Charles Lang

During a career that spanned over half a century, cinematographer Charles Lang worked with directors ranging from Dorothy Arzner ("Anybody's Woman" 1930) to George Cukor ("Zaza" 1939) to Anthony Mann ("The Man from Laramie" 1955) and Paul Mazursky ("Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice" 1969). One of the key talents responsible for the look of Paramount Studio's films during the 1930s and 40s, Lang helped establish the softer, romanticized side of the studio's ornate, glossy, vaguely European visual style. Some of Lang's best work features a supple use of camera movement and an atmospheric, translucent lighting which washes gently through interiors, most notably in such tender love stories and wispy light comedies as Frank Borzage's "A Farewell to Arms" (1932) and "Desire" (1936), Mitchell Leisen's "Cradle Song" (1933), Ernst Lubitsch's "Angel" (1937), and Henry Hathaway's stunning romantic fantasy, "Peter Ibbetson" (1935). Like most Hollywood cinematographers of the classical period, however, Lang worked in all genres, and his work included action epics ("Lives of a Bengal Lancer" 1935) as well as the more brittle, stinging comedy of such classics as Mae West's first starrer, "She Done Him Wrong" (1933) and Leisen's delightful "Midnight" (1939).