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Conrad Hall was nominated for nine Oscars and won
two - most recently for 1999's American Beauty. Considered
an expert in the use of light, Hall filmed nearly
three dozen movies in a career that stretched 50 years.
His other Academy Award was for 1969's 'Butch Cassidy
and the Sundance Kid'.
'Every film that he worked on was something beautiful
to the eye, and very imaginative', said producer Richard
Zanuck, who was head of production at Twentieth Century
Fox when Hall made 'Butch Cassidy' and worked with
him on last year's mob tale, 'Road to Perdition'.
'With 'Road to Perdition' you could virtually take
every frame of his work and blow it up and hang it
over your fireplace. It was like Rembrandt at work',
Zanuck said. 'Connie was not known for speed, but
neither was Rembrandt. He was known for incredible
genius'.
Hall's other films included 'The Professionals' (1966),
'In Cold Blood' (1967), 'The Day of the Locust' (1975)
and 'Searching for Bobby Fischer' (1993).
He shot in black and white and colour, evoking chilly
realism in 'In Cold Blood' and soaked-soaked surrealism
in 'American Beauty'. He struggled at first with that
film, Sam Mendes ' dark, absurd portrait of a dysfunctional
family, Hall once told an interviewer.
'I kept asking Sam, 'How are we going to light these
people? They're all so unsinkable'. ... But everybody
deserves a little light, don't they?' he said.
The film's rich images, including hypnotic shots of
cascading red rose petals, helped it win five Oscars,
including best picture and best cinematography.
'Light was his friend and he could use as much or
as little of it as he thought was fitting for the
scene he was doing or the shot he was doing', Zanuck
said. 'He was a master of subtlety'.
His many honours included a lifetime achievement award
from the American Society of Cinematography in 1994
and an outstanding achievement award in 1988 for 'Tequila
Sunrise'. He served last year as Kodak cinematographer
in residence at the University of California, Los
Angeles' School of Theatre, Film and Television.
Hall was to be honoured later this month with a lifetime
achievement award from the National Board of Review
Susan Hall said.
Born and raised in Tahiti, Hall was the son of James
Norman Hall, co-author of the novels 'Mutiny on the
Bounty' and 'The Hurricane'. He initially wanted to
go into journalism, but after doing poorly in a creative
writing class at the University of Southern California
he looked for a new major by flipping through the
course catalogue, he told the Los Angeles Times last
year.
'It started with A for astronomy, B for biology and
C for cinema. I thought 'Cinema? You mean like movies?
Rubbing elbows with stars? Making all that money?'
For all the wrong reasons, I signed up, and then had
a love affair with the visual language and learned
to tell stories like my dad', Hall said.
Hall's son, Conrad W. Hall, followed him in the profession,
most recently filming the beautifully, if sombre,
lit 'Panic Room'. I.
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