Obituary: Cinematographer Bruce Surtees, 1937-2012

By
Laurence
– March 4, 2012Find Others: Obituary
Bruce Surtees (r.) and Clint Eastwood

Bruce Surtees (r.) and Clint Eastwood on the set of 1973's High Plains Drifter.

Bruce Surtees, the veteran cinematographer known for his moody, nuanced use of lighting and shadows in a number of films in the 1970s and 80s, died on Thursday, Feb. 23, 2011. He was 74.

The cause was complications of diabetes.

Surtees’ first cinematography credit was on the 1971 Don Siegel-directed Civil War drama-romance movie The Beguiled, starring Clint Eastwood.

Surtees would go on to shoot more than a dozen films in which Eastwood starred and/or directed, including Eastwood’s directorial debut Play Misty for Me (1971), High Plains Drifter (1973), The Outlaw Josey Wales (1976) and the Dirty Harry adventure Sudden Impact (1983).

Other directors whom Surtees worked with include Bob Fosse (1974’s Lenny, for which he was nominated for an Academy Award), Paul Mazursky (1973’s Blume in Love), Arthur Penn (1975’s Night Moves), Gordon Parks (1976’s Leadbelly), John Milius (1978’s Big Wednesday ) and Sam Fuller (1982’s White Dog).

Surtees also gave a memorably evocative look to the ground-breaking 1983 teen comedy-romance Risky Business.

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About Laurence

Founder and editor Laurence Lerman saw Alfred Hitchcock’s North by Northwest when he was 13 years old and that’s all it took. He has been writing about film and video for more than a quarter of a century for magazines, anthologies, websites and most recently, Video Business magazine, where he served as the Reviews Editor for 15 years.