AUGUST, Joseph H.

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Cinematographer. Nationality: American. Born: 1890. Education: Attended Colorado School of Mining. Family: Son: Joseph August, Jr. Career: 1911—entered films; 1913—first known film as cinematographer, From the Shadows; 1914—first of many films for William S. Hart; 1919—cofounder, American Society of Cinematographers. Died: In Hollywood, California, 25 September 1947.

Films as Cinematographer:

1913

From the Shadows (Barker—short); The Heritage of Eve (Barker—short); The Iron Master (Barker—short); The Man Who Went Out (Barker—short); The Miser (Barker—short);

1914

The Fugitive (The Taking of Luke McVane) (Hart and Smith—short); The Imposter (Barker—short); On the Night Stage (Barker—short; extended version: The Bandit and the Preacher , 1915); The Passing of Two Gun Hicks (Two Gun Hicks) (Hart and Smith—short); Pinto Ben (Barker—short);

1915

Between Men (Barker); Cash Parrish's Pal (Double Crossed) (Hart and Smith—short); The City of Darkness (Barker—short); The Coward (T. Ince and Barker); The Conversion of Frosty Blake (The Gentleman from Blue Gulch) (Hart and Smith—short; extended version: The Convert/The Roughneck , 1915); The Darkening Trail (Hart and Smith—short; extended version: Hell Bound for Alaska , 1915); The Disciple (Barker); The Grit (Hart and Smith—short); His Hour of Manhood (Barker); The Iron Strain (Barker); Keno Bates, Liar (Hart and Smith—short); Rumpelstiltskin (Barker); The Silent Stranger (Hart and Smith); The Ruse (Hart and Smith—short; extended version: A Square Deal, 1915)

1916

Hell's Hinges; The Return of Drew Egan; Apostle of Vengeance (Hart and Smith); The Aryan (Hart and Smith); The Captive God (Barker); Civilization's Child (Barker) (co);The Deserter (Edwards) (co); The Devil's Double (Barker); The Last Act (Hart and Smith)

1917

The Cold Deck (Barker); The Desert Man (Hart); An Even Break (Hart); Golden Rule Kate (Barker); The Gunfighter (Hart); Truthful Tulliver (Hart); The Regenerates (Hart); The Silent Man (Hart); The Square Deal Man (Hart); Upholding the Law (Hart); Wolf Lowry (Hart)

1918

Blue Blazes Rawden (Hart); The Border Wireless (Hart); Branding Broadway (Hart); He Comes Up Smiling (Dwan); The Narrow Trail (Hart); Riddle Gawne (Hart); Selfish Yates (Hart); Shark Monroe (Hart); The Tiger Man (Hart); Wolves of the Rail (Hart)

1919

Poppy Girl's Husband (Hart); Breed of Men (Hillyer); John Petticoats (Hillyer); The Money Corral (Hillyer); Square Deal Sanderson (Hillyer); Wagon Tracks (Hillyer)

1920

Sand (Hillyer); The Testing Block (Hillyer); The Toll Gate (Hillyer); The Cradle of Courage (Hillyer)

1921

O'Malley of the Mounted (Hillyer); The Whistle (Hillyer); White Oak (Hillyer); Three Word Brand (Hillyer)

1922

Arabian Love (Storm); Travelin' On (Hillyer); Honor First (Storm); The Love Gambler (Franz); A California Romance (Storm)

1923

The Man Who Won (Wellman); Truxton King (Truxtonia) (Storm); Madness of Youth (Storm); The Temple of Venus (Otto); Big Dan (Wellman); Good-by Girls! (Storm); St. Elmo (Storm); Darkness and Daylight (Plummer); Cupid's Fireman (Wellman)

1924

Dante's Inferno (Otto); Not a Drum Was Heard (Wellman); The Folly of Vanity (Elvey and Otto) (co); The Vagabond Trail (Wellman)

1925

The Hunted Woman (Conway); Greater Than a Crown (Neill); The Fighting Heart (Ford); The Ancient Mariner (Otto and Bennett); Tumbleweeds (Baggot); Lightnin' (Ford)

1926

The Road to Glory (Hawks); Fig Leaves (Hawks); The Flying Horseman (Dull)

1927

The Beloved Rogue (Crosland); Two Arabian Knights (Milestone) (co); Come to My House (Green); Very Confidential (Tinling)

1928

Soft Living (Tinling); Don't Marry (Tinling); Honor Bound (Green); The Farmer's Daughter (Rosson or Taurog)

1929

Strong Boy (Ford); Salute (Ford); Seven Faces (Viertel) (co); The Black Watch (King of the Khyber Rifles) (Ford)

1930

Men without Women (Ford); Double Cross Roads (Werker) (co); On Your Back (McClintic); Up the River (Ford); Man Trouble (Viertel)

1931

Seas Beneath (Ford); Mr. Lemon of Orange (Blystone); Quick Millions (Brown); The Brat (Ford); Heartbreak (Werker); Charlie Chan's Chance (Blystone)

1932

Silent Witness (Varnel and Hough); As the Devil Commands (Neill); Mystery Ranch (Howard); Vanity Street (Grinde); No More Orchids (W. Lang); That's My Boy (Neill)

1933

Circus Queen Murder (Neill); Cocktail Hour (Schertzinger); Master of Men (Hillyer); Man's Castle (Borzage)

1934

No Greater Glory (Borzage); Twentieth Century (Hawks); Black Moon (Neill); Sisters under the Skin (The Romantic Age) (Burton); The Defense Rests (Hillyer); Among the Missing (Rogell); The Captian Hates the Sea (Milestone)

1935

The Whole Town's Talking (Passport to Fame) (Ford); I'll Love You Always (Bulgakov); The Informer (Ford); After the Dance (Bulgakov); Sylvia Scarlett (Cukor)

1936

Muss 'em Up (House of Fate) (C. Vidor) (co); Every Saturday Night (Tinling); Mary of Scotland (Ford); Grand Jury (Rogell); The Plough and the Stars (Ford)

1937

Sea Devils (Stoloff) (co); The Soldier and the Lady (Michael Strogoff) (Nicholls); Fifty Roads to Town (Taurog); There Goes My Girl (Holmes); Super-Sleuth (Stoloff); Music for Madam (Blystone); A Damsel in Distress (Stevens)

1938

The Saint in New York (Holmes) (co); Gun Law (Howard); Border G-Man (Howard); This Marriage Business (Cabanne)

1939

Man of Conquest (Nicholls); Gunga Din (Stevens); Nurse Edith Cavell (Wilcox) (co); The Hunchback of Notre Dame (Dieterle)

1940

Primrose Path (La Cava); Melody Ranch (Santley)

1941

All That Money Can Buy (The Devil and Daniel Webster) (Dieterle)

1945

They Were Expendable (Ford)

1948

Portrait of Jennie (Jennie) (Dieterle)

Publications

On AUGUST: articles—

Film Comment (New York), Summer 1972.

Focus on Film (London), no. 13, 1973.

Film Dope (Nottingham), March 1988.

Henderson, J. A., "Swan Song: Portrait of Jennie," in American Cinematographer (Hollywood), December 1996.

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Screenwriter Dudley Nichols once wrote, ". . . Joe August was a great cameraman, perhaps the most experimental and audacious I have ever known." Much of his silent work has been lost or is available only in poor copies that do little justice to Joseph H. August's exemplary skill. But the films that survive—both silent and sound—eloquently support Nichols's appraisal.

August began in the business under the tutelage of Thomas Ince and soon was William S. Hart's photographer of choice. With only a couple of exceptions, August photographed every Hart feature from The Disciple to Tumbleweeds. Hart's westerns provided August with a wide range of stylistic challenges: the blazing religiosity of Hell's Hinges; the staid, almost geometric groupings of people and buildings in The Return of Drew Egan, the bright, expansive Truthful Tulliver, the desert panoramas of The Silent Man. August's eye for landscape distinguishes the Hart films; interiors, however, often look cramped and dull.

Though August was at home in the open western scenery, his work ranged farther afield during the 1920s. He provided startling images to moralistic fantasies like Dante's Inferno, The Temple of Venus, and The Ancient Mariner, and delighted in the unusual and experimental: he turns the camera upside-down for an effect in Big Dan, works with double exposure in Hart's Three Word Brand, utilizes Technicolor in Fig Leaves.

While the cliché would have it that the introduction of sound "nailed the camera to the floor," August found the new technology challenging and inspiring. His stunning camera work on John Ford films such as Salute and Men without Women is filled with elaborate tracking shots, underwater photography (at one point, he mounted a camera in a waterproof booth on top of a submarine and filmed the submersion), and other bravura techniques without sacrificing what Lindsay Anderson calls his "voluptuous lighting" which gives films like The Black Watch their "remarkable visual distinction: strikingly chiaroscuro, boldly dramatic in composition, strongly dramatic in atmosphere."

August worked often with Ford in the 1930s, oddly—considering that both men made their reputations in the genre—never in a western. Ford had August utilize double exposures to make twins of Edward G. Robinson in The Whole Town's Talking just as the cinematographer had done with William S. Hart in Three Word Brand (1921). Ford and August also worked together on the moody Mary of Scotland, The Plough and the Stars (an "Irish" film that seems to be composed equally of documentary and expressionist techniques), and The Informer, Ford's most overt excursion into the art film. The Informer seems more deliberate and obvious than much of Ford's best work but August's contribution is superb: stylized, shadowy, evocative.

However, Ford had no monopoly on August's services. Rowland Brown, Stevens, Dieterle, Cukor, and Borzage all brought out fresh facets of the cinematographer's talent. The cinematography in Quick Millions is fast-paced and hard-boiled; August suffuses Man's Castle with romantic mist; A Damsel in Distress is fluid and sun-lit; Gunga Din stylizes its roughhousing, mock-heroic images by placing the camera below eye level and undercranking.

Portrait of Jennie, August's last film, contains some of his most striking work: harsh, black-and-white contrasts in one scene, dreamy, misty romanticism in the next. Only in his late 50s when he died, August was a motion picture veteran of over 30 years. His career neatly spans the "Golden Age." He weathered the technical innovations of the silent period, matter-of-factly took on sound, and gracefully exited the scene before television ever played havoc with the sensitive, glimmering, and audacious images to which he devoted his life.

—Frank Thompson