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What made me embrace this film project on Caravaggio was
something one of my teachers in photography school used to say: My
dear boys and girls, you cannot know everything in life, what is
important is to learn where things are, so that as they move faster
youll know where to look for them.
My spirit is that of an eternal student, always looking for new
opportunities to broaden areas
of knowledge, philosophy and the arts. When Caravaggio was
offered to me by the producer Ida Di Benedettoto whom I am
enormously grateful for allowing me to devote a part of my life to
this undertakingI knew that it would be a real opportunity to study
in depth the trajectory and work of this genius and visionary
protagonist. Caravaggios genius caused an earthquake in the
figurative arts, and they have never
Vittorio Storaro: The Shadow and Light of
Caravaggio
A film devoted to Michelangelo Merisi, universally recognized by
the pseudonym Caravaggioan extremely tormented character and
celebrated artist of the seventeenth centurywill be shown on Italys
RAI Uno TV channel and in movie theatres in two distinct versions
this year. The film directed by Angelo Longoni and shot by the
three-time Oscar-winning cinematographer Vittorio Storaro, ASC, AIC
was produced by Ida Di Benedettos company Titania with RAI, in
co-production with France, Spain and Germany. InCamera met the
legendary cinematographer Storaro to find out what motivated him to
sign on to this project.
been the same since. Nowadays, photography, architecture and
cinema cannot forego a profound knowledge of the oeuvre of this
artist who left an indelible mark on world culture.
Moreover, Caravaggio allowed me to explore further the mystery
of light and shadow. This is a theme that, right from the
beginning, has always been at the centre of my personal
cinemato-graphic story. Caravaggios shadow
is the visualization of where the unresolved states of mind
dwell, a condition innate in the human unconscious. To do this, I
thought of proceeding visually with a style of writing with light
that would make the bodies emerge from the darkness, and enable me
to make conscious what had for some time resided in the
unconscious.
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1 Actor Alessio Boni plays Caravaggio 2 Extract from Judith
Beheading Holofernes3 Caravaggio was an accomplished swordsman4 A
scene from the film
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Howmuchdidthework ofCaravaggiostimulate
andinspireyourownpersonalartisticjourney?
Just as a writer tells a story with words and a musician
expresses a mood with music, we cinema-tographers write and
transmit emotions through the harmony and conflict between light
and shadow.
The intersection of these two entities generates colours. When I
made Tis Pity Shes A Whore and Giordano Bruno at the beginning of
my career, I wasnt aware of the profound symbolic and conceptual
meaning of these elements, but possessed a purely technical
preparation from my studies in cinema and photography. It was then
that I visited the Church of San Luigi dei Francesi in the centre
of Rome with my fiance Tonia, who later became my wife. There I
made a discovery that changed my whole way of life and my approach
to images. I discovered through an analysis of a few paintings, how
much the use of light and shadowdirected, concealed, or filtered on
a subjectcould underline and emphasize a concept written in words.
Thus the viewer watching a complex work like a film and
experiencing the sensations arising from the energy flows on the
screen, can feel an emotion.
Whatexactlyhappened thatdayatSanLuigidei Francesi?
While I was walking around inside the church, I discovered the
Contarelli Chapel, decorated with extraordinary paintings by an
artist whose name I didnt know at the time. One in particular took
my breath away: The Calling of St Matthew, which I later learned
was by Caravaggio.
The thing that struck me was the extraordinary vision of
something that I was actually putting in scenes back then: a clean
separation between light and shadow. I was so bowled over by that
painting that I felt immediately impelled to try and understand and
deepen the relationship between these two elements, to understand
the most hidden, innermost meaning of that light. I had to take my
studies to a level that enabled me to grasp the intrinsic
significance of that representation.
Caravaggio was in fact a great filmmaker, he conceptualized the
subject and the composition, chose the figures, did the costumes,
designed the sets, and illuminated them like a master
cinematographer. As in the great revolutions in cinema, Caravaggio
moved from natural light to artificial light, From Judith Beheading
Holofernes on, the subjects of his paintings were almost always
illuminated by a lantern. In fact, we are seeing the completion of
a cycle in Caravaggios painting: first he used natural light as
seen and reflected in a mirror that framed his subjects, followed
by the
gradual focusing of the light on his subjects, making the
background ever darker, and ending with a revolutionary passage
from natural to artificial light.
The painting genius found his maximal creative expression in his
first official commission from the Church: notably the The Calling
of St. Matthew and The Martyrdom of St. Matthew for the Contarelli
Chapel in San Luigi dei Francesi.
Caravaggiowasalsoa manwhowascontinually
tornbetweenthediabolicalandthesaintly:adualitysynthesizedinthestrugglebetweenlightandshadowinhispaintings.Whatsolutiondidyouusetoexplainthisdichotomy?
I adopted a philosophy of light that closely followed the course
of his creativity and his life. If we analyze the paintings in the
Contarelli Chapel, in fact, we see that Caravaggio visualized The
Calling through the natural light of day and depicted The Martyrdom
of St Matthew with artificial light at night. He succeeded in
transmitting the sense of the Saints passage from life to death,
through the passage of light.
The astounding effect of The Calling on the viewer stems from
the artists brilliant intuition of depicting a ray of light,
symbolizing the divine, coming for the first time from the right,
like a ray of light at sunset.
It is not seen as a source of
light that illuminates the subjects, but a pure, transcendental
entity that slices through the darkness like a scalpel, dividing
the human from the divine. In the painting the subjects are
illuminated by a suffused light that is separate from the ray of
light. At the top of the painting, the artist has placed a window
that does not emit light, but establishes a balance in the
horizontal composition of the work.
In the film versiondirected by Angelo Longoni and which will
come out both in theatres and on televisionwe imagined Caravaggio
lying in his studio one morning, sick and tired, and being awakened
by a ray of light entering through a small window and cutting
across the foreground of the painting, superimposing itself on it,
and that this gave him the idea for completing this extraordinary
work. This was the revelation for portraying the Calling, the
choice of an entity between the human and the divine: a ray of
light.
Whichformatand basesupportdidyou usetofilmCaravaggio?
In general, I think that negative film is much more sensitive
than the technicians say; at least there is the possibility of
recording the emotions of people who participate in the
construction of the images themselves. Looking at an image
projected on a large or small screen, it is possible to feel the
harmony or
Film is an archival medium, so the negative will be there for
future generations to see whatthis ecosystem was once like.
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conflict experienced by those who contributed to creating a
specific project. I maintain that the sensitivity of a filming
system is not exclusively related to the technological level, but
also to the intangible possibility of registering emotions. I
believe this is a specific characteristic pertaining especially to
negative film.
We made Caravaggio in Univisium, filming on 35mm neg with a
composition ratio of 1:2 and with three perforations at 25 frames
per second.
The 35mm films used were the basic four KODAK VISION2 films:
50D, 250D, 200T, and 500T processed by Technicolor in Rome.
Youhavealwaysused avarietyofKodak
negativeswithinthesamefilm,acreativechoicethatsetsyouapartfromthetendencyevidentinmanyfilmsthatareshotwithonlyonetypeoffilm.Canyoutelluswhyyouoptforthismultiplechoicewhileshooting,andwhyyouusetheUnivisiumformat,whichfurthermore,youinvented?
I think it is extremely important not to use only one type of
film for all the needs that natural light and artificial light
present, in the high and low tonalities they produce. I think it is
a big mistake to lose the multitude of tonalities that these films
are able to register when each one is used specifically for the
light appropriate to it. That is lost when you decide to use just
one for all the different lighting situations while shooting a
film.
Kodak films (5201-5205-5217-5218), with their proven consistency
and the reversibility between them, enable the indispensable
matching of the various scenes during the editing, because they
provide maximal tonal and chromatic registration in the different
situations of NATURAL or ARTIFICIAL light, in low or high
intensity, with a range from 50 to 500 ASA. Univisium is a system
that allows you to save 25 percent on the cost of classic 35mm,
thanks to the use of three perforations in the negative instead of
four, and to have 25 percent more time for creativity while
shooting, which
is really important, especially for the scenes with a Steadicam.
And all this in a panoramic format of 1:2. I would like to
emphasize that to shoot in 35mm with 3 perforations, instead of
S16, does not represent an alarming increase in cost, considering
the superiority of 35mm and the increased possibilities for selling
the product in other countries.
Toconclude,Vittorio, athoughtabout
Caravaggioscolours.Avividandintensepalettethatneverleavesoneindifferent.Howdidyouinterpretthisinyourcinematographicconcept?
In 1600 there were two possibilities for expressing light, using
natural sunlight and moonlight, or using the sources of artificial
light that existed at that time, such as torches, candles,
braziers. This made me want to create the images of the film using
totally distinct, but obviously complementary chromatic elements
with respect to two specific entities: the sun and the
moon, the Father and the Mother. A collection of chromatic
nuances from red to orange to yellow to represent the sun, and one
colour only for the moon: WHITe. My expressive choice transpired
from my studies of the artists oeuvre. In analyzing Caravaggios
colours, I was able to verify that he had never used blue in his
paintings. Never. He opted for black, symbolizing the unconscious;
red, representing birth and death; orange, synonymous with the
relationship to his childhood and his mother; and yellow, the
colour of puberty, consciousness, and LIgHT. He went as far as
using greenknowledgein a few paintings. But he stopped there. So I
saw to it that there is never any blue in our film. evenings and
nights are depicted with neutral or pale lights. everything starts
with the BLACK, with matter, progressing to WHITe, to energy.
This was done out of respect and admiration for the chromatic
spectrum of an extraordinary artist, Michelangelo Merisi, known as
Caravaggio.
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