Posted by Solomon on 8/29/2020, 5:57 am
I'm not equipped to cover the accomplishments of Benjamin H. Kline, whose name is probably most familiar from the numerous Three Stooges shorts that he filmed. I can say that if you watch "The Man They Could Not Hang" (1939), you will find that he already employed in a good many scenes a rather fully-developed noir vocabulary and capability. This film is available in an excellent print with great contrast so that in those scenes in which sharp black/light lighting contrasts appear, you get a good idea of what was known and used by Kline already at an early date.
When did this sharp noir look come in? I can't say. I don't know. I know that in some earlier films, dark scenes are sometimes too dark throughout, or look grey in others, or don't use the noir angles, etc. But here in 1939, we can see some of the noir look done sharply.
Apart from Stooges films, Kline did many westerns and later on TV-work.
Later on in the 40s when noir came in strongly, he was the man behind the camera for B-features, and they include "Detour" (1945), and then others in the 1947-1949 period, like "The Judge", "Shoot to Kill", "The Invisible Wall", "Roses Are Red", "Half Past Midnight", "The Crimson Key", "Strange Journey", "Tough Assignment, "Treasure of Monte Cristo", and "Deadline for Murder". These are in the public domain and the prints haven't been kept up for the most part, so that we do not generally get to see the proper look of the contrasts that we can see in the 1939 Karloff film--if and when they are there, which I certainly cannot remember.
But I do recommend "The Man They Could Not Hang" if you go for this type of movie, which I do. No logical point is overlooked and each one is addressed through brief dialog points, even though the film is science fiction for its time, and it's ahead of its time in dealing with both heart transplants and machines that circulate blood and mimic heart action.
Re: Benjamin H. Kline, cinematographer "The Man They Could Not Hang" (1939) 64m
Posted by Don Malcolm on 8/30/2020, 3:07 pm, in reply to "Benjamin H. Kline, cinematographer "The Man They Could Not Hang" (1939) 64m"
Kline had a fifty-year career and deserves a complete examination of his life and times, given that his professional life spans virtually all types of filmmaking from the silents on into the age of television. His son, Richard, followed in his footsteps and had a lengthy career in his own right, along the way becoming an ongoing collaborator with Richard Fleischer in his post-noir phase.
Kline was beyond indefatigable and had plenty of experience with opulent productions before his career took a somewhat mysterious turn into the "B" world. So his access to the theories and emerging technologies associated with cinematography was always at the cutting edge.
I think if AT were here with us, he could get more specific about Kline's career, but it's clear that he possessed similar personality attributes with several of the more "recalcitrant" cinematographers of the period (such as Alton, McCord, and several others) which caused them to move around a lot. But AT would tell you that there was a great deal of high-contrast photography floating around in the advent of Expressionism. And that "noir angles" are not unique to noir, but became the short-hand once they'd been appropriated into crime films in the pre-Code era and refined further by the early emigres (Lang, Litvak, Ulmer--remember Ulmer was in America even before Lang).
One of the other exponents of "crisp usage" is Arthur Todd, who might've been better known except that he died young (age 47) in 1942. He was part of the Warners' crew who worked with various directors in the late 30s where they incrementally apply the techniques that were later taken even further. One of the other of these DPs at Warners who was perfecting his craft in this area was already mentioned in passing above: Ted McCord.
Hollywood owes as much to its cinematographers as anyone else involved in its production process; as a group, they were much more uniformly accomplished than any of the other behind-the-scenes practitioners: writers, directors, editors. Given the pace of work and the nature of the business, it's no wonder than many DPs moved around--and Kline was clearly one of the ones who moved around the most.
Responses