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William Fraker Dances with the Devil
Cinematographer William Fraker says there are still lessons to be learned from Rosemary's Baby
Let’s begin by peeking behind the scenes at USC, where cinematographer William A. Fraker, ASC , BSC is guiding a class of next-generation moviemakers through the process of telling stories with moving images. His textbook is Rosemary’s Baby, the classic film he shot 40 years ago in collaboration with director Roman Polanski. Fraker shows his students one scene at a time. Then he pauses to discuss how composition, light, darkness, camera angles and movement are used as visual dialogue to create a compelling
story in a collaborative process.
Fraker has earned five Oscar nominations for his work behind the camera—on Looking For Mr. Goodbar (1977), Heaven Can Wait (1978), 1941 (1979), War-Games (1983) and Murphy’s Romance (1985)—and one for his visual effects on 1941. He received the ultimate compliment in 2000, when his peers in the American Society of Cinematographers presented him with a coveted ASC Lifetime Achievement Award.
Fraker’s life story is the stuff that inspires movie scripts. His grandmother was a teacher in Mexico in 1910, when the country was in turmoil and a revolutionary government had put schoolteachers on their list of enemies. “She was an amazing lady,” Fraker reminisces. “In 1910, my grandmother rode a mule while carrying my mother and aunt all the way from Mazatlan across the border into the United States. She became a portrait photographer at a studio in downtown Los Angeles. My grandmother was my father’s mentor; he was a still photographer for Columbia Pictures from 1927 until he died in 1934. My uncle was a still photographer for Paramount Pictures. I thought that was my destiny.”
Fraker’s future was put on hold during World War II, when he served in the U.S. Navy. Afterward, the GI Bill of Rights enabled him to enroll in the film studies program at USC , where he studied under Slavko Vorkapich, a director who had pioneered the use of montage in motion pictures during the 1920s and 1930s, including David Copperfield (1935) and Mr. Smith Goes to Washington (1939).
After graduation, Fraker spent seven years shooting inserts for commercials and grab shots for movies. He’d get a call to shoot workers leaving a factory at the end of a shift, and Fraker would drive to the factory and grab the shot with his 16mm camera; he was paid $25 a shot.
Rosemary’s Baby was Fraker’s fifth feature. It was a “B” movie, which means that it was produced at the lower end of the budget scale (about $3.2 million). There was a 14-week production schedule, including two weeks in New York.
In the film, John Cassavetes and Mia Farrow play a husband and wife, Guy and Rosemary, who move into a new Manhattan apartment. Guy, an actor, has aspirations of being a Broadway star and gets his shot when another actor mysteriously goes blind. Meanwhile, Rosemary discovers she is pregnant. Then the drama begins. Was their apartment once a home for witches? Did her husband make a deal with the devil? Are neighbors Minnie and Roman Castevet (an older couple, played by Ruth Gordon and Sidney Blackmer) part of a coven? What about her doctor? Is Rosemary carrying the spawn of satan?
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This story was published in the Summer 2008 MovieMaker Magazine. The headline was:
Dancing With the Devil / William Fraker says there are still lessons to be learned from Rosemary's Baby
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