Sol Polito, the Oscar-nominated cinematographer who helped create the
distinct visual character of Warner Bros. films in the 1930s and 1940s,
was born Salvador Polito on November 12, 1892, in Palermo, Sicily.
While still young he emigrated to the US with his family, which settled
in New York City, where he attended public school. He started out as a
still photographer, then became a laboratory assistant before becoming
an assistant to a movie camera crew. Polito received his formal
training in the craft of cinematography during a three-year
apprenticeship on a camera crew before graduating to head cameraman,
shooting Rip Van Winkle (1914)
in 1914.
He worked for a variety of movie companies through the early silent
era, including Metro, Triangle, Universal and World. By the time he
shot 13 program Westerns starring
Harry Carey from 1925 to 1928, he already
showed his mastery of black and white, creating crisp images. Polito
joined First National Studios in 1927, which was merged with Warner
Bros. the following year.
Polito thrived in the studio system that emerged with the vertical
integration of the studios in the 1920s. He established himself as a
first-rate craftsman who strove to create the finest images by
following industry guidelines even as he perfected their application.
Warner Bros., under studio boss
Jack L. Warner, demanded efficiency from
its technicians and would not allow extra shooting to achieve an effect
unless the additional expense could be justified by its propensity to
make the finished film a success at the box office. Polito became
co-chief cinematographer, along with fellow Italian immigrant
Tony Gaudio, at Warners.
He worked in a wide variety of genres, and he and Gaudio created what
became known as "the Warners look"--a hard, unglamorous image,
unsoftened by flattering lighting effects. Influenced by German
Expressionism, the Warners "look" crafted by Polito and Gaudio was
rooted in chiaroscuro contrasts between light and darkness that also
were a metaphor for the world the characters lived in. Polito's
cinematography for Mervyn LeRoy's
Ich bin ein entflohener Kettensträfling (1932)
is extremely expressive and adds to the somber tone created by the
director. The Warners look in cinematography anticipated the "film
noir" style that emerged in the late 1940s, when filmmakers and
audiences, in response to the documentaries of World War II and Italian
neo-realist cinema, sought to inject realism into American cinema
(Polito was not really involved in postwar film noir, though he shot
Anatole Litvak's classic noir
Du lebst noch 105 Minuten (1948),
giving it a hazy look with an undefined framing that serves as a
metaphor for the moral ambivalence and sense of anomie that is at the
heart of the film).
When Warners moved to a lusher aesthetic in the 1930s, Polito readily
adapted. As one of the studio's chief cinematographers, he often shot
Warners' most important pictures. He frequently worked with director
Michael Curtiz on the A-list pictures
starring Errol Flynn, working in
both black-and-white and the difficult Technicolor three-strip dye
transfer process. His color cinematography on the blockbuster
Die Abenteuer des Robin Hood (1938)
is still hailed as one of the greatest examples of Technicolor
shooting. For the studio's #1 star,
Bette Davis, he created a more glamorous
look. Eschewing the hard contrast between white and black that was part
of Warners' famous "look", he created classic romantic fantasies, such
as Reise aus der Vergangenheit (1942), which
featured soft focus close-ups of Davis. As a cinematographer he was
flexible and willing to modify his effects to fit the exigencies of the
movie's theme. For his work at Warners, he was nominated three times
for the Academy Award, twice for best color cinematography.
After shooting the Errol Flynn vehicle
Escape Me Never (1947) and
The Voice of the Turtle (1947)
, Polito
moved on to Paramount to shoot "Sorry, Wrong Number" (1948) for former
Warner Bros. producer Hal B. Wallis. He
shot only one more film before he retired:
Anna Lucasta (1949) at Columbia
Pictures.
Sol Polito died on Mary 23, 1960, in Hollywood, California. He was 67
years old.
