RIP Vilmos Zsigmund

[filmtwit]

RIP Vilmos Zigmond
I first met him many many years ago when he came into the UCLA film and tv archives to screen the only known print of "Soul to Soul" on an old Steenbeck. He had been one of the camera operators on it and had never actually seen it or viewed his work on it. I had happened to have seen the print in question a few months earlier and color degradation was pretty apparent. Vilmos then gave me one of the best lines I had ever heard concerning old prints -
"A well aged print is a like a well aged wine. red."
Thanks Vilmos. After the screening I had a chance to talk to him a bit and learned he moved on to mostly doing commercials where he had far more creative control, was far better paid and if he had work with "someone" he didn't like, well the work would be done in a few days instead of a few months. Oy Vay. He then went on to tell us (me and a friend of his who came along with him) about working he had just finished on Ghost and the Darkness (He wasn't thrilled about the "animated" lion sequences to say the least).
Good night and good luck to you Vilmos.

https://www.thewrap.com/vilmos-zsigmond-close-encounters-cinematographer-dead-at-85/

 

[DominikDUK]

Another one bites the dust last week Haskell Wexler and now Vilmos Zsigmond 🙁 . Loved the work he did on McCabe and Mrs. Miller and Playing by Heart.

He was a great DP

 

[filmtwit]

For me, it was about my youth and his work on all the early Speilberg films. Close Encounters is still the real stunner of a visual film for me.

If you look at his IMDB page you can see that he's still been very active, for last 2-3 years he's been the DP on the Mindy Project. I can't really fathom him doing a regular tv series as the work schedule can be really brutal. He's still listed to do 5 features in the next year too! Oy vay.

Another one bites the dust last week Haskell Wexler and now Vilmos Zsigmond 🙁 . Loved the work he did on McCabe and Mrs. Miller and Playing by Heart.

He was a great DP

 

[ww2photog]

Just saw great interview with him on Anthony Bordain Parts Unkown, Budapest today, amazing career, he was shooting with a Leica during the interview,