Ricardo Aronovich

“Majestic!” Not a bad compliment for a cinematographer’s work – especially when it comes from an old master like Alain Resnais, who, in jest, has previously likened the subject of his praise to a condottiere who commands his team about like a band of mercenaries.

Resnais was referring to the shooting of Providence (1977), a film that suited cinematographer Ricardo Aronovich down to the ground. Resnais was enthralled by Aronovich’s shooting concept, which he branded with the adjective often used to describe the work of his literary patron Garcia Marquez: "magical realism” or “second reality". In the context of cinema, it denotes a way of filming that is slightly removed from reality to better draw out its secrets. This technique was perfectly suited to a story about an aging writer whose buried family sagas come back to haunt him one stormy night. A combination of memory, imagination, past, present and future that provided a worthy challenge for Ricardo Aronovich’s delicate play with light and shadow.

Born in 1930 in Argentina, Ricardo Aronovich was introduced to photography and the beauty of painting by his father at an early age. He was sent to study at the Institute of Design in Chicago, and then returned to Argentina where he was initiated into the secrets of cinematography by filmmaker Simon Feldman.

Aronovich began his career working for directors of Argentina’s new wave, or nuevo cine, and then went to Brazil to shoot Ruy Guerra’s cult film Os Fuzis (The Guns) in 1963. He spent the next six years in Brazil until the increasingly repressive political situation led him to move to France in the early 1970s, where he continued, however, to maintain his contacts with South America.

It was only towards the end of the 90s, however, that he met the exiled Chilean director Raoul Ruiz, who found in Aronovich a kindred spirit and ideal partner for his adaptation of Marcel Proust’s Le temps retrouvé (Time Regained, 1999). Following another fruitful collaboration on the film portrait Klimt (2006), the two are now preparing to work on their fourth film together, which will be about the scandal-ridden life of Austrian writer Leopold Ritter von Sacher-Masoch, the author of Venus in Furs.

Aronovich had a soft spot for the actors he filmed, and enjoyed a distinguished career, working with Marguerite Duras (Jaune le soleil, 1970), Louis Malle (Le Souffle au coeur, 1971) and Andrzej Zulawski (L’important c’est d’aimer, 1975). The latter starred Romy Schneider – Aronovich still waxes enthusiastic about their encounter today – who got the benefit of the master’s deft touch with lighting, and his disgust for “horrible close-ups” in which tons of light are thrown on an actor’s face, erasing its soul in the process.

Aronovich is justly proud of his big successes of the 1980s, including Missing by Costa-Gavras (1982) and Ettore Scola’s Le bal and La famiglia (1983 and 1987, respectively) with pride. He likes the visual cohesion of Missing’s realistic style, even if he did not always manage to assert his lighting style – a sophisticated mix of natural and coloured artificial light.

But Aronovich is not one for gritty, hard-edged realism, anyway. Thus Scola’s two very different films – one a chamber play, the other a family saga – accommodated Aronovich’s penchant for costume films, where the trained eye finds ample scope for falsity and lies. But creating “beautiful images” is not Aronovich’s primary objective. His goal is both more humble and more lofty: to serve the script and find the right way to express what it says.

Marli Feldvoß