British director Nicolas Roeg didn’t direct a single film until he’d been in the industry a quarter-century, the first wave of his career being in cinematography. Roeg was a photographer turned DP who earned his chops as a 2nd unit cinematographer on the greatest film ever shot – LAWRENCE OF ARABIA – and himself shot most of DOCTOR ZHIVAGO before personal differences cost him the gig and the credit.
This, in part, propelled Roeg into the director’s chair, but he never left a cinematographer’s sensibility behind. For his second feature, WALKABOUT (1970), Roeg assumed both roles, director and cinematographer, and the result is an aesthetic precursor to THE REVENANT, a naturally-lit, landscape driven story of survival rendered larger than life by the simple act of holding a camera up to the natural world.
the flawless frame 