February / 2004

Then and Now: A Conversation with Miklos Lente csc
“We have to be good storytellers with pictures”

by Don Angus

Miklos Lente csc is retired now, 47 years removed from that day he arrived in Canada as a 27-year-old from Communist Hungary and restarted his film career in Toronto from scratch.

In his homeland, his early ambition to be an engineer turned to studies in motion picture directing and then to cinematography. In Canada, he built his burgeoning knowledge and talent into an acclaimed career as a award-winning director of photography who knew what he wanted and how to achieve it — technically and artistically.

FLASHBACK: A younger Miklos Lente csc takes aim with his Arriflex camera.

And therein lies the story.

“We have to be good storytellers with pictures,” Lente told Ken Post csc in a CSC News interview in November, 1992. “Our talent has to be 50-per-cent technical and 50-per-cent artistic. If you’re 95-per-cent technical and five-per-cent artistic you’re in the wrong profession, you should be an engineer. If you’re 95-per-cent artistic and five-per-cent technical, perhaps you should be a film critic. The proper balance is important.”

Nearly 12 years later, Lente told this interviewer his philosophy of 50-50 balance hasn’t changed, although his profession has evolved through technology well beyond anything he could have imagined two or three decades ago.

“You have to have both artistic and technical knowledge,” he said. “If you don’t have one the other is not enough. Unfortunately I’ve noticed that a lot of DOPs today concentrate on technical knowledge and less on artistic, and that’s a detriment to their advancement. In my time, when the DOP was God — because we were the only ones who looked into the camera and saw what’s happening — we made all the big decisions. We really had to be able to make artistic decisions, with the help of the director — and usually the director, if he trusted his DOP, said OK.”

Once the film was in the can, he added, that was pretty much it. That’s the way it went up on the screen.

“That’s why the artistic part was so important,” he reiterated. “Today there are a lot of computer and other technical things involved.” He shot his last feature about two years ago, and he noted that “there’s a drastic difference in photography these days; many times the computer people take over. Sometimes the picture wasn’t the same one I photographed. I understand technology is changing, and I’ve got nothing against technology. It’s just artistically less satisfying for a DOP these days than it used to be.”

Lente compiled a long list of credits on features, television drama and series, documentaries and commercials in his long career, winning the Genie and CSC awards for In Praise of Older Women — his favourite feature — in 1978 and a bunch of Genie, Gemini and CSC nominations for theatrical and television projects. The CSC has also honoured him with two of its most prestigious prizes — the Kodak New Century Award in 1996 for outstanding contribution to the art of cinematography, and the Bill Hilson Award in 1989 for outstanding service contributing to the development of the motion picture industry.

TIME OUT: DOP Miklos Lente csc (right) takes a break with lead actor Charlton Heston during the shoot of the TV drama The Little Kidnappers (1990) on location on Nova Scotia’s Cape Breton Island.

The latter was partly inspired by the technical half of Lente’s persona. He invented the three-perf pulldown, although he never received full recognition or money for it, and he established Lentequip Inc. eight years ago to manufacture the film and video accessories that he kept dreaming up. It’s run by his stepson, engineer Emery Soos, but Lente is still the “ideas” man.

Lente has always shot on film. He appreciates the advances of today’s new film stocks, but “they have a good side and a bad side. The good side, of course, is that you have better quality. But many people have gotten too lazy, because you don’t have to worry about anything any more. Just push the button and there’s a picture. Almost anytime under any condition you can get a picture these days.

“In my day,” he reminisced, “64 ASA was high. I shot a television series in the Bahamas with 12 ASA — inside as well, where the smallest light was 1,000 watts. It was a different look because everything had to be lit. Practically no natural light.” He admitted that “these days that’s a big advantage; you can use the natural light and it’s very beautiful, too. I love it. Just don’t get lazy with it. Picture making is still art; you have to make sure the shadows are doing what you want.”

He has shot with 500 ASA film, “and in fact in night shooting I sometimes jacked it up to 1,000. You have to be careful how far you go, but you get good shadows.” By comparison, 26 years ago he shot In Praise of Older Women with a low ASA film stock — he didn’t remember exactly what — “and everything was lit.”

BALANCE: “You have to have both artistic and technical knowledge,” says Miklos Lente csc, shown behind a Panavision camera.

He would not shoot it the same today “because there are better film stocks available, making it easier to get a beautiful picture than it used to be. You used to have to use fill here, fill there, all kinds of tricks to get a proper picture. These days the natural bounce of light from the walls sometimes solves all the problems. If I had to do it again, it would have a different look, maybe not that much different, but details would be better.”

Another secret of his success, Lente revealed, was his readiness to be unready.

“All my career, when I went on to a set,” he said, “I was never ready. I made sure I was not ready because I had to be able to adjust. Don’t show the producer that you’re uncertain; show that you know what you’re doing. But you solve problems along the way. In order to make a good quality picture you have to be able to adjust. Don’t lock yourself in.”

Lente still loves going to movies. “Interestingly, when I go to the movies I’m not a cinematographer. I never was. The picture has to be good to tell the story, but the picture is not the story.”

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