Before Maestro, nearly a decade had gone by since Matthew Libatique had shot a film on 35mm. "There was a bit of relearning that needed to happen," the cinematographer says of his journey from 2014's Noah to Maestro. "But it's really like riding a bicycle. Shooting with film is how I started my career. To this day, I've still shot more films on film than I have on digital."
The New York City native first gained attention in the late '90s and early 2000s for his work with Darren Aronofsky, lensing films like Pi and Requiem for a Dream. That partnership has continued throughout their respective careers — Libatique received his first Oscar nomination for Best Cinematography with 2010's Black Swan — but the DP has also collaborated with filmmakers like Jon Favreau (Iron Man), Spike Lee (Inside Man), and Olivia Wilde (Don't Worry, Darling).
One of his most fruitful professional relationships is the one he has forged with Bradley Cooper. The two first worked together on Cooper's 2018 directorial debut, A Star is Born, for which Libatique received his second Oscar nomination. When Cooper began developing his directorial follow-up, the Leonard Bernstein biopic Maestro, Libatique realized that it would be a far more technically demanding project. And, unlike A Star is Born, which Libatique shot digitally, Maestro was always intended to be shot on film.
At the 96th Oscars, Libatique received his third Oscar nomination for Best Cinematography.
"What I love about this craft is that you learn something new all the time," he says. "If you're lucky, you learn something from every film. If you're not learning anything, you might as well quit."
Below, Libatique shares with A.frame his Top 5. This list, he explains, comprises "a generation of cinematographers" that helped to shape his own approach to the art of cinematography.
Directed by: Bernardo Bertolucci | Cinematography by: Vittorio Storaro
I love naturalism. I love realism. I love lights coming in from the windows and not from above, where there should be no light, so I like the lack of artifice that Last Tango in Paris has. Everything feels kind of unlit in that apartment, but in a very beautiful way, almost in a Sven Nykvist-way at times. At the same time, it's very stylized compositions, and the people inside the frames are stylized — from the fur coat she wears to his long coat. At the right time of day, he has this silhouette in the exterior scenes, and all of those things really blend together. As soon as I saw that movie, I was inspired by it. Honestly, it's like a template for what I like to do myself.
Directed by: Alexander Mackendrick | Cinematography by: James Wong Howe
I love Sweet Smell of Success, and I love the photography. There's one scene where Tony Curtis walks outside and he's near the Flatiron Building, and I'm always like, “Oh my God, that's so modern!" That film was way ahead of its time, and it inspires to me to this day, because it makes everything seem possible. It has such a reality, grit, and naturalism to it. Some of the interior scenes were lit more than I would have liked, but it was out of necessity, and when the characters do go inside, everything still has a sense of naturalism. That was done at a time when the lights had to be so hot and the ISO and sensitivity of the film stocks were so low. To me, it’s inspiring. I watch Sweet Smell of Success a lot. I love that movie.
Directed by: Stanley Kubrick | Cinematography by: Douglas Milsome
I think Full Metal Jacket is a little punk rock. I love the attitude behind it, and I was lucky enough to work with a guy who was a focus puller on that film. His name is Jonathan Taylor, and he was a second-unit cinematographer for me on Iron Man. I learned a lot from working with him, and he told me a story about Full Metal Jacket, because he worked with Dougie Milsome on that film.
He told me that when they were filming the scene where they’re walking across that field to the town, they were just throwing cameras out. They had 11 cameras and they were tossing out all of them, because they didn’t have enough people on the camera crew to operate them all. Truck drivers had cameras! Stanley Kubrick employed people to do it and would say, 'This is where the trigger is.' They'd set the stop and focus for them and then just go for it. I heard that and I was like, 'That’s so punk rock!' The spirit of the filmmaking is really why I love that movie so much.
Directed by: Woody Allen | Cinematography by: Gordon Willis
I looked at Manhattan before shooting Maestro. It's one of my favorite movies, so I watched it a couple of times. I wish I could be a fly on the wall and watch Woody and Gordon work together on that film. A lot of my favorite work that Gordon Willis did was actually with Alan Pakula. I love Klute and The Parallax View, and he shot both of those films, too. Gordon, Ed Lachman and John A. Alonzo, those guys were really my mentors.
Directed by: Francis Ford Coppola | Cinematography by: Gordon Willis
The photography of The Godfather seemed new to me when I saw it for the first time. It spoke to me the same way that Last Tango in Paris did. Coming up as a cinematographer, those were the kinds of movies we watched in our early 20s. The Godfather and all the movies made by those '70s cinematographers: Gordon Willis, John Alonzo, Owen Roizman, Conrad Hall, and James Wong Howe. Those were the people whose work we were watching.
If you look at my list, you'll notice that there are two Gordon Willis films, one Vittorio Storaro film, one Jimmy Wong Howe film, and one Douglas Milsome movie. That's because that's a generation of cinematographers who forwarded the craft to us, and that's what I love. I hope my generation can forward the craft to the next. That's what we do. That's how we support the future of cinema.
