The Ultimate Filmmaker (updated with photos)

The illustrious life of Ronald Neame CBE BSC, ranked amongst the key British film industry figures of the twentieth Century has ended after a fall in his Beverley Hills home at the age of ninety-nine. Rising through the ranks from tea to clapper boy, cinematographer, producer, scriptwriter and director he was regarded as the consummate Film Maker.

Although being born in 1911 “Ronnie” Neame was second generation in the film business, following his father Elwin Neame, a director of silent films and his mother an actress. His career took off working as an assistant on Alfred Hitchcock’s Blackmail which was released as a silent and sound film. It was one of the first films to make use of movement through by using the wheels of an early dolly. As a cinematographer one of his most important contributions was through the use of Technicolor on David Lean’s films This Happy Breed and Blithe Spirit, noted for the warmth of the colour images and his skill of the use of light. He also wrote the screenplays for both films and later co-wrote Lean’s Great Expectations and Brief Encounter.

It was in his collaboration with Noel Coward, David Lean and Anthony Havelock-Allen through the formation of Cineguild, funded by Arthur Rank, that Ronnie was able to craft his most distinguished work as a cinematographer. David Lean, by the early forties regarded as a great British directors, used Neame as one of only four cinematographers in his fifty year career. Neame’s enthusiasm for filmmaking led him eventually to producing and finally directing by the late 1940’s. His directorial debut was a strong thriller, Take My Life, enriched by the cinematography of Guy Green BSC one of the other four cinematographers favoured by Lean.

Ossie Morris BSC traces his friendship with Ronnie Neame to 1933. “Ronnie treated me as his son and prodigy, he was a lovable, likeable man, from whom I learnt a great deal,” says Ossie. Their friendship began whilst working under the cinematographer Friese-Greene. Ossie operated for Neame on the Cinema Quickies and described Neame’s simple technique in the days when lights had no condensers, testing each small floor light and chalk marking the back of the most suitable light to use in lighting the actors. He remembers Ronnie telling him to regard his role as an Executive Cinematographer, remembering always producers have limited amounts of money.

Ronald Neame’s visual style embraced a wide range of films, from thrillers to melodramas. Writing on the www.filmreference website Chris Routledge comments that “it was in his gentle comedies, such as Million Dollar Note, an adaptation of a Mark Twain story starring Gregory Peck, that his direction seems most comfortable. At his best he drew excellent performances from his leading actors including Gene Hackman in The Poseidon Adventure, Alec Guiness in The Card and Maggie Smith who won an Oscar in 1969 for her performance in The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie. Neame has been nominated for Oscars as a writer, producer, director and special effects. Probably his best film Tunes of Glory, a tense army melodrama, was nominated for BAFTA in 1961.”
He is survived by his wife, Dona and son Christopher, also a producer.
 

Photos: