An Introduction to Film

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Lighting and settingA good way to understand the

importance of how lighting influences our impressions of the

setting is to compare the quality of two movies that were

filmed in the same setting. Both Alexander Mackendrick’s

Sweet Smell of Success(1957; cinematographer: James Wong

Howe) and Woody Allen’s Manhattan(1979; cinematographer:

Gordon Willis) use the Queensboro Bridge (or 59th Street

Bridge, made famous in Simon and Garfunkel’s song of the

same name) for a key scene. Both scenes are shot at night in

the environs of the bridge.

[1] This scene from Sweet Smell of Successtakes place

outside a nightclub located on a street that runs alongside

and below the bridge. In this image, Sidney Falco, the

unscrupulous assistant to J. J. Hunsecker, the city’s most

powerful gossip columnist, has just planted drugs in the coat

of Steve Dallas, an innocent jazz guitarist who wants to

marry Hunsecker’s sister, Susan. We see Falco (Tony Curtis,

left) confirming the setup with NYPD Lieutenant Harry Kello

(Emile Meyer, right) and one of his assistants (unidentified

actor, center). Hunsecker has ordered Falco, as well as Kello,

whom he controls, to make Dallas the victim of this scheme

to keep the musician from marrying his sister. Shadows are

deep, and the streetlights cast sharp pools of light on streets

wet with rain. This atmosphere is made even more menacing

by the noisy sounds of the bridge traffic overhead.

[2] In Manhattan, two of the typically self-deprecating

New Yorkers that populate Allen’s movies——Isaac Davis

(Woody Allen) and Mary Wilkie (Diane Keaton)——meet for

the second time at a cocktail party, desert their dates and

leave together, and take a joyous walk through the streets,

which ends on a bench in Sutton Square, a quiet, elegant

neighborhood a few blocks closer to the river than the site

of the scene in image [1], but close enough that this scene is

also set alongside and below the bridge. The world of Sweet

Smell of Successcould be a million miles away. The bridge

stretches above the two characters and across the frame, its

supporting cables twinkling with lights, the early morning sky

soft and misty behind. The only sounds are the lovers’ voices

and George and Ira Gershwin’s romantic ballad “Someone to

Watch over Me.” Woody Allen is no starry-eyed fool, but the

Manhattan in this movie is all romance, soft lights, and

human relationships that (mostly) end happily.

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Soft versus hard lightingGregg Toland’s use of lighting

in Citizen Kane(1941) creates a clear contrast between

Charles Foster Kane (Orson Welles) [1] and Susan Alexander

(Dorothy Comingore) [2] that signals important differences

between them in age (Kane is 45; Alexander is 22) and

experience.

CINEMATOGRAPHIC PROPERTIES OF THE SHOT 239