Visions of Light

Movies have a quality akin to alchemy. They are, after all, images created from an illusionistic display of light. These moving pictures have always seemed so real to us, yet their reality is as translucent as the gossamer wings described in fairy tales

Behind so much of this magic is the cinematographer. And as demonstrated in the fascinating documentary Visions of Light, the cinematographer is a no-nonsense breed of magician.

Visions of Light is more than just a first-rate introduction to the art of cinematography. It's also a good reminder of the genuine beauty of the photographic image. The film unleashes an avalanche of clips — from Birth of a Nation to Blade Runner — as it condenses 100 years of cinema to the basic forces of light and shadow.

Better still, Visions of Light is stocked with interviews with a virtual who's who of cinematographers. These are the kind of people who dream movies in their sleep — and know how to film them when they're awake.

And, hey, you're going to learn things. Visions of Light is the rough equivalent of a year in film school. You learn about the lighting tricks that were used to sculpt the facial features of Greta Garbo and Marlene Dietrich. Vittorio Storaro explains the use of color in The Last Emperor. Gordon Willis confesses that the dark, threatening look of The Godfather was originally designed to hide the obvious make-up job on Marlon Brando's face.

Four figures are crucial to the history presented in Visions of Light: at the beginning of time, Billy Bitzer helped D.W. Griffith form the basic vocabulary of the cinema. Gregg Toland conspired with Orson Welles to blow up a fair amount of that vocabulary in Citizen Kane. James Wong Howe steered the '50s into the direction of razor-sharp focus, while Conrad Hall guided the' '60s toward lens flares and backlighting.

Like any history, this is partly myth. But it's also partly true.

An important half of cinematography is having the knowledge and experience to produce the image you want. The other half is the ability to move fast on your feet. Sometimes a mistake makes a shot better than it was originally planned.

Visions of Light contains two major ironies. The first is that most of the interviews were videotaped on a HDTV (high definition television) system and transferred to 35mm film. Shades of technological changes to come.

The second is that the film was co-produced by the American Film Institute and NHK/Japan Broadcasting Corporation. At the moment, the Japanese and the English are producing some of the best documentaries on the American cinema.

And you thought it was just cars that we couldn't build anymore.