“Cinema Needs Good Images”: An Interview with Cinematographer Vilmos Zsigmond
Vilmos Zsigmond, ASC was given the “ Pierre Angénieux Excellens in Cinematography” award at this year’s Cannes Film Festival. It was a fitting tribute to the 83-year-old director of photography, who chronicled the events of the 1956 Hungarian revolution before leaving his country soon afterwards. In 1962 he became a naturalized citizen of the United States, settling in Los Angeles. During the ’70s Zsigmond established himself as one of the world’s great cinematographers, working on Robert Altman’s McCabe & Mrs. Miller and The Long Goodbye , John Boorman’s Deliverance , and Steven Spielberg’s The Sugarland Express and Close Encounters of the Third Kind , for which he won an Academy Award. He also worked with Michael Cimino on The Deer Hunter and Heaven’s Gate . He had multiple collaborations with Brian De Palma: Obsession , Blow Out , Bonfire of the Vanities and most recently The Black Dahlia . Zsigmond also shot three films with Woody Allen: Melinda and Melind