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Walter Lassally - 'Electra' (107/266)

87 views · Published 17 August 2017 · 6:50 · Indexed 20 September 2026

Channel: Web of Stories - Life Stories of Remarkable People · 2017 · Film & Animation

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Born in Germany, cinematographer Walter Lassally (1926-2017) was best known for his Oscar-winning work on 'Zorba the Greek'. He was associated with the Free Cinema movement in the 1950s, and the British New Wave in the early 1960s. [Listener: Peter Bowen; date recorded: 2004]

TRANSCRIPT: The next film I made with Cacoyannis is 'Electra' with Irene Papas which I still consider to be my best film, and I think it's Cacoyannis' best film also. But he thinks all his films are best films, so that's something else.

'Electra', again black and white. Unthinkable in colour. That's quite an interesting comparison because a French woman made, some years later, she made a documentary about Cacoyannis and there are examples of the 'Electra' and right next to it are examples from 'Iphigenia' which was filmed in colour, not by me. But the difference is not the difference of cameramen, the difference is the colour, and you can see, when you see those things next to each other, you can see how much more suitable black and white is for that kind of subject, a Greek tragedy, is much better in black and white because, in colour, it turns into a sort of costume drama. Also, the landscapes. There's a big problem with the landscape turning into a picture postcard. So 'Electra' is one of the very best examples of black and white. Why black and white? Because 'Electra' is unthinkable, to me anyway, in colour. And.. in 'Electra' we adopted, well Cacoyannis actually, demanded a very severe style which went like... boom, boom, boom... and everything, all the movements, all the things had to be in a very steady rhythm, and the moment somebody put a foot wrong, oh yes, no, no, you can't do that, it doesn't fit the, doesn't fit the rhythm. 

'Electra' starts with a crowd scene where we'd got 800 people from the army and they're all rushing along in a valley accompanying Agamemnon who's just come back from the Trojan wars. And... we were up on a hillside outside Athens, looking down into the valley where these 800 army people were prepared to do their bit, and we had a very old army loudspeaker system. Cacoyannis was given a microphone and these loudspeakers were set up to project the sound down into the valley. But it didn't work terribly well. Cacoyannis got very annoyed and he was shouting himself hoarse through the microphone, but not getting the results that he wanted. And then there was a major hold-up, because the reins for Agamemnon's chariot were missing. We had a whole hoohaa where we had every... we had these 800 men waiting and all the rest of the crew waiting, everybody was waiting, and there weren't any reins for the chariot. Anyway that was probably solved eventually. But that's a very nice beginning scene. The whole film is from beginning to end, is wonderfully staged and wonderfully filmed, I would say. It starts with a rocky surface where you have the introductory title, and then the hand of Clytemnestra comes in with the manicured fingernails and all that, and grabs a rock. She's expecting, she's waiting for Agamemnon, having already planned that she's going to murder him. So the scene is set very quickly, that bit is Mycenae, is shot in Mycenae where you got through the famous lion gate. Then there is... in that film there was one studio, one little studio scene, where we built the hut where the peasant lives, where Electra's married off to this peasant, so as to, it says in the film, so as not to have any significant heirs. They live in this little hut which we built as a set in the Finos studio. All the rest is natural stuff. I used a red filter. The whole film... virtually the whole film is shot through a deep red filter which is called a Number 25, in order to get these very contrasty skies, dark, dark, dark skies with white clouds, now and then there are clouds. It's very beautiful to look at. And we found this location between... near where the airport is now, between Keratea and Anavissos, and we spent... the best part of the filming was done there. Only this one interior was done in the Finos studio. Oh, and the bath. Agamemnon's murder was also done there, in the studio. But all the rest is natural. And there's some very nice day-for-night stuff again. Very nice, and dusk. And day-for-night- there's one scene which also makes use of a bit of luck, where there'd been... some clouds came up in the early evening, because there weren't any clouds before. We shot October/November/December. [...]

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