# Geoffrey Unsworth

Geoffrey Gilyard Unsworth, OBE, BSC (26 May 1914 – 28 October 1978) was a British cinematographer who worked on nearly ninety feature films during a career that wound up spanning over more than forty years. He is best known for his work on critically acclaimed releases such as Stanley Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey, Bob Fosse's Cabaret and Richard Donner's Superman.
The British news agency The Guardian has highlighted the nature of his work for Kubrick, in the words of fellow cinematographer Peter Suschitzky, given that Unsworth's approach reportedly "became the benchmark" for a given cinematic style. Suschitzky added specifically that he had initially turned down working for filmmaker George Lucas (on the original Star Wars movie) and had "said straight away" to Lucas: "You don’t really want me, you want Geoffrey Unsworth."

## Career

Unsworth began his career working at Gaumont British from 1932 to 1937. Having joined Technicolor in 1938, he acted as assistant director of photography on many notable productions, such as Powell and Pressburger's The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp (1943) and A Matter of Life and Death (1946). After working on some of the Gainsborough melodramas, he worked at the Rank Organisation throughout the 1950s, notably on films such as A Town Like Alice and A Night to Remember.
In the 1960s, Unsworth's work extended abroad, such as with the 1962 CinemaScope epic The 300 Spartans; the decade also saw him receive his first Academy Award nomination for his work on 1964's Becket. In 1965, he was responsible for photographing the Royal National Theatre's production of William Shakespeare's Othello.
His film work brought him an impressive array of awards, including five British Society of Cinematographers awards, three BAFTAS and two Academy Awards. Unsworth was especially in demand as cinematographer in two very different genres, period pieces and science fiction. Among the highlights of his career, he collaborated with Stanley Kubrick on the visually innovative 2001: A Space Odyssey (on which he was assisted by John Alcott, who would become a regular collaborator of Kubrick's) and Bob Fosse's dark musical exploration of the end of Weimar Germany, Cabaret. In Sidney Lumet's 1974 film adaptation of Agatha Christie's Murder on the Orient Express, his lighting and use of diffusion capture the danger and romance of the train while graceful integration of camera movement and optical effects contributes to the realism of the set while controlling the claustrophobia of the setting.
Unsworth's work reached its widest audience with Richard Donner's Superman in 1978. He was responsible for integrating the work of a who's-who of cinematographers and visual effects designers (including Zoran Perisic, an animation stand crew member from 2001, who extended Kubrick's front projection technique for Superman), with the plausibility and sense of grandeur befitting a (mostly) reverent take on a superhero. The style he developed alongside director Donner was essentially that of a science-fiction period film; the glamorous, often highly diffused cinematography observed a panoply of images of Americana, suggesting an epic timeframe for the film's scenes, a mythical America somewhere between the 1930s of the original comics and the 1970s. The style of the sequences that did not involve extensive science-fiction elements had to match scenes displaying Superman's powers.
Unsworth's other work in the 1970s included the Oliver Cromwell biopic Cromwell in 1970, the 1972 John Barry musical Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, John Boorman's 1974 fantasy film Zardoz, The Return of the Pink Panther (the fourth film in Blake Edwards' Pink Panther series), Richard Attenborough's 1977 war epic A Bridge Too Far. In 1981, he won a posthumous Oscar for Best Cinematography for his collaborative work with Ghislain Cloquet on Roman Polanski's Tess.
For Superman, Unsworth was not named in the Special Achievement in Visual Effects Academy Award the film received, but instead as director of photography, and without a separate credit for special effects work, he would not have been eligible. Donner expressed great disgust that the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences did not recognise Unsworth with a nomination for Best Achievement in Cinematography in 1979.

## Personal life and death

Unsworth became an Officer of the Order of the British Empire in 1976.
Unsworth died of a heart attack in France at the age of 64 while filming Roman Polanski's Tess in 1978.
Both Superman and The First Great Train Robbery, released in the United Kingdom in December 1978, were dedicated to Unsworth's memory.
He was admired for his charming manner at work. For instance, Margot Kidder was flattered when he arranged lighting for her shots and insisted on concentration by saying "Quiet, I'm lighting the Lady." His wife Maggie worked in the British film industry, often as a script/continuity supervisor.

## Filmography
### Short film

| Year | Title | Director | Notes |
| 1946 | Make Fruitful the Land | Ken Annakin | |
| 1950 | Mr. Know-All | Ken Annakin | Segments of Trio |
| 1950 | Verger, The | Ken Annakin | Segments of Trio |
| 1955 | Cyril Stapleton and the Show Band | Michael Carreras | With Walter J. Harvey |
| 1955 | The Eric Winstone Bandshow | Michael Carreras | |
| 1956 | Eric Winstone's Stagecoach | Michael Carreras | |
Documentary short
| Year | Title | Director |
| 1942 | Teeth of Steel | Ronald H. Riley |
| 1942 | Gardens of England | Michael Hankinson |
| 1942 | World Garden | Robin Carruthers |
| 1943 | Power on the Land: The Story of the Mechanisation of British Farming | Ralph Keene |
| 1943 | The People's Land | Ralph Keene |

### Feature film

| Year | Title | Director | Notes |
| 1946 | Meet the Navy | Alfred Travers | Technicolor photography |
| 1946 | The Laughing Lady | Paul L. Stein | |
| 1947 | The Man Within | Bernard Knowles | |
| 1947 | Jassy | Bernard Knowles | |
| 1948 | Blanche Fury | Marc Allégret | Exterior photography |
| 1948 | Scott of the Antarctic | Charles Frend | With Osmond Borradaile and Jack Cardiff |
| 1949 | The Blue Lagoon | Frank Launder | |
| 1949 | Fools Rush In | John Paddy Carstairs | |
| 1949 | The Spider and the Fly | Robert Hamer | |
| 1950 | Double Confession | Ken Annakin | |
| 1950 | The Clouded Yellow | Ralph Thomas | |
| 1951 | Where No Vultures Fly | Harry Watt | |
| 1952 | Penny Princess | Val Guest | |
| 1952 | The Planter's Wife | Ken Annakin | |
| 1952 | Made in Heaven | John Paddy Carstairs | |
| 1953 | Turn the Key Softly | Jack Lee | |
| 1953 | The Sword and the Rose | Ken Annakin | |
| 1954 | The Million Pound Note | Ronald Neame | |
| 1954 | The Seekers | Ken Annakin | |
| 1954 | The Purple Plain | Robert Parrish | |
| 1955 | Simba | Brian Desmond Hurst | |
| 1955 | Passage Home | Roy Ward Baker | |
| 1955 | Value for Money | Ken Annakin | |
| 1956 | A Town Like Alice | Jack Lee | |
| 1956 | Jacqueline | Roy Ward Baker | |
| 1956 | Tiger in the Smoke | Roy Ward Baker | |
| 1957 | Hell Drivers | Cy Endfield | |
| 1957 | Dangerous Exile | Brian Desmond Hurst | |
| 1958 | A Night to Remember | Roy Ward Baker | |
| 1958 | Bachelor of Hearts | Wolf Rilla | |
| 1959 | Whirlpool | Lewis Allen | |
| 1959 | North West Frontier | J. Lee Thompson | |
| 1960 | The World of Suzie Wong | Richard Quine | |
| 1961 | Don't Bother to Knock | Cyril Frankel | |
| 1962 | The Playboy of the Western World | Brian Desmond Hurst | |
| 1962 | The 300 Spartans | Rudolph Maté | |
| 1962 | The Main Attraction | Daniel Petrie | |
| 1963 | Tamahine | Philip Leacock | |
| 1964 | Becket | Peter Glenville | |
| 1965 | Genghis Khan | Henry Levin | |
| 1965 | You Must be Joking | Michael Winner | |
| 1965 | Othello | Stuart Burge | |
| 1966 | El rey en Londres | Aníbal Uset | With Agustín González Paz and Aníbal González Paz |
| 1967 | Oh Dad, Poor Dad, Mamma's Hung You in the Closet and I'm Feelin' So Sad | Richard Quine | |
| 1967 | Half a Sixpence | George Sidney | |
| 1968 | 2001: A Space Odyssey | Stanley Kubrick | |
| 1968 | The Bliss of Mrs. Blossom | Joseph McGrath | |
| 1969 | The Assassination Bureau | Basil Dearden | |
| 1969 | Dance of Death | David Giles | |
| 1969 | The Magic Christian | Joseph McGrath | |
| 1970 | The Reckoning | Jack Gold | |
| 1970 | Cromwell | Ken Hughes | |
| 1970 | Goodbye Gemini | Alan Gibson | |
| 1970 | Three Sisters | Laurence Olivier John Sichel | |
| 1971 | Say Hello to Yesterday | Alvin Rakoff | |
| 1971 | Unman, Wittering and Zigo | John Mackenzie | |
| 1972 | Cabaret | Bob Fosse | |
| 1972 | Alice's Adventures in Wonderland | William Sterling | |
| 1973 | Baxter! | Lionel Jeffries | |
| 1973 | Love and Pain and the Whole Damn Thing | Alan J. Pakula | |
| 1973 | Voices | Kevin Billington | |
| 1973 | Don Quixote | Rudolf Nureyev Robert Helpmann | |
| 1974 | Zardoz | John Boorman | |
| 1974 | The Internecine Project | Ken Hughes | |
| 1974 | The Abdication | Anthony Harvey | |
| 1974 | Murder on the Orient Express | Sidney Lumet | |
| 1975 | The Return of the Pink Panther | Blake Edwards | |
| 1975 | Royal Flash | Richard Lester | |
| 1975 | Lucky Lady | Stanley Donen | |
| 1976 | A Matter of Time | Vincente Minnelli | |
| 1977 | A Bridge Too Far | Richard Attenborough | |
| 1978 | Superman | Richard Donner | |
| 1978 | The First Great Train Robbery | Michael Crichton | Also actor (uncredited) |
| 1979 | Tess | Roman Polanski | With Ghislain Cloquet (Posthumous release) |
| 1980 | Superman II | Richard Lester | With Robert Paynter (Posthumous release) |
| 2006 | Superman II: The Richard Donner Cut | Richard Donner | With Robert Paynter (Posthumous release) |
Documentary film
| Year | Title | Director | Notes |
| 1963 | An Evening with the Royal Ballet | Anthony Havelock-Allan Anthony Asquith | Segments "La Valse", "Les Corsaire" and "Aurora's Wedding" |
| 1965 | Pop Gear | Frederic Goode | |

### Television

| Year | Title | Director | Episode |
| 1956 | The Magical World of Disney | Ken Annakin | "When Knighthood Was in Flower" (Part 1 & 2) |
| 1972 | Columbo | Richard Quine | "Dagger of the Mind" |

## Awards and honours

Academy Awards
| Year | Category | Title | Result |
| 1964 | Best Cinematography | Becket | Nominated |
| 1972 | Best Cinematography | Cabaret | Won |
| 1974 | Best Cinematography | Murder on the Orient Express | Nominated |
| 1979 | Best Cinematography | Tess (shared with Ghislain Cloquet) | Won |
BAFTA Awards
| Year | Category | Title | Result |
| 1964 | Best British Cinematography | Tamahine | Nominated |
| 1965 | Best British Cinematography | Becket | Won |
| 1969 | Best Cinematography | 2001: A Space Odyssey | Won |
| 1973 | Best Cinematography | Cabaret, Alice's Adventures in Wonderland | Won |
| 1975 | Best Cinematography | Murder on the Orient Express, Zardoz | Nominated |
| 1978 | Best Cinematography | A Bridge Too Far | Won |
| 1979 | Best Cinematography | Superman | Nominated |
| 1982 | Best Cinematography | Tess (shared with Ghislain Cloquet) | Won |
National Society of Film Critics
| Year | Category | Title | Result |
| 1969 | Best Cinematography | 2001: A Space Odyssey | 3rd place |
| 1972 | Best Cinematography | Cabaret | 4th place |
| 1981 | Best Cinematography | Tess (shared with Ghislain Cloquet) | 3rd place |