focus on film

Vittorio Storaro: The Shadow and Light of

Caravaggio

A film devoted to Michelangelo Merisi, universally recognized by the pseudonym Caravaggioan extremely tormented
character and celebrated artist of the seventeenth centurywill be shown on Italys RAI Uno TV channel and in movie theatres in
two distinct versions this year. The film directed by Angelo Longoni and shot by the three-time Oscar-winning cinematographer
Vittorio Storaro, ASC, AIC was produced by Ida Di Benedettos company Titania with RAI, in co-production with France, Spain and
Germany. InCamera met the legendary cinematographer Storaro to find out what motivated him to sign on to this project.
1

What made me embrace this

film project on Caravaggio was
something one of my teachers
in photography school used to
say: My dear boys and girls, you
cannot know everything in life,
what is important is to learn where
things are, so that as they move
faster youll know where to look
for them.
My spirit is that of an eternal
student, always looking for new
opportunities to broaden areas

Caravaggio.indd 2

of knowledge, philosophy and

the arts. When Caravaggio was
offered to me by the producer
Ida Di Benedettoto whom I am
enormously grateful for allowing
me to devote a part of my life to
this undertakingI knew that it
would be a real opportunity to
study in depth the trajectory and
work of this genius and visionary
protagonist. Caravaggios genius
caused an earthquake in the
figurative arts, and they have never

been the same since. Nowadays,

photography, architecture and
cinema cannot forego a profound
knowledge of the oeuvre of this
artist who left an indelible mark on
world culture.
Moreover, Caravaggio allowed
me to explore further the mystery
of light and shadow. This is
a theme that, right from the
beginning, has always been at the
centre of my personal cinematographic story. Caravaggios shadow

is the visualization of where the

unresolved states of mind dwell,
a condition innate in the human
unconscious. To do this, I thought
of proceeding visually with a style
of writing with light that would
make the bodies emerge from the
darkness, and enable me to make
conscious what had for some time
resided in the unconscious.

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3
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Actor Alessio Boni plays Caravaggio

Extract from Judith Beheading Holofernes
Caravaggio was an accomplished swordsman
A scene from the film

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focus on film

Film is an archival medium, so the negative will

be there for future generations to see what
this ecosystem was once like.
3

How much did the work
Q
of Caravaggio stimulate

and inspire your own
personal artistic journey?

Just as a writer tells a

story with words and a
A musician expresses a

mood with music, we cinematographers write and transmit
emotions through the harmony
and conflict between light and
shadow.
The intersection of these two
entities generates colours. When
I made Tis Pity Shes A Whore and
Giordano Bruno at the beginning of
my career, I wasnt aware of the
profound symbolic and conceptual
meaning of these elements, but
possessed a purely technical
preparation from my studies in
cinema and photography. It was
then that I visited the Church of
San Luigi dei Francesi in the centre
of Rome with my fiance Tonia,
who later became my wife. There I
made a discovery that changed my
whole way of life and my approach
to images. I discovered through
an analysis of a few paintings,
how much the use of light and
shadowdirected, concealed,
or filtered on a subjectcould
underline and emphasize a
concept written in words. Thus the
viewer watching a complex work
like a film and experiencing the
sensations arising from the energy
flows on the screen, can feel an
emotion.

What exactly happened

that day at San Luigi dei
Francesi?

While I was walking
A
around inside the church,

I discovered the
Contarelli Chapel, decorated with
extraordinary paintings by an
artist whose name I didnt know
at the time. One in particular took
my breath away: The Calling of St
Matthew, which I later learned was
by Caravaggio.
The thing that struck me
was the extraordinary vision of
something that I was actually
putting in scenes back then: a
clean separation between light
and shadow. I was so bowled
over by that painting that I felt
immediately impelled to try
and understand and deepen the
relationship between these two
elements, to understand the most
hidden, innermost meaning of that
light. I had to take my studies to
a level that enabled me to grasp
the intrinsic significance of that
representation.
Caravaggio was in fact a great
filmmaker, he conceptualized
the subject and the composition,
chose the figures, did the
costumes, designed the sets,
and illuminated them like a
master cinematographer. As in
the great revolutions in cinema,
Caravaggio moved from natural
light to artificial light, From Judith
Beheading Holofernes on, the
subjects of his paintings were
almost always illuminated by a
lantern. In fact, we are seeing
the completion of a cycle in
Caravaggios painting: first he
used natural light as seen and
reflected in a mirror that framed
his subjects, followed by the

gradual focusing of the light on his

subjects, making the background
ever darker, and ending with a
revolutionary passage from natural
to artificial light.
The painting genius found his
maximal creative expression in his
first official commission from the
Church: notably the The Calling of
St. Matthew and The Martyrdom
of St. Matthew for the Contarelli
Chapel in San Luigi dei Francesi.

Caravaggio was also a
Q
man who was continually

torn between the
diabolical and the saintly: a
duality synthesized in the
struggle between light and
shadow in his paintings. What
solution did you use to explain
this dichotomy?

I adopted a philosophy
A
of light that closely

followed the course
of his creativity and his life. If
we analyze the paintings in the
Contarelli Chapel, in fact, we see
that Caravaggio visualized The
Calling through the natural light of
day and depicted The Martyrdom
of St Matthew with artificial
light at night. He succeeded in
transmitting the sense of the
Saints passage from life to death,
through the passage of light.
The astounding effect of
The Calling on the viewer stems
from the artists brilliant intuition
of depicting a ray of light,
symbolizing the divine, coming for
the first time from the right, like a
ray of light at sunset.
It is not seen as a source of

light that illuminates the subjects,

but a pure, transcendental entity
that slices through the darkness
like a scalpel, dividing the human
from the divine. In the painting
the subjects are illuminated by a
suffused light that is separate from
the ray of light. At the top of the
painting, the artist has placed a
window that does not emit light,
but establishes a balance in the
horizontal composition of the
work.
In the film versiondirected
by Angelo Longoni and which
will come out both in theatres
and on televisionwe imagined
Caravaggio lying in his studio
one morning, sick and tired, and
being awakened by a ray of light
entering through a small window
and cutting across the foreground
of the painting, superimposing
itself on it, and that this gave
him the idea for completing this
extraordinary work. This was
the revelation for portraying the
Calling, the choice of an entity
between the human and the
divine: a ray of light.

Which format and

base support did you
use to film Caravaggio?

In general, I think
A
that negative film is

much more sensitive
than the technicians say; at least
there is the possibility of recording
the emotions of people who
participate in the construction
of the images themselves.
Looking at an image projected
on a large or small screen, it is
possible to feel the harmony or

Caravaggio.indd 3

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focus on film

conflict experienced by those

who contributed to creating a
specific project. I maintain that
the sensitivity of a filming system
is not exclusively related to the
technological level, but also to the
intangible possibility of registering
emotions. I believe this is a specific
characteristic pertaining especially
to negative film.
We made Caravaggio in
Univisium, filming on 35mm neg
with a composition ratio of 1:2
and with three perforations at 25
frames per second.
The 35mm films used were
the basic four KODAK VISION2
films: 50D, 250D, 200T, and
500T processed by Technicolor
in Rome.

You have always used
Q
a variety of Kodak

negatives within the
same film, a creative choice
that sets you apart from the
tendency evident in many films
that are shot with only one type
of film. Can you tell us why
you opt for this multiple choice
while shooting, and why you use
the Univisium format, which
furthermore,
you invented?
8

Caravaggio.indd 4

I think it is extremely
A
important not to use

only one type of film for
all the needs that natural light and
artificial light present, in the high
and low tonalities they produce. I
think it is a big mistake to lose the
multitude of tonalities that these
films are able to register when
each one is used specifically for
the light appropriate to it. That is
lost when you decide to use just
one for all the different lighting
situations while shooting a film.
Kodak films (5201-52055217-5218), with their proven
consistency and the reversibility
between them, enable the
indispensable matching of the
various scenes during the editing,
because they provide maximal
tonal and chromatic registration
in the different situations of
NATURAL or ARTIFICIAL light,
in low or high intensity, with
a range from 50 to 500 ASA.
Univisium is a system that allows
you to save 25 percent on the
cost of classic 35mm, thanks to
the use of three perforations in
the negative instead of four, and
to have 25 percent more time for
creativity while shooting, which

is really important, especially for

the scenes with a Steadicam. And
all this in a panoramic format
of 1:2. I would like to emphasize
that to shoot in 35mm with 3
perforations, instead of S16, does
not represent an alarming increase
in cost, considering the superiority
of 35mm and the increased
possibilities for selling the product
in other countries.

moon, the Father and the Mother.

A collection of chromatic nuances
from red to orange to yellow to
represent the sun, and one colour
only for the moon: white. My
expressive choice transpired from
my studies of the artists oeuvre.
In analyzing Caravaggios colours,
I was able to verify that he had
never used blue in his paintings.
Never. He opted for black,
symbolizing the unconscious;

To conclude, Vittorio,
red, representing birth and death;
Q
a thought about
orange, synonymous with the

Caravaggios colours.
relationship to his childhood and
A vivid and intense palette that
his mother; and yellow, the colour
never leaves one indifferent.
of puberty, consciousness, and
How did you interpret this in your
light. He went as far as using
cinematographic concept?
greenknowledgein a few
paintings. But he stopped there.

In 1600 there were
So I saw to it that there is never
A
two possibilities for
any blue in our film. Evenings and

expressing light, using
nights are depicted with neutral
natural sunlight and moonlight,
or pale lights. Everything starts
or using the sources of artificial
with the black, with matter,
light that existed at that time,
progressing to white, to energy.
such as torches, candles, braziers.
This was done out of respect
This made me want to create
and admiration for the chromatic
the images of the film using
spectrum of an extraordinary
totally distinct, but obviously
artist, Michelangelo Merisi, known
complementary chromatic
as Caravaggio.
elements with respect to two
specific entities: the sun and the

For the full version of this interview, please go to http://www.kodak.com/US/en/motion/newsletters/inCamera/

30/5/07 11:20:37