The London born, Paris raised and educated cinematographer Douglas Slocombe has died at the age of 103. The reason his life, now ended, is mentioned on our website when many other, equally deserving lives have not been is because it illustrates so forcefully what older people can accomplish if their career prospects are not curtailed by prejudice about age.
The American director Steven Spielberg, who, by 1981, could have his pick of international cinematographers, chose Slocombe to shoot Raiders of the Lost Ark in 1981 when Slocombe was 68. Spielberg asked him to be the DOP on the two sequels, shot when Slocombe was 71 and 76 respectively. Anyone who has seen those action/adventure films (just think back to that long truck chase in Raiders of the Lost Ark) would recognise that being DOP was no cushy or sedentary job. In addition to technical expertise, managerial skills and imagination the job required incredible stamina (filming took place in multiple locations across Europe). A lesser director might have opted for a younger cinematographer.
But nothing Indiana Jones got up to compared to what Slocombe witnessed and experienced as a young photojournalist in 1939-1941. Spielberg himself was an expert on WWII, a theme of several of his films as director and producer. He must have enjoyed Slocombe’s stories of his war time experiences and admired the man for his adventurous spirit as well as talent, neither of which faded with age.
Slocombe set off with a newsreel camera to capture the rise of the Nazi party and later, the Nazi invasion of Poland. He witnessed first-hand the closing of Jewish shops, the burning of a synagogue and a speech by Goebbels. The hissing of his camera drew the madman’s attention to Slocombe and he was briefly arrested and then followed during his entire trip. Eventually, Slocombe escaped to London via Sweden, but not before the train he was travelling in was machine-gunned by a German aeroplane. The footage from his experiences was included in a short 1940 documentary, Lights Out in Europe.
Slocombe did not spend the rest of the war recuperating, but rather, on convoys, in bombers and in the thick of battle as a cinematographer making morale-boosting films for the Ministry of Information. He enjoyed being in an open cockpit so much that he obtained his pilot’s licence after the war.
On the basis of his documentary footage, Slocombe went on to be a regular at the Ealing Studios, where he shot Kind Hearts and Coronets (1949) starring Alec Guinness and the Lavender Hill Mob (1951), among many other classics. His name is also associated with the original The Italian Job (1967); Jesus Christ, Superstar (1973); The Lion in Winter (1969) and the original Rollerball (1975). He won a BAFTA for his work on The Great Gatsby that same year, but despite being nominated for an Academy Award three times, never won. He did, however, receive many other awards over the years including the Life Time Achievement Award from the British Society of Cinematographers and an OBE.
It was only Slocombe’s problems with his eyesight in the 1980s that prompted his retirement, in 1989, at the age of 76. He is survived by his only child, his daughter Georgiana, who frequently travelled with her father and mother on location.