Gordon Willis

Gordon Willis

Birth : 1931-05-28, Astoria, New York, USA

History

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia Gordon Hugh Willis, Jr., ASC (May 28, 1931 – May 18, 2014) was an American cinematographer. He is best known for his work on Francis Ford Coppola's The Godfather series as well as Woody Allen's Annie Hall and Manhattan. Fellow cinematographer William Fraker called Willis's work a "milestone in visual storytelling", while one critic suggested that Willis "defined the cinematic look of the 1970s: sophisticated compositions in which bolts of light and black put the decade's moral ambiguities into stark relief". When the International Cinematographers Guild conducted a survey in 2003, they placed Willis among the ten most influential cinematographers in history.

Profile

Gordon Willis

Movies

An Amazing Time: A Conversation About End of the Road
Self
Documentary about the 1970 film, "End of The Road."
Woody Allen: A Documentary
Self
Iconic writer, director, actor, comedian and musician Woody Allen allowed his life and creative process to be documented on-camera for the first time. With this unprecedented access, Emmy-winning, Oscar-nominated filmmaker Robert B. Weide followed the notoriously private film legend over a year and a half to create the ultimate film biography. "Woody Allen: A Documentary" chronicles Allen's career - from teen writer to Sid Caesar's TV scribe, from stand-up comedian to award-winning writer-director averaging one film-per-year for more than 40 years. Exploring Allen's writing habits, casting, directing, and relationship with his actors first-hand, new interviews with A-listers, writing partners, family and friends provide insight and backstory to the usually inscrutable filmmaker.
Emulsional Rescue: Revealing 'The Godfather'
Self
We hear from Coppola, Spielberg, director of photography Gordon Willis, consulting restoration cinematographer Allen Daviau, film archivist Robert A. Harris, Paramount Post Production executive VP Martin Cohen, MPI senior technical advisor Daniel Rosen, MPI scanning technician Chris Gillaspie, senior digital artist Steven A. Sanchez, digital artist Valerie V. McMahon, and MPI technical director and senior colorist Jan Yarbrough as they offer interesting facts about the original cinematography, details on the restoration of the three films.
Fog City Mavericks
Himself
Fog City Mavericks: The Filmmakers of San Francisco is a compelling exploration of the legendary filmmakers who call the San Francisco Bay Area home including George Lucas, Francis Ford Coppola, Clint Eastwood, Chris Columbus and producer Saul Zaentz. The special weaves interviews, commentaries and unforgettable moments from some of the most visionary movies ever created such as American Graffiti, the Star Wars film series, the Indiana Jones film series, The Godfather trilogy, Apocalypse Now, One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, Amadeus, Toy Story, The Incredibles, Lost in Translation, Flags of Our Fathers and many others. It also features interviews with those who have worked with Bay Area mavericks: Steven Spielberg, Michael Douglas, Anthony Minghella, Milos Forman and Frank Darabont.
Film Noir: Bringing Darkness to Light
Self
Film Noir burrows into the mind; it's disorienting, intriguing and enthralling. Noir brings us into a gritty underworld of lush morbidity, providing intimate peeks at its tough, scheming dames, mischievous misfits and flawed men - all caught in the wicked web of a twisted fate.
Telling the Truth About Lies: The Making of
Self
A short documentary on the making of "All the President's Men."
Easy Riders, Raging Bulls: How the Sex, Drugs and Rock 'n' Roll Generation Saved Hollywood
Self
A look at 1970s Hollywood when it was known as New Hollywood, and the director was the star of the movie.
The Devil's Own
Director of Photography
Frankie McGuire, one of the IRA's deadliest assassins, draws an American family into the crossfire of terrorism. But when he is sent to the U.S. to buy weapons, Frankie is housed with the family of Tom O'Meara, a New York cop who knows nothing about Frankie's real identity. Their surprising friendship, and Tom's growing suspicions, forces Frankie to choose between the promise of peace or a lifetime of murder.
Malice
Director of Photography
A tale about a happily married couple who would like to have children. Tracy teaches infants, Andy's a college professor. Things are never the same after she is taken to hospital and operated upon by Jed, a "know all" doctor.
Visions of Light
Self
Cameramen and women discuss the craft and art of cinematography and of the "DP" (the director of photography), illustrating their points with clips from 100 films, from Birth of a Nation to Do the Right Thing. Themes: the DP tells people where to look; changes in movies (the arrival of sound, color, and wide screens) required creative responses from DPs; and, these artisans constantly invent new equipment and try new things, with wonderful results. The narration takes us through the identifiable studio styles of the 30s, the emergence of noir, the New York look, and the impact of Europeans. Citizen Kane, The Conformist, and Gordon Willis get special attention.
The Godfather Part III
Director of Photography
In the midst of trying to legitimize his business dealings in 1979 New York and Italy, aging mafia don, Michael Corleone seeks forgiveness for his sins while taking a young protege under his wing.
Presumed Innocent
Director of Photography
Rusty Sabich is a deputy prosecutor engaged in an obsessive affair with a coworker who is murdered. Soon after, he's accused of the crime. And his fight to clear his name becomes a whirlpool of lies and hidden passions.
Bright Lights, Big City
Director of Photography
A disillusioned young writer living in New York City turns to drugs and drinking to block out the memories of his dead mother and estranged wife.
The Pick-up Artist
Director of Photography
A womanizer meets his match when he falls for the daughter of a gambling addict who is in debt to the mob.
The Money Pit
Director of Photography
After being evicted from their Manhattan apartment, a couple buy what looks like the home of their dreams—only to find themselves saddled with a bank-account-draining nightmare. Struggling to keep their relationship together as their rambling mansion falls to pieces around them, the two watch in hilarious horror as everything—including the kitchen sink—disappears into the Money Pit.
Perfect
Director of Photography
A female aerobics instructor meets a male reporter doing a story on health clubs, but it isn't love at first sight.
The Purple Rose of Cairo
Director of Photography
Cecilia is a waitress in New Jersey, living a dreary life during the Great Depression. Her only escape from her mundane reality is the movie theatre. After losing her job, Cecilia goes to see 'The Purple Rose of Cairo' in hopes of raising her spirits, where she watches dashing archaeologist Tom Baxter time and again.
Broadway Danny Rose
Director of Photography
A hapless talent manager named Danny Rose, by helping a client, gets dragged into a love triangle involving the mob. His story is told in flashback, an anecdote shared amongst a group of comedians over lunch at New York's Carnegie Deli. Rose's one-man talent agency represents countless incompetent entertainers, including a one-legged tap dancer, and one slightly talented one: washed-up lounge singer Lou Canova (Nick Apollo Forte), whose career is on the rebound.
The Lost Honor of Kathryn Beck
Director of Photography
A shopkeeper is condemned by the police and the press for sleeping with a suspected terrorist.
Zelig
Director of Photography
Fictional documentary about the life of human chameleon Leonard Zelig, a man who becomes a celebrity in the 1920s due to his ability to look and act like whoever is around him. Clever editing places Zelig in real newsreel footage of Woodrow Wilson, Babe Ruth, and others.
A Midsummer Night's Sex Comedy
Director of Photography
A nutty inventor, his frustrated wife, a philosopher cousin, his much younger fiancée, a randy doctor, and a free-thinking nurse spend a summer weekend in and around a stunning - and possibly magical - country house.
Pennies from Heaven
Director of Photography
During the Great Depression, a sheet music salesman seeks to escape his dreary life through popular music and a love affair with an innocent school teacher.
Stardust Memories
Director of Photography
While attending a retrospect of his work, a filmmaker recalls his life and his loves: the inspirations for his films.
Windows
Director of Photography
Emily Hollander becomes the subject of a lesbian obsession at the hands of Andrea Glassen, her next-door neighbour.
Windows
Director
Emily Hollander becomes the subject of a lesbian obsession at the hands of Andrea Glassen, her next-door neighbour.
To Woody Allen from Europe with Love
Himself
Initiated by producer-director Pierre Drouot, Woody Allen for the very first time agrees to let a filmmaker, Belgium's André Delvaux, film him during one of his own productions, Stardust Memories. Woody talks about his work, always steering clear of the anecdotal or the private.
Manhattan
Director of Photography
Manhattan explores how the life of a middle-aged television writer dating a teenage girl is further complicated when he falls in love with his best friend's mistress.
Comes a Horseman
Director of Photography
Ella Connors is a single woman who gets pressured to sell her failing cattle farm to her corrupt ex-suitor, Jacob Ewing. She asks for help from her neighbor, Frank Athearn. As Ella and Frank fight back through stampedes, jealousy, betrayal, and sabotage... they eventually find love.
Interiors
Director of Photography
When Eve, an interior designer, is deserted by her husband of many years, Arthur, the emotionally glacial relationships of the three grown-up daughters are laid bare. Twisted by jealousy, insecurity and resentment, Renata, a successful writer; Joey, a woman crippled by indecision; and Flyn, a budding actress; struggle to communicate for the sake of their shattered mother. But when their father unexpectedly falls for another woman, his decision to remarry sets in motion a terrible twist of fate…
September 30, 1955
Director of Photography
A young Southerner loses his grip on reality when his favorite movie star James Dean suddenly dies in a car crash.
Annie Hall
Director of Photography
New York comedian Alvy Singer falls in love with the ditsy Annie Hall.
All the President's Men
Director of Photography
During the 1972 elections, two reporters' investigation sheds light on the controversial Watergate scandal that compels President Nixon to resign from his post.
The Drowning Pool
Director of Photography
Harper is brought to Louisiana to investigate an attempted blackmail scheme. He soon finds out that it involves an old flame of his and her daughter. He eventually finds himself caught in a power struggle between the matriarch of the family and a greedy oil baron, who wants their property. Poor Harper! Things are not as straight-forward as they initially appeared.
The Godfather Part II
Director of Photography
In the continuing saga of the Corleone crime family, a young Vito Corleone grows up in Sicily and in 1910s New York. In the 1950s, Michael Corleone attempts to expand the family business into Las Vegas, Hollywood and Cuba.
The Parallax View
Director of Photography
An ambitious reporter gets in trouble while investigating a senator's assassination which leads to a vast conspiracy involving a multinational corporation behind every event in the world's headlines.
The Paper Chase
Director of Photography
A first-year law student struggles with balancing his coursework and his relationship with the daughter of a stern professor.
Up the Sandbox
Director of Photography
A young wife and mother, bored with day-to-day life in New York City and neglected by her husband, slips into increasingly outrageous fantasies: her mother breaking into the apartment, an explorer's demonstration of tribal fertility music at a party causing strange transformations, and joining terrorists to plant explosives in the Statue of Liberty.
Bad Company
Director of Photography
After Drew Dixon, an upright young man, is sent west by his religious family to avoid being drafted into the Civil War, he drifts across the land with a loose confederation of young vagrants.
Klute
Director of Photography
A high-priced call girl is forced to depend on a reluctant private eye when she is stalked by a psychopath.
Little Murders
Director of Photography
Alfred Chamberlain, who suffers from an inability to feel or to be passionate about anything, meets Patsy Newquist, who takes it upon herself to mold him into "a strong, vital, self-assured man that I can protect and take care of."
The People Next Door
Director of Photography
A married couple struggle with the realities of their imperfect marriage as they fight to save and rehabilitate their teenage daughter from a life of drug addiction and ultimate committal to a mental ward.
The Landlord
Director of Photography
At the age of twenty-nine, Elgar Enders "runs away" from home. This running away consists of buying a building in a black ghetto in the Park Slope section of Brooklyn. Initially, his intention is to evict the black tenants and convert the building into a posh flat. But Elgar is not one to be bound by yesterday's urges, and soon he has other thoughts on his mind.
Loving
Director of Photography
Brooks Wilson is in crisis. He is torn between his wife Selma and two daughters and his mistress Grace, and also between his career as a successful illustrator and his feeling that he might still produce something worthwhile.
End of the Road
Director of Photography
After a catatonic episode on a railway station platform, Jacob Horner is taken to "The Farm"...
The Godfather, Coda: The Death of Michael Corleone
Director of Photography
Director's cut of The Godfather Part III, the 1990 American crime film written by Mario Puzo and Francis Ford Coppola, and directed by Coppola, which wrapped up the story of The Godfather saga. It completes the story of Michael Corleone, a Mafia kingpin who tries to legitimize his criminal empire. It had a limited theatrical release in December 2020, followed by a home media release for digital platforms.