Visions of Light Movie Review

The novice's guide to film cinematography, Visions of Light is a brisk primer on what the D.P. of a movie does: Basically, make it look the way it looks. From Birth of a Nation to Citizen Kane to Raging Bull to Eraserhead, this trio of documentary filmmakers leads us through a fascinating (and dazzling) journey of some of the world's most beautiful and most innovatively photographed movies. The focus here is more on technique than on trickery (no mention of the flames held in front of Raging Bull's camera, to give it that hazy look), and that's just fine: This is a film about how the artistry of filmmaking was born and how it developed to where we are today. It's impossible to digest in one review -- more than 100 films are excerpted -- but fascinating to sit through.