Vilmos Zsigmond is one of the world’s greatest cinematographers, a winner of the Academy Award as well as of the Lifetime Achievement Award of the American Society of Cinematographers. For his career he was awarded the Gold Medal of the Hungarian Republic as well as the Hungarian Corvin Chain Award for Merit. He became the honorary citizen of his hometown Szeged in 2004.
Vilmos Zsigmond was born on June 16th, 1930 in Szeged, where he lived until the age of 20. He graduated from the Piarist High School in 1948. After his graduation he studied photography under Balázs Becsky in his studio in Kárász Street.
"I have retained many memories from the period of living in Szeged, since the things we experience as a child remain deeply engraved in our minds. Széchenyi Square, the plane trees… Going to school on foot from Móraváros to Felsőváros. It was a 45-minute walk, however, back home it took a little longer because I played a lot on the streets. I still remember the old bridge, designed by the architecture company of Eiffel, that was exploded and never reconstructed. Another bridge was built instead of the beautiful old one. I can recall the memory of Rudolf Square. Fruits were offered there on the market in the morning. Melons, peaches, grapes were piled up. All this disappeared from our life today, but has stayed in my memory.”
He studied cinematography at the University of Theatre and Film Arts in Budapest, under György Illés, János Badal and Béla Bolykovszky. He graduated in 1955. During the Hungarian Revolution of 1956, he and classmate László Kovács made many recordings in the streets of Budapest with a camera hidden in a shopping bag. After the revolution he left Hungary.
After arriving in the United States, he worked in film labs first, then he made educational films and shorts for several years. He attracted attention from the early 60s with his accuracy, visual literacy and unconventional use of the camera. During that time the legendary Hungarian cinematography school of György Illés was also noticed by the international film industry. Students from this school broke with the old traditions of studio lighting. They found new, individual ways of expression by using and developing natural lighting techniques, vivid compositions and special camera movements.
"We were happy as we created the European-style cinema in America.” – he said about this golden era.
He gained professional recognition with Robert Altman's movie McCabe and Mrs. Miller. In the film he produced the atmosphere of old, faded photographs by fading pictures with certain laboratory processes. From that time on, pale colours became important elements in his design. He applied the same technique again to create a special atmosphere in other movies such as Deliverance, Scarecrow and The Deer Hunter.
He worked with a number of great directors including De Palma, Cimino and Schatzberg. He was also a co-creator of Spielberg.
In Sugarland Express he increased dramatic tensions by shooting with a handheld camera. In Close Encounters of the Third Kind he created a grand vision much earlier than the glory days of digital sci-fi art. For the cinematography of this movie he received the Academy Award in 1978.
In the 80s he filmed more comedies, in which he intensified humorous situations by using special settings, lighting effects and camera movements (The Bonfire of the Vanities, The Witches of Eastwick). Interestingly, he appears for a moment in Maverick in the role of a photographer typical of that time.
He worked several times in Hungary, too. He filmed some parts of the movie Stalin here as well as the opera film Bánk Bán. In 1990 he directed a film, The Long Shadow, whose cinematographer was Gábor Szabó.
Vilmos Zsigmond shot about fifty movies. Different television channels still show films from his outstanding cinematographic career almost every day.