Miroslav Ondricek, a cameraman whose intimate, realist style propelled him from Communist Czechoslovakia to a successful career in Hollywood, where he was nominated for two Academy Awards for cinematography, died on March 28 in Prague. He was 80.
His son, David, a film director, announced the news to a Czech television station. He did not give a cause.
Mr. Ondricek (pronounced OND-ree-chek) was best known for his work with the director Milos Forman, a fellow Czech émigré. Among other films, they collaborated on “Ragtime,” a 1981 adaptation of the E.L. Doctorow novel; “Amadeus” (1984), about the life of Mozart; “Hair” (1979), an adaptation of the Broadway musical; and “Valmont” (1989), a romantic drama set in 18th-century France based on the novel “Les Liaisons Dangereuses.”
Mr. Ondricek’s two Academy Award nominations were for “Ragtime” and “Amadeus,” which won the best picture Oscar.
In a filmography that stretched to some 40 titles, Mr. Ondricek also worked with Mike Nichols, George Roy Hill, Lindsay Anderson and Penny Marshall, among other directors.
With Ms. Marshall he shot “Awakenings,” a 1990 drama with Robin Williams based on a memoir by the neurologist Oliver Sacks; “A League of Their Own,” the 1992 tale of a women’s baseball team during World War II, starring Geena Davis and Tom Hanks; and his final feature, “Riding in Cars With Boys,” starring Drew Barrymore, in 2001.
“He watched,” Ms. Marshall recalled on Thursday, emphasizing the verb. “A lot of the foreign D.P.’s would go out and read the paper,” she said, referring to directors of photography. “But Mirek would stand by the camera, and if he didn’t like something, he’d walk on set and fix it. Nobody understood a word he said, but the actors loved him.”
Miroslav Ondricek was born in Prague on Nov. 4, 1934. The Communist regime that came to power after World War II forbade him to stay in school past the age of 15 because his father was a member of the bourgeoisie, so he trained as an ironworker.
He found a laboratory job in the state-run film studios and was eventually able to attend film school at night. After a dozen years making newsreels, he finally got behind the camera on a feature film just as the Czech New Wave was beginning to gain attention around the world.
The director Ivan Passer introduced him to Mr. Forman, and the two hit it off, working together on Mr. Forman’s early masterpieces “Loves of a Blonde” and “The Firemen’s Ball,” which was banned by the Communist authorities shortly after its release for its critique of a corrupt society.
Mr. Forman settled in the United States. Although Mr. Ondricek was permitted to go abroad to make films, he never emigrated from Czechoslovakia and continued working there in the 1970s.
In 2004, he received the International Award from the American Society of Cinematographers.
In his final interview, given in the summer of 2014 to the Czech daily Lidove Noviny, Mr. Ondricek was asked what he thought had been his main contribution to cinematography.
“I guess a naturalness,” he said, adding, “I began as a newsman, a documentarian,” and cited his early works with Mr. Forman as examples of a realist sensibility that grabbed audiences in the 1960s.
“I never understood how the old masters did it,” he said. “They’d light a scene, set the camera, then go out for a cigarette with the director. They just weren’t at the shoot. I lived through the film, and I loved it.”
No comments:
Post a Comment