On The Prowl

Losey had a favourite move,  
  Where his camera would glide,  
Round the back of a seated one,  
  While a standing one would stride,  
Up and down obsessively,
  A tiger in a cage,  
As that camera prowls aggressively,  
  A monster in a rage.

The most exciting version of this actually comes in SECRET CEREMONY, where Liz Taylor does the pacing, covered from two camera positions, with the dolly jolting back and forth at whiplash speed, sometimes in counterpoint to her movement, sometimes in synch with it, the whole thing assembled with great skill and BITE by Reginald Beck’s editing. (I had Beck pegged as a fuddy-duddy since he objected to the flash-forwards in THE GO-BETWEEN, but his work in SECRET C is extremely lively and innovative. Earlier, when Liz slaps Farrow, he cuts across the line with an insert of just three frames between his longer shots, and that little subliminal shot STINGS!)

“We did some camera movements in SECRET CEREMONY that are really impossible to get. There is a scene where Elizabeth is walking up and down talking to [Farrow's character] Cenci about the past, just before the suicide. I wanted to swing the camera with her, and she was walking quite fast — up and down — as she talked, and [cinematographer] Gerry Fisher had to work with the weight of a crab-dolly which was the only way we could do it. I had to have about six men on that dolly to be able to get it off and bring it back.”

I had a conversation on the phone with Gerry Fisher once, when we were trying to get a feature off the ground. We figured any investors would be happier if they could pair a first-timer like me with someone experienced, and I thought, “Who better?” G.F. was a charming fellow and seemed quite interested, but we never got the money.