offers an enormous range of lighting approaches, all tied to the theme. That was my main reference point for The Stranger; for François, it was more the Nouvelle Vague. So, as you say, the film became a blend of those two influences. I wanted hard light. No soft light. There is some softness, but for the most part the light is harsh. The sun is everywhere. Another key reference was Ripley, the black-and-white miniseries by Steven Zaillian, with cinematography by Robert Elswit.
It’s wonderful that films are still being made in black and white. You decided to shoot in black and white – and then what? How did you go about it? Did you shoot digital rather than on film, and how did you approach the processing?
I usually work with a DIT, but on this project I didn’t have one. Sometimes, with my second assistant – who is very skilled with DaVinci Resolve – I would check the LUT in the back of the truck, do a quick review of the footage on my iPad Pro, and send the images off to the lab. I had asked my regular DIT to build a black-and-white LUT; François was seeing black and white through the viewfinder, and we were seeing the same on the monitor.
Going a little deeper – and trying to avoid spoilers, though I hope anyone reading this has already seen the film – I really like the way the main character is introduced: he is in shadow, a silhouette. The first image I remember is a silhouette moving towards us, and then suddenly he steps into the light.
There was the idea of the character coming out of prison. It’s a very rich image: it begins out of focus, in slow motion, with a dark silhouette, and then he comes very close to the camera and, as he steps out of the building, he is hit by a blinding light in his eyes. It’s a contemporary language, as you were saying earlier.
Yes, I love that scene because it introduces the character so fully: the light reveals something – it’s like a musical overture that contains the whole work within it, a hint of everything that will follow. Still on the subject of light: there is a scene in which the protagonist decides to go and kill the Arab, and he is holding a knife that reflects the light into his eyes, producing a strange effect —
It’s an old trick called the ‘heat effect’. They use it in Raging Bull, for instance. It’s something I studied at film school: you pour a little alcohol, set it alight, and the heat creates this waviness.
So the effect is created by heat!
Yes. François wasn’t sure he wanted it, so we shot one take with the effect and one without. The one with it worked better: combined with the slow motion at 50 frames per second, it produced a slight distortion. It could have been done in post, but doing it on set was more interesting – it might yield something unexpected. With the sun in the mix, there was always the chance of a surprise.
Sometimes it’s better not to control everything.
Exactly, I completely agree.
In this film, light really matters. Lo straniero It’s all about light and shadow, in a way. During the murder trial, when the protagonist is asked why he killed the Arab, he replies: ” ‘Because of the sun.’ It’s the same in the novel.
That’s why it was important to have the sun there constantly. In terms of black and white, the contrast is very high – there aren’t many greys. That’s Janusz Kamiński’s approach. I really like pushing the highlights and keeping the shadows dense.
The sun comes back at a key moment. Another sequence I’d like to discuss – because there is something in those images that moves you without quite knowing why – is the scene in which the main character (Benjamin Voisin) goes to kill the Arab. Is it a ‘sensual’ moment? There is a kind of suspension of time, a close-up that travels from the Arab’s armpit to his face in the foreground, and an exchange of glances. Despite the conflict, something ambiguous seems to surface between the two.
Yes, it’s a crucial scene. We talked about it a great deal. I remember that morning very clearly. The day before hadn’t gone well – I don’t know why, sometimes it just happens – so we were a bit on edge. I had spoken with François the evening before to say that we really needed to be focused the next day, as it was the key scene of the film. That morning he arrived with a very clear idea and handed out a shot list. François almost never works from a shot list, but that day he did. He had a very precise vision of how he wanted that scene.
It’s magical.
The one trick we used was done in post: because of the strong sunlight in his eyes, the actor would occasionally blink, so in post we froze his eyelids!
Really?!
No changes needed here — the sentence is already clean, natural, and free of Italian calques. It works as is.
How did the staging come about? Did you shoot in sequence?
Yes, we shot in sequence. François doesn’t rehearse with the actors, because he’s on the camera. Once he has everything he needs from a sequence, he moves on to the next shot – another angle, a reverse, a wide shot… every which way (laughs). The beginning of the film was relatively straightforward, because there was only one actor on screen. If you look closely, the opening is more composed than the final part: there is a strong sense of composition, because we had the time to work on it.
Would you like to tell us about your technical choices for this project?
I shot with the ARRI Alexa 35. It was my first film with the Alexa 35. At the beginning I felt a bit lost – I was coming from the Alexa Mini – but I’ve always worked with ARRI, I’m used to it, and it performs very well. With the Alexa Mini I got used to underexposing: I always used a LUT at -1 stop to protect the highlights. With the Alexa 35 it’s the opposite, and it took me a while to adjust: you have so much information in the highlights and such a wide dynamic range… It allowed me to make choices I couldn’t have made with the Mini. With the Alexa 35 I started overexposing to get more detail in the shadows. So I changed the LUT during the shoot. With this camera I had to build a more contrasty LUT, because if you use a flat LUT with a lot of information, you can’t really make lighting decisions on set. It was closer to shooting on film, where you commit to your choices as you go.
Which lenses did you use?
Ha ha! The lenses… I didn’t have much choice with François, because he loves zooms. With him I often use an old zoom, an Angénieux 17–80 that opens to T2.2, which is quite good. It’s a fairly soft lens, and that’s why I like it. On the Steadicam I used Cooke S4 primes – a good combination with the zoom.
Yes, Angénieux and Cooke always go well together – it’s a good match.
It’s a classic combination. And at times, with the second camera, I shot close-ups of Benjamin Voisin with a wide-angle lens – the Cooke 21 – to stay close to the actors while keeping a wide-field effect.
And what did you do in preparation?
With François, we mainly do location scouts, during which we talk a lot, and at the start of the project we read the screenplay two, three, or four times at different stages. That way, ideas and details can surface. It’s an open process. Then we have a day of tests – sometimes in a studio – working with the lighting and the costumes. For this project, we shot for two days in France before filming in Morocco. The final scene, with the priest, was shot two weeks before the rest of the shoot, back in France.
So for the rest, did you shoot in Morocco?
Yes, in Tangier.
The production design and the locations are very beautiful: is everything real, or are there visual effects as well?
There are some digital effects in the wider shots, where the buildings in the background have been altered, but for the closer shots everything is real.
It’s not directly related to cinematography, but I really like that the end credits feature the track ‘Killing an Arab’ by The Cure. It’s a beautiful piece, a bold choice – I wanted to share that impression with you.
I wasn’t sure about that choice, but in the end, watching the Venice Film Festival screening, we could see it shifting the audience’s mood – it’s such a dramatic track, and in an instant everything changes. That’s François Ozon – that’s his style!
Do you think this film has a meaning in relation to what is happening in the world right now?
Certainly – particularly given what has happened, and is still happening, in Palestine. That is still a story of colonialism. In France and Belgium, very few films are made about colonialism. In France there is at least a film about Algeria, but in Belgium there is nothing about the Congo. And I can assure you that the Belgians committed terrible crimes in the Congo. It felt very important to make The Stranger now.
Of course, it has a political significance.
Think of the trial scene at the end, with the exchange between the two women: Marie (Rebecca Marder), French and the murderer’s fiancée, and Djemila (Hajar Bouzaouit), Arab and the victim’s sister. One says to the other, ‘It’s my home, it’s my country,’ and the other replies, ‘No, it’s not your home and it’s not YOUR country…’. It’s a powerful moment.
I really loved the Arab actress – all the actors are wonderful. Rebecca Marder and Benjamin Voisin… You were lucky to have them in front of your lens! And you photographed them beautifully!
It’s wonderful to work with François. As I was saying, he always works with excellent actors. It’s always a real pleasure to make his films. And when actors are called by François, they know they have to bring their A-game!
Is there anything I haven’t asked you that you’d like to add?
This film has a political dimension, and yet on set we were a mix of cultures – a Moroccan crew, a French crew, a Belgian crew – and everything was harmonious. There was no tension; it worked. That’s what I love about cinema: you meet people from all over the world and you always find a way to work together. That’s why I make films.
