Chinese-American cinematographer James Wong Howe was a diligent and far-reaching young man. In modern terms, he was a hustler, but in the early exploratory years of the film, everyone did when the up-and-coming film industry produced dozens of titles each week. In the 1910s, praised silent filmmakers like DW Griffith and Cecil B. Demil seem to have risen with wise business insight, false confidence, and good luck.
Wonhow had all of them, but he had more courage — he had to. It was clear in the endless, reckless innovation of his work. His reputation as the best perfectionist. And his success and respected position in an industry where there is virtually no place for Asian artists. James Wong Howe was a rebellious person.
His decades-long career spanning the Era of Silence, the Golden Age of Hollywood, and the New Hollywood Renaissance of the 1960s and 70s is a creative endurance despite fashion changes, industry upheaval, and discriminatory practices. It symbolized the spirit. He revolutionizes the way the film communicates visually and conveys emotions without the need for words or even performers, such as the expressive use of wide-angle and fisheye lenses in a science-fiction drama that replaces John Frankenheimer’s body. We have developed a new technology that can be used. “Seconds” (1966); Or one of the earliest aerial shots of the last moment of Joshua Logan’s technicolor romantic comedy. “picnic” (1955).
These and other examples of Wonhow’s photographic prowess can be seen in the ongoing series dedicated to his work, which lasts until June 26th. Moving Image Museum In Queens.
James Wong Howe was born in 1899 in Wong Tung Jim, Guangdong Province, China. In the early 1900s, he was taken to Pasco, Washington by his entrepreneurial father. There he experienced racism, learned boxing, and began messing around with the camera before his father died in 1914. Unlike Charlie Chaplin’s classic character, Trump, Wong Howe was a game outsider who stumbled from unhappiness to unhappiness. He went to Oregon, San Francisco, and Los Angeles, where 18-year-old Jimmy Howe finally set out to work as a Janitorial staff member at Lasky Studios.
Demir liked Jimmy. He was amused by the contrast between the young man’s floral shirt, his small stature and the oversized cigar he smoked on the set. Wonhow was not passive. He seemed to be challenging the problem of skin color. In his spare time, he got used to the equipment in the studio and practiced taking pictures with a still camera. Soon he was promoted to assistant cameraman.
At that time, no one could be considered a genuine camera expert. People learned at work and improvised new technologies, so the crew that made them stand out were those who found creative solutions to the problems that occurred on the set. This was Wong Howe’s strength and the source of his first big break. Actress Mary Miles Minter was still impressed with Wonhow’s portrait and claimed to make her next movie. He devised a solution that could prevent her blue eyes from turning white on the camera. This is a problem caused by the blue-sensitive orthochromatic film used at the time. Since then, his reputation as a formidable photographer has been guaranteed.
Wonhow wasn’t the only Asian artist hanging out in the studio backlot. There was an actor Sessue Hayakawa born in Japan. The on-screen enforcement of the Hollywood Interracial Anti-Mixing Act restricted him to playing the role of a forbidden lover or the sadistic Svengali type, but his among white female viewers. Popularity made him like a bank. Then, when the film industry began to make bigger and more spectacular works in an “exotic” setting, Chinese-American actress Anna May Wong was a reliable support performer. In fact, Wong Howe shot her in one of her first major roles as the indigenous princess Tiger Lily at Herbert Brenon’s “Peter Pan.”
However, the new anti-Asian sentiment and production code of the 1930s, which narrowed down the depiction of interracial relationships, further discouraged the industry from working with Asian performers. Wong Howe was initially frustrated at this time, but was nicknamed “Lowy Howe” because of his preference for his work, especially the dramatic, high-contrast lighting. His split screenshots allow Major Ronald Colman’s Major Lassendir to speak directly with the Doppelganger in John Cromwell’s “Pow of War at Zenda Castle” (1937) and Busby Berkeley’s “The Made Me Acriminal” (1939). The battle scenes taken in are as follows. Because it’s internal organs, you can almost feel the boxing gloves jerking.
He was loved by the media, but it was novel that Asian men could be so talented. When Very personal and respected by his collaborators, Wong Howe was often despised by the white crew under his command. He dealt with the laws and prejudices that forced him into second-class citizenship throughout his life. During World War II, he wore a button with the words “I’m Chinese” to avoid harassment if everyone thought he was Japanese. He has lived in the United States for nearly 40 years, Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 He banned him from acquiring citizenship. Without it, he was forced to decline exciting creative opportunities, such as joining John Ford’s wartime documentary crew.
Perhaps the most devastating was his marriage to a novelist. Sanora BabThe couple tied a knot in Paris in 1937, but due to California’s Interracial Anti-Mixing Act and the studio’s moral provisions, they weren’t made public until decades later. Suspected of having a relationship with the Hollywood Communists, he was put on the “Gray List” by Senator Joseph McCarthy’s House Un-American Activities Committee. Wong Howe was mostly away from politics, but it didn’t help China to become a communist country.
Still, following the volatile 1940s, he collaborated with Fritz Lang on the provocative war thriller “Hangmen Also Die!” And Ida Lupino’s ambitions in Vincent Sherman’s pitch-black soap opera “The Hard Way.” And captured all shades of vulnerability. .. “
Wong Howe’s image is sublime, and his expressive interaction of light and shadow evokes moral conflict from the thin air. He re-thought New York with “the sweet scent of success.” This is Alexander Mackendrick’s 1957 drama about a malicious newspaper reporter, which many consider to be Wonhow’s masterpiece. He oiled the walls of the interior set to give it a surreal sparkle, and used long-focus lenses to make the buildings look dense, emphasizing the delirium of claustrophobia.
Few people have the work that triggered the movie to move from a mere dime-ticket spectacle to a form of art. Still, Wonhow was hungry. Since the 1920s he has wanted a director. He was given the opportunity in the form of consignment documentaries and “B” films, but his true ambitions were often denied. He had a project on a Chinese rickshaw puller and a script he wrote with Bab about Chinatown in San Francisco, both of which were eventually withdrawn due to lack of funding. If you can only be screened once at the Moving Image Museum, use Wonhow’s only director function, “Go, Man, Go!”. (1954), starring newcomers Sidney Poitier and Ruby Dee in a drama about Harlem Globetrotters. It’s a bare minimum piece, but like Wong Howe himself, there was something bigger and more grit and spirit just below the surface.
Wonhau did not deny his Chinese roots. For some time he ran a popular Chinese restaurant frequently visited by Marlene Dietrich, Mickey Rooney and Tyrone Power. And in his last year, he was to wear traditional Chinese clothes. Todd Rainsberger’s 1981 cinematographer’s study created a broader American portrait of Wong Howe, who died in 1976, who felt loyal to him, if not his employer. It became clear that he was anxious. He was one of the great American cinematographers and won the Oscar twice, but he knew it was worth it, so he wanted more. That was his rebellion.
“How It’s Done: The Cinema of James Wong Howe” will be held until June 26th at the Moving Image Museum in Astoria, Queens. For more information, Movingimage.us..
