Water and Sug­ar: Car­lo Di Pal­ma, the Colours of Life

Imag­i­na­tive and unique, Car­lo Di Pal­ma was the mas­ter cin­e­matog­ra­ph­er who brought inno­va­tion, aes­thet­ic vibran­cy and rich colour to count­less Michelan­ge­lo Anto­nioni films, who intro­duced a Euro­pean flare to the ear­ly works of Woody Allen, but whose name is prob­a­bly only recog­nised by small coterie of hard­core film enthusiasts.

Fari­borz Kamkari’s Water and Sug­ar is a cel­e­bra­tion of the cinematographer’s work, with appear­ances from the likes of Bernar­do Bertoluc­ci, Ken Loach, Wim Wen­ders, Chris­t­ian De Sica and more, all of whom reflect on col­lab­o­ra­tions with their late friend. Rub­bing shoul­ders with these greats is Di Palma’s wife, Adri­an­na Chiesa, who takes it upon her­self to reignite her husband’s lega­cy while also remind­ing us of her pres­ence by appear­ing in almost every frame. We fol­low her through­out Europe and across to New York (wit­ness­ing mul­ti­ple out­fit changes) as she inter­views direc­tors, writ­ers, actors and jour­nal­ists in homage to her late husband’s work.

The doc­u­men­tary adopts a stan­dard chrono­log­i­cal nar­ra­tive of his life: he was born to a florist and cam­era-oper­a­tor and he became a hybrid of his par­ents’ careers, demon­strat­ing tech­ni­cal abil­i­ties with a unique eye for cap­tur­ing colour and aes­thet­ic. Told by his moth­er to go towards cul­ture, to be with intel­lec­tu­als, artists, painters and writ­ers, his pas­sion for the mov­ing image seemed inevitable and only encour­aged by his first job work­ing under the influ­ence of great Ital­ian-neo­re­al­ist mae­stros, on the set of Luchi­no Visconti’s 1943 film Ossessione.

From here, the doc­u­men­tary takes us onwards and upwards, with insight to the bril­liance behind shot lists along­side appro­pri­ate­ly cho­sen clips that demon­strate the artist’s most impres­sive works and growth as a cin­e­matog­ra­ph­er. Par­tic­u­lar­ly mem­o­rable is an expla­na­tion to a din­ner scene from 1986’s Han­nah and her Sis­ters, in which he refused Allen’s shot reverse/​shot set up, in favour of a rotat­ing long take – a sequence which then became one of the most intense and laud­ed of the film.

Giv­en that this doc­u­men­tary cel­e­brates the inven­tive genius of a mas­ter behind cin­e­mat­ic art, it’s dis­ap­point­ing­ly ordi­nary and unin­ven­tive in its form. That being said, it thor­ough­ly depicts the impor­tance of the tal­ent behind the visu­als, of the impor­tant names often for­got­ten, and of course, of the true genius of the subject.