Black Narcissus

In The Red Shoes – the story of a ballerina’s fatal obsession with her art – Cardiff’s fluid camera and bold use of colour created a unity from naturalistic, staged and dream sequences. He had a remarkable gift for telling a story with colours, and used red to striking effect: there is the red dress and lipstick of Kathleen Byron’s lovesick nun in Black Narcissus, and the red ballet shoes that torment Moira Shearer’s ballerina. 

The Red Shoes

Cardiff could find eroticism latent in the most unpromising circumstances, and few were able to light women as he could: his close-ups of burning eyes and moist lips revealed passionate depths in such demure actresses as Deborah Kerr and Kim Hunter. 

The Prince and the Showgirl

He also survived working with John Huston, for whom he filmed The African Queen (1951), a project of celebrated hardship made in colour, with Huston at his most perverse, more interested in hunting than in filming.  

The African Queen

For King Vidor, Cardiff filmed the gargantuan battle scenes in the American/Italian production of War and Peace (1956), for which he received one of his numerous Oscar nominations. In the event, he won only once, for Black Narcissus. 

War and Peace

The son of music hall performers, Jack Cardiff was born at Great Yarmouth on September 18 1914. His parents toured extensively, and Jack later claimed to have attended a multitude of schools. He made his film debut at the age of four, and in a subsequent role he played a boy who dies after being run over – his demise took three days to film, a harrowing experience for his parents since his elder brother had died in infancy.

Girl on a Motorcycle

Also known as Naked Under Leather, it stars Marianne Faithfull as a continental bimbo who leaves her sleeping husband, zips herself into black leather, straddles an enormous motorbike and thrashes off to seek the heartless intellectual (Alain Delon), who alone can satisfy. At a sexual climax induced by her beloved machine, she crashes spectacularly and dies. One feature of this fetishistic curio is that even on the most extreme bends the motorcycle never appears to deviate from the vertical. 

Alain Delon and Marianne Faithfull

Another peculiar venture was The Scent of Mystery (1960). Made for that quintessential showman Michael Todd, it was the first film to be presented in Odorama, or “Smell-O-Vision”, a system that released odours in a cinema so that the audience could “smell” what was happening on the screen.

Actress Sophia Loren (C) picnicking with director Henry Hathaway (L), producer Robert Haggiag (near R) and cameraman Jack Cardiff (R) on Via Appia Antica between shooting scenes for Legend of the Lost  Phototo by Eliot Elisofon, 1951

In 1994 the Los Angeles Society of Cinematographers presented Cardiff with its international award for outstanding achievement; the next year he received a lifetime achievement award from the British Society of Cinematographers. In 2000 he was appointed OBE, and the following year he was awarded an honorary Oscar.