Haskell Wexler
BORN CHICAGO, USA, FEBRUARY 6, 1922. DIED SANTA MONICA, CALIFORNIA, DECEMBER 27, 2015, AGED 93
THE CINEMATOGRAPHER Haskell Wexler, who won an Academy award for Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf ? (1966), was known for his life-long advocacy of progressive causes. He told the award ceremony as the Vietnam war raged — “I hope we can use our art for peace and for love”.
Feted throughout the industry, Wexler also received an Academy Award for Bound for Glory (1976) a biography of folk singer Woody Guthrie, whom he had met during the Second World War while both men were serving in the Merchant Marines. He received a joint Oscar nomination for One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest (1975) and was five times nominated for an Oscar. Medium Cool, shot during the 1968 Democratic National Convention in Chicago, signalled his rejection of boundaries in art or politics.
He worked with many leading directors. He received an Independent Spirit Award for Matewan (1967) on West Viginia coal miners, the first of four for John Sayles, who noted Wexler’s concern with the story — “thematically, morally, politically”.
Wexler, who was colour-blind, used contrasts and shadows. He received the last Oscar for monochrome cinematography for Mike Nichols’ Who’s afraid of Virginia Woolf? praised for his closely observed, often unflattering portrayals of warring stars Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton. The ethical and radical issues which dominated Wexler’s thinking could be seen in documentaries like Who Needs Sleep? (2006) examining overworked Hol-
Haskell Wexler: ethical film maker whose radical vision broke down boundaries in art and political thinking lywood film crews, and Brazil: A Report on Torture (1971) .
His radical views may have led to his dismissal as director of photography in One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest. It came in the wake of a documentary he had made featuring interviews with fugitives. Miles Forman, who directed the five-times Academy Award winner claimed Wexler was difficult to work with and replaced him with Bill Butler, both jointly receiving the Oscar nomination. A devastated Wexler pointed out that there were only one or two minutes in the film he did not shoot.
Wexler grew up in an affluent, liberal Jewish background. One of the three sons of Simon, founder of Allied Radio, and Lottie Wexler, he recalled Paul Robeson visiting their home and getting involved in civil rights discussions. “We were actively supporting the federal anti-lynching law.” In Italy with his family, aged 12, he used a 16mm Bell & Howell camera to film uniformed fascist youths, which he later intercut with home movies.
He studied at the progressive Francis Parker school and then spent a year at the University of California, Berke- ley, before dropping out to serve in the Merchant Navy for four years. He was decorated for bravery having rescued fellowcrewmemberswhenhisshipwas torpedoed off the coast of South Africa.
After the war his parents helped him open a studio in Des Plaines, Illinois. The industrial films he made there all had social significance. But the studio closed in 1947 and he turned to educational films. He won his first Oscar nomination for best documentary short for The Living City, (1953) concerned with slum clearance and the need for affordable housing.
Wexler’s first feature film was the low budget Stakeout on Dope Street, directed by Irvin Kershner, starring his brother Yale as one of three heroin peddling teenagers.Throughout the 1960s Wexler shot mainly black and white naturalistic films such as Kershner’s The Hoodlum Priest (1961) and The Face in the Rain (1963). For this film he invented the handheld running shot, running with an actor down a narrow alley.
He made two mainstream colour films for Norman Jewison, The Thomas Crown Affair, and In the Heat of the Night (1967) featuring Sidney Poitier as a black detective and Rod Steiger as a bigoted police chief, in a psychological standoff, and.
The upsurge of anti-Vietnam war fervour returned Wexler to the documentary material he felt “closer to the skin”. In 1971 he filmed a powerful Oscar winning documentary, Interviews with My Lai Veterans. Further films criticising US policy in Vietnam followed.
Right into the 80s Wexler chose to use non-fiction film technique as a means of heightening both the action and creativity. He is survived by his third wife, the actress Rita Taggart, his children Mark, Jeff and Kathy and his sister Joyce.