James Wong Howe, A.S.C. was simply a visionary. Greatly admired in the business, Howe’s talents as a cinematographer were highly sought after. Over his six-decade long career, Howe worked closely with a variety of directors on productions big and small and successfully navigated his way through major industry transitions including the advent of sound, color and the widescreen format. While Howe dabbled in directing, he preferred cinematography which he considered a more creative pursuit. 

He was nominated for 10 Academy Awards for Best Cinematography for films including ALGIERS (’38), ABE LINCOLN IN ILLINOIS (’40), THE NORTH STAR (’43), SECONDS (’66) and his final film FUNNY LADY (’75). He won twice, for THE ROSE TATTOO (’55) and HUD (’63). Among his favorite films to work on were THE THIN MAN (’34), VIVA VILLA! (’34), PICNIC (’55) and THE OLD MAN AND THE SEA (’58). But many, including himself, considered the pinnacle of his achievement to be HUD, a sweeping drama directed by Martin Ritt that included stunning shots of barren Texas landscape and one of the most poignant and beautifully shot endings in cinema history.

According to the TCM documentary directed by Daniel Raim, IMAGE MAKERS: THE ADVENTURES OF AMERICA’S PIONEER CINEMATOGRAPHERS (2019), Howe “practiced the art of the cinematographer as the highest form of storytelling and imbued it with his own engaging point of view.” Howe had a keen eye for expressive lighting and composition that accurately depicted the mood of any given story. He earned the nickname “Low-Key Howe” for his penchant for lighting that looked more natural on screen. In an interview, Howe said, “I like to cross light. I don’t like to have many shadows on the wall because every time you show one shadow it becomes another character. It intrudes upon the scene.” Howe taught himself deep focus, keeping the foreground, middle ground and background in focus and thus creating multi-layered shots. For Howe, the magic happened when the actors, director and cinematographer were all in sync with each other. He was insular in his training and didn’t watch many other films because he felt that inspiration should come from within.

Howe was an innovator from the very start, crafting new techniques that enhanced visuals while adding more emotional resonance to scenes. Many of Howe’s innovations were purely accidental. In his early days photographing actresses for studio portraits, he made Mary Miles Minter’s light blue eyes, which were difficult to photograph, darker by having her look at a piece of black velvet. Years later, while working on Howard Hawks’ WWII drama AIR FORCE (’43), a generator that was used for lighting stopped working. He was shooting a scene in which B-17s were landing on a burning field. He had his technicians wire flares while utilizing the headlights from the planes. The flickering lights and smoke from the flares resulted in a very dramatic shot that would not have been as effective had it been done with steady lights.

Often times his innovations involved some creative problem solving or experimentation. For Robert Rossen’s THE BRAVE BULLS (’51), Howe strapped the camera to the actors’ waist to create a unique point of view for the bullfighting sequences. According to the AFI, in order to film Ronald Colman shaking hands with himself in THE PRISONER OF ZENDA (’37), Howe used a 3X4 foot optical glass and a double whose head and shoulders were matted out with masking tape. Then he ran the film backwards and re-photographed with just Colman’s head and shoulders and everything else matted out. 

For director John Cromwell’s ABE LINCOLN IN ILLINOIS, scenes were shot utilizing the glow from torchlights, enhanced by reflectors that produced a naturally soft image. To capture the boxing sequences in Robert Rossen’s BODY AND SOUL (’47), Howe, a former boxer himself, used eight different cameras, one of which was a hand-held camera that Howe carried while squatting on roller skates while an assistant guided him around the ring for low-angle shots. To enhance the visuals on Alexander Mackendrick’s SWEET SMELL OF SUCCESS (’57), Howe added Vaseline to star Burt Lancaster’s thick-rimmed glasses to make them shine giving Lancaster a more menacing appearance.

Howe’s preference was to work in black-and-white. In an interview he said, “black and white is a medium you can do many things with thematically, with filters and so on. With color you’re restricted.” While working on the Technicolor film THE ADVENTURES OF TOM SAWYER (’38), he struggled to get the lighting right in the cave sequence. Howe defied Technicolor’s strict guidelines and shot the scene with less lighting than they had required. This resulted in a more natural look that producer David O. Selznick was pleased with. However, this angered Technicolor and Howe was barred from working on color films until 1949.

His mastery of black-and-white cinematography can especially be seen in his later work on films such as John Frankenheimer’s SECONDS. He employed 9mm fish-eye lens, used low f-stops and worked with the crew to create sets that appeared distorted and a bit offkilter. The black-and-white cinematography and the extreme angles ramp up the drama in this mind-bender of a film. For HUD, Ritt worried that Howe would not feel particularly inspired by mostly exterior shooting in a rather plain landscape. Ritt wanted to include more footage of clouds, but Howe saw the blank sky and open landscape as representative of the isolation the characters felt within the context of the story. The final scene was to be shot in a bedroom and was changed to an exterior shot that brilliantly captures the end of an era for the family. The door closes on the viewer just as the words “The End” appear on the screen. While we don’t know if this was Howe’s vision or Ritt’s, it does demonstrate how cinematography is key to evoking a message or theme to a viewer in an effective way.