Light and Shadows: Conrad Hall

REFERENCED FILMS COOL HAND LUKE FAT CITY IN COLD BLOOD INCUBUS

Amidst all the hoopla over this year’s summer blockbusters, New York’s Brooklyn Academy of Music quietly ran a short film series in May to honor the work of Conrad Hall, the well-known director of photography who passed away this January. The four films in “Light and Shadows: Conrad Hall” — Cool Hand Luke (1967), In Cold Blood (1967), Incubus (1965), and Fat City (1972) — aptly demonstrate Hall’s artistry and underline his inventiveness.

Conrad Hall’s extensive filmography (he was working up until he died), includes a number of popular films: Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid (1969), Tequila Sunrise (1988), American Beauty (1999, for which he deservedly won an Oscar), Panic Room (2002), and Road to Perdition (2002, for which he won another Oscar, this one posthumously). The films in BAM’s series reflect a particular time, when complex character studies and in-depth examination of social issues were the norm in mainstream films.

The first shot in Cool Hand Luke is a close up shot of a parking meter, with signs reading, “Time Expired” and “Not Permitted.” Such declarations of prohibition (accompanied by thudding, anxious music) set up a sense of oppression that the film goes on to explore. The next shots show a drunken Lucas Jackson (Paul Newman), severing the heads off the meters one by one. Red lights flicker on his face as he pulls another swig from his flask; it’s the cops, come to restore law and order. The shot freezes on Luke, smiling slightly, as they pull up to arrest him. Roll credits.

Luke never explains why he’s cutting up the meters; we don’t know whether it’s pure mischief, unfocused rebellion, or determined strategy. He’s sent to a Southern prison camp for two years, at which point, the film’s color scheme shifts, from the striking blacks and reds of the first few scenes to bland, dispiriting hues. The barracks are blue: the walls, the bars on the windows, and the steel mesh frame of the door are cut only by the stark yellow light cast by the bare light bulbs hanging from the ceiling. It’s an institutional hell, where the prisoners have to ask the warden’s permission to leave their cots at night.

After standing up to the bully Dragline (George Kennedy) in a boxing match, Luke earns the respect of the other inmates. Out of boredom, he bets everyone that he can eat 50 hard-boiled eggs in an hour. When he does, the other prisoners roar in excitement and rush off to collect their winnings on the bet, while the camera pans to reveal the famous shot of a Christ-like Luke, naked except for shorts, bloated and spread-eagled on a bed of eggshells.

Luke (named for the apostle) struggles to figure out if there is a God. Working on the chain gang on the highway every day in blistering, yellow heat, Luke wonders aloud if there is a God. This question comes back to haunt him. After an escape attempt, he’s recaptured and, while the other prisoners watch from a lighted window, the guards beat Luke outside in a ditch. He finally begs for forgiveness but he will only get it, they tell him, if he declares his allegiance to God. This question of belief — if God exists, how could He sanction such brutality — carries the film to its depressing conclusion. The ending returns to the beginning: at last, a red light reflects on Luke’s face as he smiles irrepressibly.

There’s no red in the black and white films In Cold Blood or Incubus. Both films explore good and evil via complex contrasts of light and the dark. In Cold Blood is a faithful rendering of Truman Capote’s non-fiction novel, about two ex-cons who brutally murdered the Clutter family in Kansas in the mid-1950s, juxtaposing the lives of the Clutter family and the two men who will murder them. In the opening scene, Perry Smith (Robert Blake) is on an overnight Greyhound bus to Kansas, smoking cigarettes and strumming his guitar. A young girl moves away, frightened by the greasy hair and menacing motorcycle jacket that mark him as a “misfit.”

Once in Kansas City, he meets up with his pal, clean-faced Dick Hickock (Scott Williams). They wind their way through crowded streets as they make their plans, accompanied by Quincy Jones’ jazzy soundtrack. They drive around, drinking soda and eating burgers served by a roller skating waitress in a drive-through, just hours before the fateful crime.

By contrast, the Clutters wake up to the pale winter sun shining over their flat Kansas farmland and simple wood frame house. It’s another quiet Saturday: they exchange friendly good mornings, drink milk in the kitchen, and plan their day. Herbert Clutter (John McLiam) politely kisses his daughter Nancy (Brenda Currin) goodbye before she goes horseback riding. His invalid wife rests in bed. That evening, after supper, Nancy’s boyfriend comes by to watch TV with the family. There’s seemingly no connection between the two worlds — one urban and noisy, the other rural and, despite the family’s name, decidedly uncluttered.

But their fates collide late that night when the guys pull up silently in the woods behind the farmhouse. The house looks particularly vulnerable, framed against the snowy fields, outlined only by a few dark trees, isolated. There’s one light on still — Nancy is praying before she goes to sleep. Hickock and Smith exchange uneasy glances. It’s their moment of truth, and both want to bow out. But Nancy’s light goes out, a signal for them to begin the crime and the metaphorical sign that evil has won out over good.

The next morning, the thin sunlight fills the silent, empty rooms, until Nancy’s friend discovers the bodies. We witness the murders only at the end of the film, when Smith describes them to the police. Hall filmed the murders at night, in the actual Clutter house, using only flashlights, and the effect is truly creepy. Smith and Hickock’s faces, flickering, look both shocked and eager; Nancy’s face, streaked with tears, is horrified when they point the flashlight to shoot her.

Very differently, Incubus is set on a magical island (filmed on the beautiful California coast) where the characters speak Esperanto. The Bergmanesque plot has men drawn to a well that promises eternal life, but the succubae (beautiful maidens) lure them to their death on the beach. Kia (Allyson Ames), a particularly ambitious succubus, wants to seduce a “good man,” despite her older sister Amael’s (Eloise Hardt) warnings that the truly good have great powers. In some of the most hypnotic and riveting scenes, Kia runs through the woods, looking for a good man. Hall’s long shots show only brief flashes of Kia’s white dress and long blond hair amid the trees. In comparison, Marc (William Shatner), a recently returned war hero, appears shadowed and bent, walking with a cane, weakened by his experiences.

Marc is, of course, the good man. Pretending to be a lost farm worker, Kia asks him for help. Chivalrous Marc offers her food and lodging, just as an eclipse begins. While they sit in the shadow, waiting for the sun to return, Marc falls under Kia’s spell, although it’s unclear if Kia, too, in the twisting of light and darkness, has fallen for him as well. This inversion of light and dark continues: the full moon is so bright that we’re never sure whether its day or night, or whether the archetypal good will actually win out over evil. As part of the series, BAM held a “Cinemachat” with the producer of Incubus, Anthony Taylor. He noted that Hall made 99% of the decisions on the photographic setup, further demonstration of his talent and the respect he inspired.

For John Huston’s Fat City (1972), Hall returns to color. Muted tones underline the film’s focus on two working class guys who dream of making it as boxers. The streets are pocked with drab bars and a dusty pawnshop, with only the gym’s white facade shining in the pale sunlight: boxing is their only way out.

Tully (Stacy Keach) is on his way out; he used to box but lost his career and wife to his alcoholism. By chance, he spots Ernie (a very young Jeff Bridges) at a local YMCA and convinces him to start boxing for money. Ernie joins the local gym run by trainer Ruben (Nicholas Colasanto, later “Coach” on Cheers), and starts practicing in the glowing, bright room, indicative of the promise he represents to both himself and Ruben. Tully, meanwhile, ekes out a living as a migrant worker. Under the searing sun (reminiscent of the chain gang scenes in Cool Hand Luke), Tully drinks from his flask, wearily wipes sweat from his forehead, and tells anyone who’ll listen his plans to get back on track. That he never does is tragic, but conveyed in stunningly simple and evocative imagery.

“Light and Shadows: Conrad Hall” emphasizes the artist’s painstaking cinematography that serves stories rather than upstaging them. It’s a welcome reminder of the time when movies pushed boundaries — visual and narrative.