 Erwin Hillier began his career in his native Germany at Ufa studios as an
assistant to Fritz Arno Wagner on M (Germany, d. Fritz Lang, 1931) before moving
to Britain, where he joined the camera department at Gaumont British in 1933.
Despite working on major productions such as The Man Who Knew Too Much (d.
Alfred Hitchcock, 1934) and Evergreen (d. Victor Saville, 1934), Hillier was
keen to progress and so he took his chance to become an operator at Joe Rock
Studios, Elstree making quota quickies. It was during this period he met
director Michael Powell on the production of The Man Behind the Mask (1936).
After a period during the early years of the war making documentaries for the
Ministry of Information, Hillier photographed The Lady from Lisbon (d. Leslie
Hiscott, 1941) at Riverside Studios. This was followed by The Silver Fleet (d.
Vernon Sewell, 1943), for Powell and Pressburger's production company. The film,
which told the story of a modern Dutch Scarlet Pimpernel played by Ralph
Richardson, was shot on a breakneck schedule of five weeks at Denham and on
location in Kings Lynne and Liverpool Docks.
On the strength of his work Hillier was invited by Powell to shoot A
Canterbury Tale (1944), an atmospheric tale of latter-day pilgrims following in
the footsteps of Chaucer. Hillier was delighted to be photographing a production
in which landscape played such an important role:
There are so many things in nature which are fascinating. When we used to go
out to select locations I would spend hours by myself, not only with a compass
watching the sun, I would also pick out certain things early in the morning and
then again in the early evening. I used to find out the time when everything
looked most fascinating, when it had character and style, rather than shoot in a
flat light.
The daylight exteriors of the Kent landscape are consequently bathed in a
warm, radiant glow. This contrasts with the arrival of the three latter-day
pilgrims in the village of Chillingbourne, which occurs during the blackout, and
it is under the cover of darkness that the mysterious 'glueman' strikes, pouring
glue on the hair of unsuspecting girls. These sequences are extremely low key,
with the characters often just visible by virtue of minimal backlighting, their
silhouettes giving them an aura of mystery. Several sequences hinge on an idea
of banishing the darkness and letting in the light, of conveying the experience
of revelation. Light alternately floods in and is cut out as the blackout
curtains are opened and closed during the lecture given by Thomas Culpepper
(Erie Portman's squire, who turns out to be the glueman). Culpepper himself is
introduced as a silhouette against the light from the slide projector, while in
the dim room smoke from dozens of cigarettes and pipes rises, evoking the
sequence of the smoking policemen in M. As he begins to evoke the magical powers
of the pilgrims' road, his face emerges from the darkness with a striking
intensity, as Hillier later explained:
I dimmed up the light just as we moved in on his face. I had a little hit of
light for his eyes and the light was dimmed up very slowly so you weren't aware
of it, and when he came in you got the expression in his eyes. If you don't
capture the eyes you don't capture the mood, the soul of a person.
Hillier's next film for the Archers developed further their romantic ideas of
mysticism and the elemental force of landscape. "I Know Where I'm Going!" (1945)
is largely set in the Western Isles of Scotland, dominated by the elements at
their most powerfully foreboding: dark brooding skies, wild seas, impenetrable
fog and lashing rain. These effects were enhanced by some calmer sequences on
the quayside shot at the magic hour - the last moments of light before sunset -
for which Hillier utilised one small lamp and a graduated filter to cope with
the subtle constant changes in the light and atmosphere. The interior lighting
in IKWIG bears the hallmarks of expressionism: looming shadows, shafts of light
and angular compositions. The darkness finally lifts with the passing of the
storm and the realisation by Joan (Wendy Hiller) that her careful life plans
must change. The final scenes are shot in a bright sunlight with calm, tranquil
skies and seas - a stark contrast to the rest of the film.
A key sequence in which the boat carrying Joan and Torquil (Roger Livesey) is
almost wrecked in the Corryvreckan whirlpool is effectively rendered with
process shots cut together with some breathtaking live action. Much of this was
filmed by Hillier in rather dangerous conditions close to the real whirlpool,
operating a Mitchell with a thousand-foot magazine in a small boat. A
considerable amount of blue screen was used because Livesey was unable to
travel to the locations. The results are mainly very impressive, largely due to
the way Hillier approached the problem to enable a close match between
background and foreground action:
I suggested that we try deep focus because to shoot in the normal way would
be unacceptable as we had to cut from real exteriors to interiors. It had to be
a perfect match. Anyway, I had a go and took a hell of a risk as there weren't
any light meters and I had to do it all by eye. But having had so much
experience as an operator looking through the camera I knew exactly when I
stopped down how the exposure would be and how much depth of field I would
get.
After these triumphs Hillier suffered a double setback. He was replaced as
Powell and Pressburger's regular cameraman by Jack Cardiff when the Archers
began shooting in Technicolor. His own debut in colour, the musical London Town
(1946), starring the music hall comedian Sid Field, he describes as "one of the
worst mistakes I made in my life". The film was made at Shepperton which had
just reopened after the war and suffered from a lack of equipment, particularly
modern are lamps. While Hillier places much of the blame on director Wesley
Ruggles, who envisaged the film as a stage production with little cinematic
flair or imagination, it is obvious the cameraman was not comfortable working
with Technicolor. The lighting is rather harsh in some sequences, while the
'Germanic' style of diffused close-ups on female performers is rather jarring
when cut with the long shots. To top it all the production also went over
schedule and failed badly at the box office.
Hillier bounced back, but the rest of his career was dominated by well made
but rather minor productions like The October Man (d. Roy Ward Baker, 1947), a
psychological thriller starring John Mills, and Mr Perrin and Mr Traill (d.
Lawrence Huntington, 1948). He compensated for his earlier problems with colour
on Mario Zampi's romantic melodrama Now and Forever (1955), insisting on
retaining three-strip Technicolor against the wishes of the ABPC front office,
who wanted to use Eastman Color, and subsequently experimenting with muted
colour effects:
I was trying to use a diffused light like a painter's north light. So I had
some very large spun glass diffusers made up which were placed two or three feet
away from the lamps so it wouldn't get scorched ...
In some sequences Hillier used a big arc lamp to cover an entire area which
he diffused down, giving what he describes as a more subtle, almost luminous
effect. Reflectors provided fill in the shadow areas of the image and reduced
the contrast levels even further.
The latter part of Hillier's career is dominated by a series of
collaborations with Michael Anderson, beginning with Private Angelo (1949) with
Anderson handling much of the directing as the credited director, Peter Ustinov,
also played the leading role. Their best known film together is The Dam Busters
(1955), the story of the daring raids on Germany using the revolutionary
bouncing bomb, which is distinguished by effective day-for-night material and
the aerial footage shot by Hillier from the gun turret of a Wellington bomber.
By the 1960s Hillier and Anderson were working on bigger international
productions such as Operation Crossbow (UK/Italy, 1965), The Quiller Memorandum
(1966) and Shoes of the Fisherman (US, 1968), which includes some memorable
footage shot in St Peter's, Rome.
Duncan Petrie
This entry is taken from Duncan Petrie's The British Cinematographer (BFI, 1996). Used by permission.
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