Robert Burks

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Leslie Robert Burks (born July 4, 1909 in Chino , California , † May 13, 1968 in Newport Beach , California) was an American cameraman . Between 1951 and 1964 he was one of Alfred Hitchcock's closest collaborators . His work on Above the Rooftops of Nice won an Oscar for best color camera in 1956 .

Career

Robert Burks began his career at the age of 19 with the film company Warner Brothers and rose from camera operator to camera assistant and finally to cameraman. In this capacity he was involved in over 40 films from 1944 to 1967. Burks was a specialist in sophisticated camera effects and in 1944 took over the management of the "Special Photographic Effects unit" at Warner Brothers. By 1952 he worked as an expert on special effects in numerous films (including Arsenic and Lace Cap , 1944, and Gangster in Key Largo , 1948).

While Burks photographed his films mainly in black and white until the early 1950s , he then established himself as one of the leading specialists in color photography. One of his best-known black and white films is Der Fremde im Zug (1951), in which he was also responsible as cameraman for the creation of the dramatic climax - a murderous duel on an out of control carousel. With this film, Burks started his successful collaboration with star director Alfred Hitchcock , for whom he shot twelve films until 1964.

When Burks' contract with Warner Brothers expired in 1953, the cinematographer Hitchcock followed the production company Paramount Pictures . For Burks as for Hitchcock, the most successful years of their careers followed. The cameraman was responsible for the image design in almost all classic Hitchcock films of this era (with the exception of Psycho , 1960). Burks directed the camera for Murder on a Call (1954), The Window to the Courtyard (1954), Above the Roofs of Nice (1955), The Man Who Knew Too Much (1956), and Vertigo - From the Realm of the Dead (1958) ), The Invisible Third (1959) and The Birds (1963).

Hitchcock's demands on the artistic and camera technology design of his films were extremely high. For example, Call Murder was the adaptation of a stage play and it was played almost exclusively in a small apartment, which had to be photographed in such a way that the viewer did not get the impression of being present at a film theater production. In Das Fenster zum Hof the camera was in a small apartment for most of the film, the eponymous window of which opened onto a huge courtyard backdrop that was difficult to light and photograph. For The Invisible Third , Burks designed, among other things, a spectacular chase over the stone presidential heads of Mount Rushmore , which - with models and huge backdrops - had to be shot in the studio. In the birds , there were many scenes with complicated special effects with which the nightmarish attacks of the birds were simulated.

Robert Burks was awarded an Oscar in 1956 for his particularly opulent image design for Above the Roofs of Nice . He had already received a nomination in 1954 for Das Fenster zum Hof and in 1952 for Der Fremde im Zug . In 1966 he was nominated for the fourth and final time for the film Dreaming Lips (director: Guy Green ). The collaboration between Alfred Hitchcock and Robert Burks came to an end in 1964 with Marnie , a film that was received with reserve by critics and audiences. Both could no longer build on their previous successes.

Robert Burks died in a house fire in 1968 at the age of 58.

Filmography (selection)

Web links

personal data
SURNAME Burks, Robert
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American cameraman
DATE OF BIRTH 4th July 1909
PLACE OF BIRTH Chino , California
DATE OF DEATH May 13, 1968
Place of death Newport Beach , California