Mark Laurila, retired teacher of English and Film at California State University
August 21, 2023 (Updated in June 2025)
Marechal1937 (YouTube)
“My aesthetic has always been tied to the Gordon Willises of the world, the Jordan Cronenweths, the Conrad Halls, the James Wong Howes… the people who took risks.”
David Fincher
‘Seven‘ Criterion Laserdisc commentary, 1996
“With all our modern technology, there is no one who can match James Wong Howe’s ability to control light in the service of story.”
Roger Deakins BSC ASC
The Inventive Versatility of James Wong Howe, Criterion, 2022
James Wong Howe ASC was a legendary Hollywood cameraman who remains too little known today, despite having been nominated ten times for Academy Awards (and winning twice). A master of black and white, he brought his characteristic, nuanced control of darkness, and light to cinematography.
He loved to tell the story of how he put on roller skates and picked up a handheld camera in order to capture the excitement of the climactic boxing match in the classic Film Noir Body and Soul (1947), starring John Garfield. The footage Wong Howe captured inside the ring became a major inspiration for Martin Scorsese when he made Raging Bull (1980). How exactly was Wong Howe’s approach so different from what had come before? This video shows examples of earlier boxing movies, such as Golden Boy (1939) and They Made Me a Criminal (1939), and compares them to Wong Howe’s achievement in Body and Soul.
The resulting analysis is surprising and will likely change perceptions of the film and of Chinese-born/American-raised James Wong Howe. Regarding the film, the innovative camerawork combines the smoothness of the Mitchell BNC with the instability of the handheld Eyemo. Regarding Wong Howe, racism was a constant presence in his life, as he experienced racist movie crews, was denied citizenship because of the Chinese Exclusion Act, and was barred from marrying the writer Sanora Babb because she was white. Additional Wong Howe movies referenced here include Sweet Smell of Success (1957), The Prisoner of Zenda (1937), Yankee Doodle Dandy (1942), Transatlantic (1931), Air Force (1943), He Ran All the Way (1951), Hud (1963), Peter Pan (1924), and The Heart is a Lonely Hunter (1968).
Best of James Wong Howe: The Thin Man (1934)
This video presents the highlights of Wong Howe’s cinematography in the 1934 Comedic Mystery The Thin Man, an adaptation of the novel by Dashiell Hammett. William Powell and Myrna Loy play Nick and Nora Charles, a famous detective and his heiress wife who team up (with the help of their dog Asta) to solve the mystery behind a murder and a missing suspect.
The video demonstrates Wong Howe’s brilliance in several modes: Revealing the Main Characters (in which the characters are first seen from behind, with a moving camera allowing their surprising actions to help define them), Shadowy Characters (in which Wong Howe employs the kind of light and dark that he would use in future Films Noir), Pioneering Whip Pans (in which he uses the ultra-fast panning that would become best known decades later in the films of the French New Wave), The Artful Close-up (which shows the painstaking, glamorous lighting techniques that made him so in demand among the era’s leading ladies…and men) and Character Motivates Camera Movement (which shows how Wong Howe preferred to move his camera only if it had the purpose of better showing characters’ actions).
The success of The Thin Man resulted in the production of five (less-effective) sequels between 1936 and 1947.
Best of James Wong Howe: Body and Soul (1947)
This video presents the highlights of Wong Howe’s cinematography in the 1947 John Garfield Film Noir boxing drama Body and Soul. The movie shows how money, along with sex, can lead to corruption, a theme often found in Garfield’s movies.
The video demonstrates Wong Howe’s brilliance in several modes: Emotion and the Moving Camera (in which emotions are enhanced through the choice to move the camera through space), Romance Night and Day (showing how the mood could be created differently, depending on the time), Picturing Lust (in which he used a composition to suggest objectification), Noir Style, Deep Focus, and Pioneering Hand-held Camera.
Body and Soul was created through Garfield’s own independent production company and resulted in a Best Actor Academy Award nomination for Garfield. It won for Best Editing by Robert Parrish. The film co-stars Lili Palmer, Hazel Brooks, William Conrad, Canada Lee, and Lloyd Gough (billed here as Lloyd Goff).
The film’s director Robert Rossen, its screenwriter Abraham Polonsky, and Garfield were all eventually targeted by HUAC, the House Committee on Un-American Activities, during the Hollywood Blacklists in the 1950s. Because of his blacklisting, Garfield’s career was destroyed, and he soon died of a heart attack at the age of 39.
Best of James Wong Howe: He Ran All the Way (1951)
This video presents the highlights of Wong Howe’s cinematography in the 1951 crime melodrama Film Noir He Ran All the Way, which contains the final on-screen performance by John Garfield.
The video demonstrates Wong Howe’s brilliance in several modes: Introducing a Character (which involves a fast pan, a startling push-in, and reframing to emphasize a gun), Darkness and Light (showcasing Wong Howe’s mastery of Film Noir style), Camera Placement in Pool (in which Wong Howe put on swim trunks and lowered his camera into Long Beach’s Plunge to get the play of light off the water and onto the actors’ faces), All in a Single Shot (virtuosic, and always helpful on a low budget movie), High-Angle Vulnerability (nearly a God’s Eye View looking down on human weakness), Trapped Inside Frames (fitting for a hostage story), and John Garfield’s Final Scene on Film (a collaboration with an actor that Wong Howe had loved and worked with since the 1930s).
The script was mostly written by Dalton Trumbo, but because of his blacklisting and impending prison sentence, his name was removed from the credits. The film’s director, John Berry, was also blacklisted, and he left the U.S. in order to continue working in Europe.
Best of James Wong Howe: Picnic (1955)
This video presents the highlights of Wong Howe’s cinematography in the 1955 Cinemascope and Technicolor classic Picnic, directed by Joshua Logan and based on the play by William Inge.
By the time this film was made, nearly half of all Hollywood feature films were still being shot in black and white. Wong Howe’s reputation still largely rests on his black and white work, but by the 1950s, studios increasingly chose to make films in color, pushing Wong Howe outside his comfort zone. The Technicolor company required DPs to be “assisted” by a supposed Technicolor expert who would try to dictate color use and lighting. But Wong Howe resisted, making enemies at Technicolor. He continually aimed to use less high key and more low key light than the Technicolor engineers pushed for, and he was always ready to desaturate the colors to give a more earthbound look, rather than a gaudy Hollywood one.
Picnic was the movie that made Kim Novak a star, and William Holden became a major sex symbol for his many shirtless scenes and for the sexual chemistry between him and Novak. Although most of the interiors were shot on Columbia Pictures sound stages in Hollywood, the many exteriors were shot on location in several small Kansas towns. Wong Howe loved the challenge of location shooting. And in this case, he also loved that the director, Joshua Logan, was mostly a New York stage director. As Todd Rainsberger writes, “Haskell Wexler, a Howe assistant at the time, says that Logan was not cinematically inclined and relied heavily upon Howe to visualize the story.” As Logan himself wrote in a letter to Jimmie, “If I have been a successful director in this picture, it is enormously due to the encouragement, ideas and editing that you gave to me so generously…” Wong Howe, known in the industry as a “frustrated director,” loved the opportunity to put his imprint on the movie’s look.
Best of James Wong Howe: Sweet Smell of Success (1957)
This video presents the highlights of Wong Howe’s cinematography in the 1957 Film Noir masterpiece Sweet Smell of Success. Burt Lancaster plays powerful and ruthless New York newspaper columnist J.J. Hunsecker who manipulates Press Agent-on-the-make Sidney Falco, played by Tony Curtis, into doing his bidding, breaking up his younger sister’s romantic relationship.
The video demonstrates Wong Howe’s brilliance in several modes: Sidney Falco and the Restless Camera (in which the constantly moving camera emphasizes the press agent’s non-stop hustling), Faces in Darkness (often suggesting hidden intentions and toxic influence), and EXT. NEW YORK CITY – NIGHT (in which Wong Howe’s mastery of location and night shooting astonishes).
Sweet Smell of Success began as a short story by Ernest Lehman, best known for writing Alfred Hitchcock‘s North by Northwest. Lehman wrote the first script, but after the director Alexander Mackendrick was hired, playwright Clifford Odets rewrote much of it, and the film’s famous acidic dialogue seems overtly Odetsian.
“Sweet Smell of Success is a crazy movie. You know, directors look at films in a pretty special way. We all have a kind of lexicon. For us, shots are common nouns and verbs that, together, form sentences or paragraphs, a language. And this language is constantly evolving. Sweet Smell of Success is part of my lexicon. It is there even when I don’t consciously refer to it. I love it because it stays true to its concept all the time. It never stops to take you by the hand, it pulls you in, period.”
David Fincher
Première, November 23, 2020
Best of James Wong Howe: Hud (1963)
This video presents the highlights of Wong Howe’s cinematography for Hud, the 1963 adaptation of a Larry McMurtry novel that showcased one of Paul Newman’s most iconic performances and that won Patricia Neal her Academy Award for Best Actress. Wong Howe won the Academy Award for Best Cinematography.
This video demonstrates Wong Howe’s brilliance in several modes: Ultra Widescreen Panavision for Dynamism, Making a Cadillac Emblematic of a Reckless Man (which shows how the pictorial qualities involving Hud’s pink Cadillac were used to reveal personality and, simultaneously, excite audiences), Tracking Two-Shots that Emphasize Connection…And Ultimate Disconnection (which shows how Wong Howe developed a motif over the course of the film), Filters Remove Clouds for a Stark, White-Hot Sky (which shows the use of light-blue filters to create an effect that Wong Howe bragged about in almost every interview he gave after this), Location Night Shooting Enhances Emotion and Realism (which actually benefits from the local bugs attracted to the photo floods), Wide Angle Lens (25mm) and Slow Pan Underlines the Isolation of a Barren Landscape (which shows one unbroken, high angled shot that made the surrounding farms look much farther away than they actually were), Matching a Location’s Bare-Bulbed Lighting for Small Town Authenticity (an instance in which Wong Howe proclaimed he resisted any use of his “special touch” with light), Mid-Gray, Rather than High Contrast to Create a Hot and Drab Environment (which shows how “Low Key Howe” stifled his favored mode for the sake of what was most appropriate for the story), Unglamorous Lighting to Suggest a Hard Life (which shows several scenes with Patricia Neal’s character, Alma), and One Virtuosic, Continuous Shot to Give Finality to a Character’s Arc (giving the kind of big send-off that couldn’t have hurt Neal’s chances on Oscar night).
The Fincher Analyst 