Reading the first “letters” by Paolo Carnera was an immense pleasure for me. I finally felt part of a group that, with its own individualities, upholds a shared vision of dedication and love for our work.
After the era of stellar Italian cinematographers (Delli Colli, Rotunno, Storaro…) who brought our cinematography to international acclaim, most of the generations that followed gradually reduced the narrative of our work to a largely self-referential portrayal, elevating the role of the cinematographer to the absolute demiurge of the film set.
I borrow the words written in 2003 by Arnaldo Catinari, who had already identified the issue and sensed the dangerous drift that could arise from it: “I understand everything that can be understood, […] what leads us to analyse ourselves and put on paper how heroic our work is and how heroic our relationships with directors, producers, etc., are, and especially how heroic we were that time we had to face the hardest day on the toughest set, having to control millions of kilowatts, thousands of extras while at the same time the sun was setting, the director was shouting, and clouds covered the sky! I truly understand it all, but today it all seems too much to me” (in: Alessandro Gatti, Luce e sceneggiatura, AIC, Rome 2003, pp. 38-39).
The sharing of our work, when it is genuine and fuelled by passion, only enriches both the one who shares and the one who receives. For example, I greatly enjoyed discovering the work of new, talented young colleagues through Paolo’s words. And it is precisely to my young colleagues that I would like to reach out, with the hope of also enriching those who read this; in putting my thoughts into writing, I have already gained so much.
So I return to my writings from when I was 32 years old, about to do my third film as a cinematographer, and I share them here with our whole community.
I enjoyed (re)reading at 48 what I thought back then, how I felt: the frustration I experienced, feeling somewhat inadequate due to my self-taught photographic knowledge, the fear of not being good enough… and also the unwavering passion, the ability to grasp nuances, and the attention to detail that today I don’t believe I have as I did then (perhaps the passion, yes!).
In fact, I think that all (or almost all) of my young colleagues are more skilled and better prepared than I am: you have more time, more “hunger” for knowledge, more desire to make a mark. However, you must never give up; you must believe in yourselves and not be discouraged.
And now I take you back to…
«Rome, 27 August 2008
Today I met Claudio again. Everyone has their own film/director they look up to. Gus Van Sant is one of these for Claudio. I watched Paranoid Park. Some things I understood, others I didn’t. Portland has a beautiful atmosphere, and the camera work is elegant; it seems like it’s always there almost by chance, though it’s not. The cinematography also feels random, but I can’t explain it.
There are ages where one searches for tangible signs of their being, and their appearance, and there are arts and trades where age is not measured in years. Despite being 32, I am in the adolescence of cinematographers, with that sacred fire, that tireless drive, and the critical, hypercritical eye toward the “adults” that I don’t fully understand or perhaps don’t understand.
I’m still a slave to technique, just on the verge of leaving it behind, but the path to wisdom is still long.
Seeing Doyle’s choices is like noting down notebooks full of mistakes while watching an end-of-year performance. In time, Doyle, perhaps I’ll understand you – I hope so – but there’s no telling when adulthood will arrive. And so, full of youthful boldness, I whisper to Claudio that the king has no clothes, and that I don’t like the cinematography in Paranoid Park. Although, for me, it’s not a shout; it’s more of a murmur. Honesty in our work pays off: Claudio also doesn’t like the cinematography, or rather, he doesn’t love it; he finds it careless. We, on the other hand, want something epic: paraphrasing human ages, we are like the primitives who were awed by the warmth, the crackling, and the light of the fire, the brilliance of the sun, the brightness of the moon. It reminds me of a book I read years and years ago, when I was in the infancy of cinematography: “The younger a people, a culture, the greater their reverence for the warmth of the sun».
[…]
The sky today in Rome has darkened, the black is blacker, and the sky is clearer. I see it subdued: Aman’s story is subdued. Mastandrea meeting him at night on the terrace is subdued. Valerio, our actor, who everyone recognises, must not be immediately recognisable. Or rather: he shouldn’t be recognisable right away. He’s a boxer, or rather an ex-boxer. A tough, gritty life, and if he’s recognised immediately as Valerio, it’s over. So, the night-time terrace helps us, as does Teddy’s house, where they’ll go later. And if someone recognises Mastandrea after five or six minutes of seeing him there before their eyes, well, then that will be another point in our favour: these adolescents aren’t doing too badly!
Desaturated and subdued cinematography, and then Teddy (who is no longer Mastandrea but just Teddy) goes out after years from the house, and even the light goes out, spilling beyond the frame. And then night again, night and madness, and a hospital that returns to being subdued. And then Aman, the escape, the light warming up, and there’s sunset, there’s Africa, there’s everything that is synonymous with an ending, and the end can only be epic. The 211 seconds of tests I have left I can devote to testing these contrasts, to seeing how much the negative can take, to taking a risk. Taking a risk because normally I like to expose the negative well, I like to read into it. The challenge, the risk, is not in the subdued tones, but in achieving a subdued negative that is still vibrant, not giving a lifeless and shallow image.
When you’re an adolescent, it’s easy to dream of becoming famous, of winning at least one Olympic event. We were in Abano Terme at the age of 12, returning from the field where I had just won the ICSAIN Italian Cross Country Championship. My roommate Danilo said to me: “When I grow up, I want to win the Giro d’Italia.” In 2007, Danilo won the Giro. Who knows if ours, if our dreams, might come true too».
