Sir Douglas Slocombe OBE, BSC, ASC (10 February 1913 – 22 February 2016) was a British cinematographer, particularly known for his work at Ealing Studios in the 1940s and 1950s, as well as three Indiana Jones films. He won BAFTA Awards in 1963, 1974 and 1977, and was nominated for an Academy Award on three occasions.

Early life

Slocombe was born in London, the son of journalist George Slocombe (1894–1963). His father was Paris correspondent for the Daily Herald and so Slocombe spent part of his upbringing in France, returning to the United Kingdom in around 1933.

Slocombe initially intended to become a photojournalist and as a young photographer Slocombe witnessed the early events leading up to the outbreak of World War II. Visiting Danzig in 1939 he photographed the growing anti-Jewish sentiment. In consequence, he was commissioned by American film-maker Herbert Kline to film events for a documentary called Lights Out, covering a Goebbels rally and the burning of a synagogue, for which he was briefly arrested. Slocombe was in Warsaw with a movie camera on 1 September 1939 when it was attacked by Germany. Accompanied by Kline he escaped but his train was machine-gunned by a German aeroplane. In 2014, he said of the experience that:

"I had no understanding of the concept of blitzkrieg. I had been expecting trouble but I thought it would be in trenches, like WW1. The Germans were coming over the border at a great pace...We were trundling through the countryside at night. We kept stopping for no apparent reason, but we came to a screeching halt because a German plane was bombing us. After its first pass we climbed out the window and crawled under the carriage. The plane came back and started machine-gunning. A young girl died in front of us."

Escaping the train alive, Slocombe and Kline bought a horse and cart from a Polish farm, finally returning to London via Latvia and Stockholm.

Work

After returning to England, Slocombe became a cinematographer for the Ministry of Information, shooting footage of Atlantic convoys with the Fleet Air Arm. He also developed a relationship with Ealing Studios, where filmmaker Alberto Cavalcanti, who helped him obtain his position worked. Some of his photography was used as second unit material for fictional films.

Slocombe moved into photographing for feature films at Ealing Studios during the later 1940s after being hired on the strength of his documentary work. Slocombe later described his early work on Champagne Charlie as amateurish, in one case resulting in a sequence having to be reshot. However, in his career Slocombe worked on 84 feature films over a period of 47 years.

Slocombe would later speak approvingly of Ealing's culture of script development. However, he also noted that its restrictive studio system headed by Michael Balcon, in which outside work was not normally permitted, made it impractical for him to attempt to start a career as a director, something he had considered.

His early films as cinematographer included several classic Ealing comedies, notably Kind Hearts and Coronets (1949), The Man in the White Suit (1951), The Lavender Hill Mob (1951) and The Titfield Thunderbolt (1953). He was particularly praised for his flexible, high-contrast cinematography for the horror film Dead of Night, and for his bright, colourful West Country summer landscapes on The Titfield Thunderbolt.

Apart from filming, Slocombe worked also on developing plans for shots, visiting prisoner-of-war camps in Germany as part of pre-production for The Captive Heart. For Saraband for Dead Lovers, an early colour production, the production team settled on a muted, gloomy style unusual for the period, variously praised as unconventional and criticised for being excessively symbolic and leaving exterior and interior shots poorly matched.

An effect for which he was particularly acclaimed was a special effect shot in Kind Hearts and Coronets, which allowed Alec Guinness, playing eight different characters, to appear as six of them simultaneously in the same frame. By masking the lens, the film was re-exposed several times with Guinness in different positions over several days. Slocombe recalled sleeping in the studio to make sure nobody touched the camera. Slocombe personally regarded Basil Dearden as the 'most competent' of the directors he worked with in this period.

He found early colour photography sometimes restrictive, finding the Technirama colour camera system used on Davy 'a block of flats' and difficult to compose shots with.

Financial problems forced Ealing Studios to close down from 1955 onwards. Slocombe said of the period in 2015 that "we had to get on with our careers - there was little time for sentiment."

For The Italian Job, Slocombe was hired by producer Michael Deeley because "he tended to do very moody work, and he was very efficient". Slocombe later remembered shooting inside Kilmainham Gaol, a genuine closed prison, and finding the experience unpleasant: "the real thing, there is something quite terrifying about it. One knows hundreds and hundreds of people have suffered here...although this was a comedy, all this was still in the back of one's mind."

He won the British Society of Cinematographers Award five times, and was awarded its Lifetime Achievement Award in 1996. Roger Ebert particularly praised his work on Jesus Christ Superstar, writing that it "achieve[s] a color range that glows with life and somehow doesn’t make the desert look barren." Not all reviews of his later colour work were favourable: while his cinematography on Never Say Never Again has been described by one author as "subtle, subdued...[it] creates a mellow mood", it has also been assessed as "muddled and brown".

In the 1980s, he worked with Steven Spielberg on the first three Indiana Jones films. Also notable among his later films is Rollerball (1975).

Personal life

Slocombe experienced problems with his vision from the 1980s onwards, including a detached retina in one eye and complications from unsuccessful laser eye surgery in the other, and was nearly blind at the end of his life. In his later years, he lived in West London with his daughter, his only child.

He was appointed Officer of the Order of the British Empire (OBE) in the 2008 New Year Honours, and attended a BAFTA dinner in his honour in 2009. He turned 100 in February 2013. Despite his blindness, Slocombe remained able to give interviews into his last years, and was interviewed by David A. Ellis in a book entitled Conversations with Cinematographers in 2011 and by the BBC on the invasion of Poland in 2014 and the history of British films in 2015. He was quoted in the latter interview as saying "it's a weird feeling to have outlived virtually everyone you ever worked with."

Slocombe died at the age of 103 in the morning of 22 February 2016, in a London hospital from complications following a fall.

Awards

Academy Awards

• Nominee Best Cinematography – Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981)
• Nominee Best Cinematography – Julia (1977)
• Nominee Best Cinematography – Travels with My Aunt (1972)

BAFTA

• Nominee Best Cinematography – Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom (1984)
• Nominee Best Cinematography – Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981)
• Winner Best Cinematography – Julia (1977)
• Nominee Best Cinematography – Rollerball (1975)
• Winner Best Cinematography – The Great Gatsby (1974)
• Nominee Best Cinematography – Jesus Christ Superstar (1973)
• Nominee Best Cinematography – Travels with My Aunt (1972)
• Nominee Best Cinematography – The Lion in Winter (1968)
• Nominee Best Cinematography (Color) – The Blue Max (1966)
• Nominee Best Cinematography (B&W) – Guns at Batasi (1964)
• Winner Best Cinematography (B&W) – The Servant (1963)

Saturn Awards

• Winner Best Cinematography – Rollerball (1975)

American Society of Cinematographers

• Winner International Award (2002)

British Society of Cinematographers

• Winner Lifetime Achievement Award (1995)
• Nominee Best Cinematography – Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom (1984)
• Winner Best Cinematography – Julia (1977)
• Winner Best Cinematography – The Great Gatsby (1974)
• Winner Best Cinematography – Jesus Christ Superstar (1973)
• Winner Best Cinematography – The Lion in Winter (1968)
• Winner Best Cinematography – The Servant (1963)

Los Angeles Film Critics Association

• Winner Best Cinematography – Julia (1977)

Selected filmography

• The Big Blockade (1942)
• Dead of Night (1945)
• Painted Boats (1945)
• The Captive Heart (1946)
• Hue and Cry (1947)
• The Loves of Joanna Godden (1947)
• It Always Rains on Sunday (1947)
• Saraband for Dead Lovers (1948)
• Kind Hearts and Coronets (1949)
• A Run for Your Money (1949)
• Cage of Gold (1950)
• The Man in the White Suit (1951)
• The Lavender Hill Mob (1951)
• Mandy (1952)
• The Titfield Thunderbolt (1953)
• Touch and Go (1955)
• The Smallest Show on Earth (1957)
• The Man in the Sky (1957)
• Circus of Horrors (1960)
• The Boy Who Stole a Million (1960)