Jack Cardiff (1914-2009)

This man was called Jack Cardiff. He was and still is deemed to be Britain's greatest camera man and cinematographer. Born on the boards – his music hall parents put him in the silent film ‘My Son, My Son’ in 1918, aged four – he progressed through runner, clapper boy and camera operator, often under Alexander Korda, until two big breaks: being taken on as the first British trainee for Technicolor and embarking on a globetrotting colour-documentary career culminating in the Oscar-winning ‘Western Approaches’ in 1944. Then, magic happened. Second unit on one masterpiece, ‘The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp’, he was invited by its director, Michael Powell, to film the whole of a second. His work on ‘A Matter of Life and Death’ (1946) – incredibly, his first complete credit – ‘Black Narcissus’ (also 1946) and ‘The Red Shoes' (1948), with Cardiff’s versatility and pioneering experimentalism dancing perfectly in tune with the Archers’ own, produced a trio of achievements of beauty, impact and emotional meaning that are unsurpassed in British film.

Through six decades it was concluded that Jack Cardiff's energy never dimmed. He worked up until he was ninety.