Ralph Douglas Vladimir Slocombe, (10 February 1913 – 22 February 2016) was an English cinematographer and centenarian. He was particularly known for his work at Ealing Studios in the 1940s and 1950s, and the first three Indiana Jones films. He won three BAFTA Awards for Best Cinematography - The Servant (1963), The Great Gatsby (1974), and Julia (1977) - and was nominated for the equivalent Academy Award on three occasions.
Slocombe received Lifetime Achievement Awards from both the British and American Society of Cinematographers. In 2008, he was ascended an Officer of the Order of the British Empire (OBE) at the 2008 New Year Honours for his contributions to motion pictures.
Early life
Slocombe was born in Putney, London, His father was the Paris correspondent for the Daily Herald, and so Slocombe spent part of his upbringing in France, returning to the United Kingdom around 1933. He graduated with a degree in Mathematics from the Sorbonne.
Slocombe initially intended to become a photojournalist, and as a young photographer, he witnessed the early events leading up to the outbreak of World War II. Visiting Danzig in 1939, he photographed the growing anti-Jewish sentiment. In consequence, he was commissioned by American film-maker Herbert Kline to film events for a documentary called Lights Out, covering a Goebbels rally and the burning of a synagogue, for which he was briefly arrested. Slocombe was in Warsaw with a movie camera on 1 September 1939 when Germany invaded. Accompanied by Kline, he escaped, but his train was machine-gunned by a German aeroplane. In 2014, he said of the experience that:
<blockquote>I had no understanding of the concept of blitzkrieg. I had been expecting trouble but I thought it would be in trenches, like WW1. The Germans were coming over the border at a great pace ... We were trundling through the countryside at night. We kept stopping for no apparent reason, but we came to a screeching halt because a German plane was bombing us. After its first pass we climbed out the window and crawled under the carriage. The plane came back and started machine-gunning. A young girl died in front of us. Slocombe later described his early work on Champagne Charlie (1944) as amateurish, in one case resulting in a sequence having to be reshot.
Slocombe would later speak approvingly of Ealing's culture of script development. However, he also noted that its restrictive studio system headed by Michael Balcon, in which outside work was not normally permitted, made it impractical for him to attempt to begin a career as a director, something which he had considered.
His early films as a cinematographer included such classic Ealing comedies, notably Kind Hearts and Coronets (1949), The Man in the White Suit (1951), The Lavender Hill Mob (1951), and The Titfield Thunderbolt (1953). He was particularly praised for his flexible, high-contrast cinematography for the horror film Dead of Night (1945), and for his bright, colourful West Country summer landscapes on The Titfield Thunderbolt. For Saraband for Dead Lovers (1948), shot in Technicolor, the production team settled on a muted, gloomy style unusual for the time, which Slocombe in 2015 considered as among his best work of the period.
A special effect shot he created was a scene in Kind Hearts and Coronets, in which Alec Guinness, playing eight different characters, appeared as six of them simultaneously in the same frame.
He found widescreen equipment sometimes restrictive, finding the Technirama camera system used on Davy (1958) "a block of flats" and difficult to compose shots with.
After Ealing
Financial problems forced Ealing Studios to wind down from 1955 onwards, and close later in the decade. In 2015, Slocombe said of the period that "we had to get on with our careers – there was little time for sentiment."
He won the British Society of Cinematographers Award five times, and was awarded its Lifetime Achievement Award in 1996. He also won a special BAFTA award in 1993. Not all reviews of his later colour work were favourable: while his cinematography on Never Say Never Again (1983) has been described by one author as "subtle, subdued...[it] creates a mellow mood", it has also been assessed as "muddled and brown". Notable among his later films is Rollerball (1975). He was quoted in 1989 as saying of it "there's an excitement in doing action films. I probably enjoy them on a sort of Boy Scout level." Janusz Kamiński, cinematographer on Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, said that he deliberately shot the film to emulate Slocombe's visuals, in order to create an appearance of continuity with the previous pictures.
Personal life
Slocombe experienced problems with his vision from the 1980s onwards, including a detached retina in one eye and complications from unsuccessful laser eye surgery in the other, and was nearly blind at the end of his life. Despite his blindness, Slocombe continued to give interviews into his last years, and was interviewed by David A. Ellis in a book entitled Conversations with Cinematographers, in 2011 by French television in French, by the BBC on the invasion of Poland in 2014, and on the history of British films in 2015.
Death
Slocombe died on the morning of 22 February 2016, aged 103, in a London hospital from complications following a fall.
Filmography
Documentary film
{|class="wikitable plainrowheaders"
! scope="col" | Year
! scope="col" | Title
! scope="col" | Director
! scope="col" | Notes
|-
! scope="row" | 1940
| Lights Out in Europe
| Herbert Kline
| Uncredited
|-
! scope="row" rowspan="2" | 1943
| Greek Testament
| Charles Hasse
|
|-
| San Demetrio London
| Charles Frend
| Uncredited
|}
Feature film
{|class="wikitable plainrowheaders"
! scope="col" | Year
! scope="col" | Title
! scope="col" | Director
! scope="col" | Notes
|-
! scope="row" | 1941
| Ships with Wings
| Sergei Nolbandov
| Uncredited
|-
! scope="row" | 1944
| For Those in Peril
|rowspan=2|Charles Crichton
|
|-
! scope="row" | 1945
| Painted Boats
|
|-
! scope="row" | 1946
| The Captive Heart
| Basil Dearden
|
|-
! scope="row" rowspan=3|1947
| Hue and Cry
| Charles Crichton
|
|-
| The Loves of Joanna Godden
| Charles Frend
|
|-
| It Always Rains on Sunday
| Robert Hamer
|
|-
! scope="row" rowspan=2|1948
| Saraband for Dead Lovers
| Basil Dearden
|
|-
| Another Shore
| Charles Crichton
|
|-
! scope="row" rowspan=2|1949
| Kind Hearts and Coronets
| Robert Hamer
|
|-
| A Run for Your Money
| Charles Frend
|
|-
! scope="row" rowspan=2|1950
| Dance Hall
| Charles Crichton
|
|-
| Cage of Gold
| Basil Dearden
|
|-
! scope="row" rowspan=2|1951
| The Lavender Hill Mob
| Charles Crichton
|
|-
| The Man in the White Suit
| Alexander Mackendrick
|
|-
! scope="row" rowspan=2|1952
| His Excellency
| Robert Hamer
|
|-
| Mandy
| Alexander Mackendrick
|
|-
! scope="row" | 1953
| The Titfield Thunderbolt
|rowspan=2|Charles Crichton
|
|-
! scope="row" rowspan=2|1954
| The Love Lottery
|
|-
| Lease of Life
| Charles Frend
|
|-
! scope="row" rowspan=2|1955
| Ludwig II
| Helmut Käutner
|
|-
| Touch and Go
| Michael Truman
|
|-
! scope="row" | 1956
| Sailor Beware!
| Gordon Parry
|
|-
! scope="row" rowspan=4|1957
| The Man in the Sky
| Charles Crichton
|
|-
| The Smallest Show on Earth
| Basil Dearden
|
|-
| Barnacle Bill
| Charles Frend
|
|-
| Davy
| Michael Relph
|
|-
! scope="row" | 1958
| Tread Softly Stranger
| Gordon Parry
|
|-
! scope="row" rowspan=2|1960
| Circus of Horrors
| Sidney Hayers
|
|-
| The Boy Who Stole a Million
| Charles Crichton
|
|-
! scope="row" rowspan=3|1961
| The Mark
| Guy Green
|
|-
| Taste of Fear
| Seth Holt
|
|-
| The Young Ones
| Sidney J. Furie
|
|-
! scope="row" rowspan=2|1962
| The L-Shaped Room
| Bryan Forbes
|
|-
| Freud the Secret Passion
| John Huston
|
|-
! scope="row" | 1963
| The Servant
| Joseph Losey
|
|-
! scope="row" rowspan=2|1964
| The Third Secret
| Charles Crichton
|
|-
| Guns at Batasi
| John Guillermin
|
|-
! scope="row" rowspan=2|1965
| A High Wind in Jamaica
| Alexander Mackendrick
|
|-
| Promise Her Anything
| Arthur Hiller
|
|-
! scope="row" | 1966
| The Blue Max
| John Guillermin
|
|-
! scope="row" rowspan=3|1967
| Fathom
| Leslie H. Martinson
|
|-
| Robbery
| Peter Yates
|
|-
| The Fearless Vampire Killers
| Roman Polanski
|
|-
! scope="row" rowspan=2|1968
| Boom!
| Joseph Losey
|
|-
| The Lion in Winter
| Anthony Harvey
|
|-
! scope="row" | 1969
| The Italian Job
| Peter Collinson
|
|-
! scope="row" | 1970
| The Buttercup Chain
| Robert Ellis Miller
|
|-
! scope="row" rowspan=2|1971
| Murphy's War
| Peter Yates
|
|-
| The Music Lovers
| Ken Russell
|
|-
! scope="row" | 1972
| Travels with My Aunt
| George Cukor
|
|-
! scope="row" rowspan=2|1973
| Jesus Christ Superstar
| Norman Jewison
|
|-
| The Return
| Sture Rydman
| Short film
|-
! scope="row" rowspan=2|1974
| The Great Gatsby
| Jack Clayton
|
|-
| The Marseille Contract
| Robert Parrish
|
|-
! scope="row" rowspan=4|1975
| The Maids
| Christopher Miles
|
|-
| Rollerball
| Norman Jewison
|
|-
| That Lucky Touch
| Christopher Miles
|
|-
| Hedda
| Trevor Nunn
|
|-
! scope="row" rowspan=2|1976
| The Sailor Who Fell from Grace with the Sea
| Lewis John Carlino
|
|-
| The Bawdy Adventures of Tom Jones
| Cliff Owen
|
|-
! scope="row" rowspan=2|1977
| Nasty Habits
| Michael Lindsay-Hogg
|
|-
| Julia
| Fred Zinnemann
|
|-
! scope="row" | 1978
| Caravans
| James Fargo
|
|-
! scope="row" rowspan=2|1979
| The Lady Vanishes
| Anthony Page
|
|-
| Lost and Found
| Melvin Frank
|
|-
! scope="row" | 1980
| Nijinsky
| Herbert Ross
|
|-
! scope="row" | 1981
| Raiders of the Lost Ark
| Steven Spielberg
|
|-
! scope="row" rowspan=2|1983
| The Pirates of Penzance
| Wilford Leach
|
|-
| Never Say Never Again
| Irvin Kershner
|
|-
! scope="row" | 1984
| Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom
| Steven Spielberg
|
|-
! scope="row" | 1985
| Water
| Dick Clement
|
|-
! scope="row" | 1986
| Lady Jane
| Trevor Nunn
| With Derek V. Browne
|-
! scope="row" | 1989
| Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade
| Steven Spielberg
|
|}
Television
{|class="wikitable plainrowheaders"
! scope="col" | Year
! scope="col" | Title
! scope="col" | Director
! scope="col" | Notes
|-
! scope="row" | 1957
| Play of the Week
| Peter Brook
| Episode "Heaven and Earth"
|-
! scope="row" | 1975
| Love Among the Ruins
| George Cukor
| TV movie
|}
Awards and nominations
Academy Awards
{|class="wikitable"
! Year
! Category
! Title
! Result
! Ref.
|-
| 1972
|rowspan=3|Best Cinematography
| Travels with My Aunt
|
|
|-
| 1977
| Julia
|
|
|-
| 1981
| Raiders of the Lost Ark
|
|
|}
BAFTA Awards
{|class="wikitable"
! Year
! Category
! Title
! Result
! Ref.
|-
| 1964
|rowspan=11|Best Cinematography
| The Servant
|
|rowspan=11|