Oswald "Ossie" Morris & Film - Part 3

This is the third extract from an interview with Ossie Morris (see Part 1, posted 10th November 2008, with introductory details.)

All of the interview is Copyright © Oswald Morris & Barrie Gordon 2008.


Ossie (O): ... directors you want to know?

Barrie (B): Well, we've spoken about David Lean, about 'Oliver Twist', but I wondered ...

O: Well let me say: there are good directors and there are bad directors. A bad director is one employed by the Company to make the film, and usually those directors were under 52 week contract, so all they're concerned about is keeping the Company happy, and drawing their money. Now, that usually makes a dull film ... sometimes a bad film, because what those directors do, they call the actors onto the set and they say 'right, would you like to rehearse it'. They rehearse it, and say 'OK', and they turn to me and say 'right, how do we shoot it?'. They wouldn't do anything - they'd let the actors do what they want to do. Now, they are usually the kiss of death, they really are. You get lumbered with these at the beginning, but as I got more films I dodged those people like the plague.

B: I understand that later, at a certain stage you became freelance?

O: Oh yes ... I was a freelance after my first film 'Golden Salamander'. Now, 'Golden Salamander', I was given that under my camera operator contract, err ... after the war, and my camera operator contract gave me £20 a week, which was a lot of money in those days. When I left the air force and they knew I was getting £20 a week, all the officers thought God, you know, can I get a job there? (we laughed!) Anyway I, err, what was I going to say ... oh yes, sorry ...

B: Good and bad directors really.

O: Oh that's right, yes ... so, the first film I did, 'Golden Salamander', all they did was upped my salary to £40 a week, which was the minimum union salary, for the film. Now, at the end of that film the Company said to me 'now, we haven't got another film for you, but you can carry on as a camera operator under contract guaranteeing you £20 a week or if you want to be released from the contract we'll do that'. And I talked to my wife about that and I took the chance, and said I'd like to leave.

B: A big step, but probably worth doing?

O: Now, I had great support from my wife, and I said 'dear, we may be going through rough times but fingers crossed' ... it worked, I got an offer of a film through friends of mine, and did that, so that I now got two films and then people started asking me, and slowly but surely I got more and more films and fewer breaks.

B: Can I just say, when ... talking about getting jobs, was it always the case that somebody came to you or did you sometimes approach somebody to work on their film?

O: In the early days I daren't approach somebody to work on their films, I was too terrified to do that. I had to ask err ... I had to wait for somebody to ask me, and on reflection now I don't think even up to the 58th film, I ever went to anybody to ask them to do the film.

B: It was always a case of somebody phoning you, or writing to you, and saying 'would you like to do ...?'

O: It's usually A: through ... I had to get an agent in the end - you have to have that, because of the legal aspect of it. Ah, they either approach the agent or they'll approach me direct, and if they approached me direct I'll say I want to do it, I tell my agent and he does all the financial thing, and the thing of credits on the front - very important ...

B: On the front of the film?

O: Yes, you start off with your credits in amongst a whole lot, and then the aim is to get what we call 'single screen credit', and then the size of the credits - all credits are judged by the size of the title, and they go 75%, 60%, 50% of the size of the title. So that's how it went ... and now you asked me about directors.

B: One second, I was going to say, talking about credits ... I noticed that when you became a ... I think I noticed ... you became a ... cinematographer, that on 'Fiddler on the Roof' you had full credit?

O: Oh yes.

B: There was just the roof, and you were on top!

O: Yes, oh I had full screen credit way back before then. I can't remember when it went to full-screen. I think it was shortly after I did 'Moulin Rouge' which was quite young - I was quite young in that.

B: ... I understand that was directed by John Huston.

O: That's right.

B: ... and you had quite a long association with John Huston. Can you tell me about, say, one or two of his films or the way of working?

O: Well, let me say how I got the films first because that's interesting. I wasn't the first choice. There was a very distinguished German cameraman called Otto Heller, who was much more senior than me ... was invited ... because I'd only done about eight or nine not major features then - yes, they were features, but not ones that gonna knock you for six, and I got a message saying that John Woolf wanted to see me . Now I knew John Woolf was the producer of the film and I asked my mentor Ronnie Neame (who comes into my life very much and he's still alive in California ... 96 years of age, and we still talk) and I said to Ronnie 'you know I've been asked to go and see John Woolf but' I said 'Otto Heller's doing the film', and Ronnie said ' there must be something wrong, he wouldn't ask you there'. I said 'maybe he's going to get me to do the 2nd unit'. 'Go and see him' he said 'and see what he says', and I went and saw him and he said 'John Huston wants you to photograph 'Moulin Rouge'' ... err, 'are you prepared to do it?' And I said ... I was absolutely gobsmacked to use a crude word .. err, and I said, 'well, yes, yes'. He said 'now how much money do you want?' Now Ronnie Neame had advised me, because I was only getting £40 a week, the union maximum, said 'Ossie, you've got to up your money like mad because he won't respect you otherwise'. So I said 'well how much do I ask him for?' He said '£100 a week' I said 'he'll never give me that ... '.'Ask him, you're going to get it because John Huston wants you. If John Huston wants you, John Woolf will get you.' So, I saw John Woolf and now he said how much did I want, and I said '£100 a week', and he said 'Good God, you're only getting £40 a week' which is exactly what Ronnie said, and I said 'Yes, but I think I'm worth that you know, to take on this project ... it really is a mammoth project', and that's how I got onto it. Now that film was the turning point ... in my career.

B: This was 1953?

O: Well it was shown '53, it was made '52, yes, and when I went and saw Huston, I went to Claridges to see him, and I was invited up into his wonderful suite on the 1st floor. I had never been to Claridges before, and he said 'come in, sit down kid, sit down kid' and he sat at a desk with a pad, and I thought he was ready to take notes and he was quizzing me, and one thing he asked me, which absolutely flummoxed me - he said 'do you know anything about the Toulouse-Lautrec paintings?' Well, I didn't. I knew about a lot of the French Impressionists - Monet, Degas, people like that but not Toulouse-Lautrec. I said 'well not really, very much'. He said 'ha ha ha'. He said 'how many films have you done?'. So I told him and he said - he eventually said 'OK fine' and he'd been writing or at least I thought he was, and as he got up to go out, I looked down ... he wasn't writing notes at all - he was drawing a sketch of me, and it wasn't half bad ... I could see it as I went out ...

B: Was it in the Lautrec style or something?

O: (Laughter) Well, it could have been, yes I mean, some of the Lautrec, yes ... a sort of a wraggedness that Lautrec had. Anyway, I went home and I said to my wife ... - She said 'how did it go'. I said 'total disaster, I don't think I've got it'. Anyway, it was then that I was asked to go and see John Woolf and he made the deal. So I got ...

B: £100 a week?

O: Yes ... and that's how I got the film. Now, I go to see him again in Claridges and I said 'now, how do you see the film being ... looking', and that impressed him ... I know that. He said 'very simply I'd like it to look as though it was directed by Toulouse-Lautrec'. So he said, 'Now, we've got a 2nd unit going down to Albi where all the original Lautrec's are in the museum in the south of France'. He said 'we got the 2nd unit going down, why don't you go down with them, and look at the paintings' ... they're going to photograph all these paintings for a montage in the film. So I go down with the 2nd unit. And I look at this lot - now, I thought God, what have I let myself in for, what have I let myself in for - these paintings are a mixture of sketching and err ... colourwash ... there are no oil paintings there ... he didn't do it in oils, he used to sketch on the tablecloth, in the Moulin Rouge while the can-can girls were dancing, and things like that. So, I came back and I thought, you know, I've got to go for broke on this now. So, I thought, how can I do it. Now, Technicolor in those days was all powerful - there was no other colour system, and they had a big franchise and they controlled everything you did in colour. You rented the cameras, you rented the crew, they processed the film, they printed the film ...

B: I have read a bit about this because err ... 'Technicolor executives were stunned ...' (with the muted photographic treatment in 'Moulin Rouge')

O: Oh, yes.

B: ... and then they came round eventually ...

O: Oh right, not until the film was shown ... (and on the method of muting ...) Now, how did I do that?. Well there were two ways I could do that - one was to use fog and that would diffuse it, and another I, and I did some tests with fog ... I asked for ...

B: What you're saying is artificial ...

O: Yes, artificial. We had machines, you can put it in, and I asked for two or three sections of sets to be built, and I got a stand-in in one of the costumes that's going to be in that particular set, so we saw some idea of the colours, just a small section, like a corner and I put a girl or a man in there and I do these tests. And I took them to Huston and I was as nervous as a kitten by now, and I ran them, and with Huston I'd already learnt you don't talk yourself in, you let him make the decision because if you tell him how good you think they are he'll immediately prove to you you're an idiot. So, I waited and he said 'ha ha, ha ha, why don't you do some more'. I said 'fine'. So that meant I'd got...

B: ... you'd got the green light.

O: I'd got the green light. So, I did the same thing again with more smoke and heavier fog filters. Showed them to him again. 'Very interesting' he said. Well, I got know that when he said 'very interesting' it means that's a seal of approval. He said 'why don't you give it one more go.' So I did, and while we're doing ... it takes two weeks from when you do it, to see it in the old system, it's a very complicated system.

B: I think that's what we talked about earlier, out of this conversation, was that with the modern techniques you more or less see it straightaway.

O: Oh, yes.

B: You could shoot it, look at it ...

O: Yes, you couldn't even do that. With Technicolor you could not see anything in colour properly until the end of the film - you only saw it in black & white.

B: Not until the end of the film!

O: No, they did ... what you did ... every 1000 feet of film you ran - at the end of it, they said 'can we have a pilot please?'. Now all they do, is get the actor or actress to stand in the set, and shoot 10 feet of film, which they processed and let you see it two weeks later. Well, two weeks later we could be in Timbuktu!


... to be continued .....