French cinematographers

Jean-Luc Godard (UK: GOD-ar, US: goh-DAR; French: [ʒɑ̃ lyk ɡɔdaʁ]; 3 December 1930 – 13 September 2022) was a French and Swiss film director, screenwriter, and film critic. He rose to prominence as a pioneer of the French New Wave film movement of the 1960s, alongside such filmmakers as François Truffaut, Agnès Varda, Éric Rohmer and Jacques Demy. He was arguably the most influential French filmmaker of the post-war era. According to AllMovie, his work "revolutionized the motion picture form" through its experimentation with narrative, continuity, sound, and camerawork. His most acclaimed films include Breathless (1960), Vivre sa vie (1962), Contempt (1963), Band of Outsiders (1964), Alphaville (1965), Pierrot le Fou (1965), Masculin Féminin (1966), Weekend (1967) and Goodbye to Language (2014).During his early career as a film critic for the influential magazine Cahiers du Cinéma, Godard criticised mainstream French cinema's "Tradition of Quality", which de-emphasised innovation and experimentation. In response, he and like-minded critics began to make their own films, challenging the conventions of traditional Hollywood in addition to French cinema. Godard first received global acclaim for his 1960 feature Breathless, helping to establish the New Wave movement. His work makes use of frequent homages and references to film history, and often expressed his political views; he was an avid reader of existentialism and Marxist philosophy, and in 1969 formed the Dziga Vertov Group with other radical filmmakers to promote political works. After the New Wave, his politics were less radical, and his later films came to be about human conflict and artistic representation "from a humanist rather than Marxist perspective."Godard was married three times, to actresses Anna Karina and Anne Wiazemsky, both of whom starred in several of his films, and later to his longtime partner Anne-Marie Miéville. His collaborations with Karina — which included such critically acclaimed films as Vivre sa vie (1962), Bande à part (1964) and Pierrot le Fou (1965) — were called "arguably the most influential body of work in the history of cinema" by Filmmaker magazine. In a 2002 Sight & Sound poll, Godard ranked third in the critics' top ten directors of all time. He is said to have "generated one of the largest bodies of critical analysis of any filmmaker since the mid-twentieth century." His work has been central to narrative theory and has "challenged both commercial narrative cinema norms and film criticism's vocabulary." In 2010, Godard was awarded an Academy Honorary Award.

Paul Ivano, ASC (May 13, 1900 – April 9, 1984), was a Serbian–French–American cinematographer whose career stretched from 1920 into the late 1960s. Born Paul Ivano Ivanichevitch, to Serbian parents in Nice, France, he served for two years with the Franco–American Ambulance Corps and the American Red Cross Ambulance Corps from 1916 to 1918. After the conclusion of World War I, he remained in the Balkans, acting as a photographer and interpreter for the American Red Cross. He arrived in the United States in 1919, and moved to California, the following year. In 1947 he was the cameraman who made the first aerial helicopter shots for an American feature film in Nicholas Ray's film noir They Live by Night.

Marius Ely Joseph Sestier (8 September 1861 – 8 November 1928) was a French cinematographer. Sestier was best known for his work in Australia, where he shot some of the country's first films.
Born in Sauzet, Drôme, Sestier was a pharmacist by profession. He was employed by early filmmakers the Lumière brothers (Auguste and Louis Lumière) to demonstrate their cinématographe abroad. In this capacity he travelled to India in June 1896, where he held a showcase of six short films made by the Lumière brothers at Watson's Hotel, Bombay on 7 July 1896; this was the first time moving pictures had been shown in India. Sestier also shot his own films while in Bombay, but the Lumière brothers rejected these for their catalogue as they were not satisfied with the quality as French customs had opened the package of undeveloped film.After Sestier completed his work in India he travelled to Sydney where he met with Australian photographer Henry Walter Barnett, who had darkroom facilities to develop films locally.In September 1896 Sestier, Barnett and Charles Westmacott opened Australia's first cinema, the Salon Lumière in Pitt Street, Sydney. Sestier and Barnett began making their own films, starting with a short film of passengers disembarking from the ship PS Brighton in Manly, which was the first film shot and screened in Australia. Sestier and Barnett made approximately 19 films together in Sydney and Melbourne, most notably a film of the 1896 Melbourne Cup horse race. The feature, which consisted of 10 one-minute films shown in chronological order (separate films were required due to limitations of cameras of the time), was premiered at the Princess Theatre, Melbourne on 19 November 1896, with Sestier giving an accompanying lecture. It was covered in the Australian press, including The Age and The Bulletin, and has been cited as Australia's first film production.After his business partnership with Barnett ended Sestier continued to tour Australia, demonstrating the cinématographe and showcasing films until May 1897. After returning to France he went on to become director of the Lumière Patents Company.

Jean Alexandre Louis Promio (9 July 1868 – 24 December 1926) was a French film photographer and director. He is mentioned as a pioneer in film and was the director for Sweden's first Newsreel. The newsreel was shown for King Oscar II:s arrival at the General Art and Industrial Exposition on 15 May 1897.

Alexandre Promio came from an Italian family that moved to France and resided in Lyon. During his time as an assistant to an optician in Lyon, he witnessed the first presentation of the medium of moving pictures cinematograph. Promio was interested in the art of photography, and in March 1896 left his work at the optician to start working for Auguste and Louis Lumière. After just some time at the work he became the boss for the film unit and got the responsibility for the education of the first cinematograph-operators.His first assignment was to present and marketing of the new media worldwide. Promio visited several cities between April 1896 and September 1897. The first trip went to Madrid where he demonstrated the moving pictures on 13 May 1896 On 7 July he did a film demonstration for the Tsar Nikolaj II of Russia and the empress of Saint Petersburg, after that he visited England, Germany and Hungary. In September 1896, he arrived in the US, and filmed the first films of Chicago. In Italy he on 25 October 1896 filmed the city of Venice from a Gondola. The film had its premiere on 13 December 1897 in Lyon under the title of Panorama du Grand Canal vu d'un bateau which shows the short trip of Canal Grande. It was most likely the world's first moving film, also the first being filmed by a moving camera.After 1898 he did not do anymore travels and resided permanently in Lyon France where he continued to be an employee of Lumière. In 1907 he filmed for Pathé and between 1914 and 1915 he was a soldier in the first world war. After his duty in the war he became a still photographer and film photographer to the Algerian government, there he created 3000 photographs and 38 documentary films. He returned to France sick and resided in Asnières-sur-Seine near Paris. He died in his home on Christmas eve 1926. His death however was not announced until four months after.

Roger Hubert (1903–1964) was a French cinematographer who worked on more than 90 films.

Louis Aimé Augustin Le Prince (28 August 1841 – disappeared 16 September 1890, declared dead 16 September 1897) was a French artist and the inventor of an early motion-picture camera, and director of Roundhay Garden Scene. He was possibly the first person to shoot a moving picture sequence using a single lens camera and a strip of (paper) film. He has been credited as the "Father of Cinematography", but his work did not influence the commercial development of cinema—owing largely to the events surrounding his 1890 disappearance.A Frenchman who also worked in the United Kingdom and the United States, Le Prince's motion-picture experiments culminated in 1888 in Leeds, England. In October of that year, he filmed moving-picture sequences of family members in Roundhay Garden and his son playing the accordion, using his single-lens camera and Eastman's paper negative film. At some point in the following eighteen months he also made a film of Leeds Bridge. This work may have been slightly in advance of the inventions of contemporaneous moving-picture pioneers, such as the British inventors William Friese-Greene and Wordsworth Donisthorpe, and was years in advance of that of Auguste and Louis Lumière and William Kennedy Dickson (who did the moving image work for Thomas Edison).
Le Prince was never able to perform a planned public demonstration of his camera in the US because he mysteriously vanished; he was last known to be boarding a train on 16 September 1890. Multiple conspiracy theories have emerged about the reason for his disappearance, including: a murder set up by Edison, secret homosexuality, disappearance in order to start a new life, suicide because of heavy debts and failing experiments, and a murder by his brother over their mother's will. No conclusive evidence exists for any of these theories. In 2004, a police archive in Paris was found to contain a photograph of a drowned man bearing a strong resemblance to Le Prince who was discovered in the Seine just after the time of his disappearance, but it has been claimed that the body was too short to be Le Prince.In early 1890, Edison workers had begun experimenting with using a strip of celluloid film to capture moving images. The first public results of these experiments were shown in May 1891. However, Le Prince's widow and son Adolphe were keen to advance Louis's cause as the inventor of cinematography. In 1898, Adolphe appeared as a witness for the defence in a court case brought by Edison against the American Mutoscope Company. This suit claimed that Edison was the first and sole inventor of cinematography, and thus entitled to royalties for the use of the process. Adolphe was involved in the case but was not allowed to present his father's two cameras as evidence, although films shot with cameras built according to his father's patent were presented. Eventually the court ruled in favour of Edison. A year later that ruling was overturned, but Edison then reissued his patents and succeeded in controlling the US film industry for many years.

Henri Decaë (31 July 1915 – 7 March 1987) gained fame as a cinematographer entering the film industry as a sound engineer and sound editor. He was a photojournalist in the French army during World War II. After the war he began making documentary shorts, directing and photographing industrial and commercial films. In 1947 he made his first feature film.
Decaë is strongly associated with directors who strongly influenced, or were part of, the French New Wave. These include Jean-Pierre Melville, Louis Malle and Claude Chabrol. Decaë first worked as a cinematographer with Melville on Le Silence de la Mer (1949). Decaë also edited and mixed the sound. Although Decaë worked with Melville on Les enfants terribles, which as Williams commented (1992, p333) "...the work is more accurately to be viewed as a stunning demonstration of the cinematic possibilities of faithful literary adaptation in the hands of a gifted director", according to Marie (p 88) it was his distinctive camera work on Bob le flambeur which caught the attention of the Cahiers critics. Malle hired him for his first two features and Chabrol for his first three features. They had been lucky as Decaë was finding it hard to get work at that time as he was being informally shunned by many after participating in a critical film about the Korean War. By the time Decaë worked for François Truffaut on The 400 Blows he came with a reputation, which meant that he was the highest-paid person on the film.
Decaë's liking for natural light, his ability to work at speed as well as his excellent photographic sensibility led to him working with René Clément on several features beginning with Plein soleil (1960). It was Decaë "...who liberated the camera, from its fixed tripod. He made the New Wave possible, backing up Melville, Malle, Chabrol and Truffaut." (Marie, 2003 p 89)
For bibliographical references see bibliography under Cinema of France.

Sacha Vierny (10 August 1919 – 15 May 2001) was a French cinematographer. He was born in Bois-le-Roi, Seine-et-Marne, Île-de-France, France, and died in Paris, France, at the age of 81. He is most famous for his work with Alain Resnais – especially for the two films Hiroshima mon amour and L'année dernière à Marienbad – and with Peter Greenaway (The Cook, the Thief, His Wife & Her Lover, Prospero's Books).