In MemoriamSome Came Running by Glenn Kenny

William Lubtchansky, 1937-2010

By May 5, 2010January 12th, 202610 Comments

WL AMourL’amour par terre, Jacques Rivette, 1984
 

WL Louvre
Une vis­ite au Louvre, Danielle Huillet and Jean-Marie Straub, 2004

Shoah
Shoah, Claude Lanzmann, 1985 

One of the greatest cine­ma­to­graph­ers of this or any oth­er era. He died of heart dis­ease at age 73 yesterday.

10 Comments

  • The cine­ma­to­graph­er who worked on the greatest num­ber of mas­ter­pieces in the scope of a single career, Lubtchansky was also, put very simply, the greatest cine­ma­to­graph­er in the his­tory of the cinema.
    ck.

  • Jason M. says:

    I just heard about this, and came over here fig­ur­ing that you’d have some­thing up on him. What an incred­ible career. And what a loss.

  • nrh says:

    Would agree to him being the greatest cine­ma­to­graph­er in the second half of the twen­ti­eth cen­tury. The films he shot for Rivette alone would qual­i­fy him for that, let alone the rest…

  • S. Porath says:

    It always warms the heart when an artist’s last work is done with a close col­lab­or­at­or, and 36 vues du Pic Saint Loup makes for a won­der­ful swan song.

  • Jason M. says:

    S Porath – I was just think­ing the same thing. 36 Vues is about as good a swan song as one could hope for. Wry, gentle, wise and beau­ti­ful. It has the feel of a final film in many ways – I just assumed that it would be Rivette’s and not Lubtchansky’s.

  • Ed Howard says:

    Truly a shame. A cine­ma­to­graph­er who worked with Godard on some of the dir­ect­or’s most adven­tur­ous work (and is respons­ible for all those jaw-dropping track­ing shots in Nouvelle vague) and who closely col­lab­or­ated with Rivette on so many of that dir­ect­or’s major films. What an amaz­ing filmo­graphy he amassed. He’ll be missed, but he’s cer­tainly left behind plenty of images to remem­ber him by.

  • Nouvelle Vague is argu­ably Godard’s most amaz­ingly pho­to­graphed film (which is say­ing a lot con­sid­er­ing the Coutard col­lab­or­a­tions). RIP!

  • I’ve been thinkinga bout him lately as he appears in the doc­u­ment­ary “L’Enfer de L’Henri-Georges Clouzot.” He was one of the cam­era oper­at­ors on that great doomed project.
    His work with Rivette speaks for itself. I espe­cially love “Duelle.”

  • Richard says:

    This is a major, major loss. His filmmo­graphy is jaw-dropping.

  • Sal C says:

    The remark­able work he did on Garrel’s last two films should not go without men­tion. So I men­tion it now.

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