26 Facts About Gordon Willis

Gordon Willis is best known for his photographic work on eight Woody Allen films, six Alan J Pakula films, four James Bridges films, and all three films from Francis Ford Coppola's The Godfather series.

Fellow cinematographer William A 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".

Gordon Willis's parents had been dancers in Broadway theatre before his father became a makeup man at Warner Bros.

Gordon Willis wanted to be an actor and then became interested in lighting and stage design, later turning to photography.

Gordon Willis worked in advertising, shooting numerous commercials, and made a number of documentaries, a discipline that strongly influenced his later style.

Gordon Willis was a camera operator on the feature documentary Windjammer filmed in Cinemiracle.

Gordon Willis went on to work for some of the most acclaimed directors of what is seen as a golden age of American film-making.

Gordon Willis captured America's urban paranoia in three films he shot with Alan J Pakula: Klute, The Parallax View and All The President's Men.

Gordon Willis collaborated with Hal Ashby on The Landlord, James Bridges on The Paper Chase, and Herbert Ross on Pennies From Heaven ; as well as shooting all three of Coppola's Godfather films and working with Woody Allen on a succession of films that included Annie Hall and Manhattan.

Up to the making of The Godfather, Gordon Willis mostly used Mitchell reflex cameras with Baltar or Cooke lenses.

Gordon Willis went back to using Mitchells on The Godfather Part II, in order to retain the visual coherence of the two films.

Originally, Gordon Willis turned down the first two Godfather films, until Coppola told him they would not look the same without him.

Gordon Willis's work turned out to be groundbreaking in its use of low-light photography and underexposed film, as well as in his control of lighting and exposure to create the sepia tones that denoted period scenes in The Godfather Part II.

Gordon Willis said that it was the color that stitched the Godfather films together.

Gordon Willis praised the director for the "management hell" of his struggles with Paramount, adding that he was "grateful he could separate the visual structure of these movies from the mess that went on to fashion them".

Gordon Willis described making films with Allen as being so comfortable that it was like "working with your hands in your pockets".

Gordon Willis, whose idea it was to use anamorphic widescreen for the filming, said: "We both felt that New York was a black-and-white city".

The fact that Gordon Willis did not receive a single nomination was a subject of some controversy.

Gordon Willis was once quoted as saying of Hollywood, "I don't think it suffers from an overabundance of good taste".

Gordon Willis was later nominated twice, once for his recreation of 1920s photography in Woody Allen's Zelig, and then for The Godfather Part III.

Gordon Willis directed one film of his own, Windows, in 1980.

Gordon Willis admitted the film had been a mistake, and later said of directing that he didn't really like it.

Gordon Willis was nominated for the Golden Raspberry Award for Worst Director one year after the film's release.

Gordon Willis died of cancer on May 18,2014, ten days before his 83rd birthday, in North Falmouth, Massachusetts.

Gordon Willis changed the way films looked and the way people looked at films.

Gordon Willis's work became celebrated for his ability to use shadow and underexposed film with a "subtlety and expressivity previously unknown on color film stock", with one critic citing as examples Don Corleone's study in The Godfather and a parking garage in All the President's Men.