Jack Cardiff night on TCM

TCM is running a brief tribute to cinematographer Jack Cardiff this evening. Of course, all of the Sunday night programming themes are brief because they have to give way for the Silent Sunday Nights movie around midnight, but this one only has one movie: The Red Shoes, at 8:00 PM. It's a movie I've never really been able to get into, largely because I find it difficult to get into the world of ballet in the first place, and because the characters here are even more driven than the ones in The Turning Point. There's nothing wrong with being driven per se, it's just that getting to the top can be so demanding that the drive to do so makes characters unappealing. That's particularly true here. Still, the cinematography is gorgeous, and the color they used in those days is much better than the color of The Turning Point or certainly the movies of today, which seem to be mostly green-blue with the occasional explosion thrown in.

But the real reason to watch tonight's lineup is the documentary Cameraman: The Life and Work of Jack Cardiff, which follows at 10:30 PM. It's a comprehensive and informative look at Cardiff, with extensive interviews done with him in the last years of his life. (The documentary was released in 2010, the year after he died.) TCM put the spotlight on Cardiff with a month-long festival back in January 2012, and I briefly mentioned the documentary then.