Joseph Natanson; scenic designer for classic films
Hyfler/Rosner
(Ordinarily a lock....)
Joseph Natanson
(Filed: 22/11/2003) Telegraph
Joseph Natanson, who has died in Rome aged 94, began life as a Surrealist
painter before being recruited in 1947 to do the special effects for Michael
Powell and Emeric Pressburger's film The Red Shoes.
The picture won an Oscar for its designs, but Natanson vowed never to become
involved with such a project again. Yet he went on to provide the
illusionistic art work for some of the best-known directors of the second
half of the 20th century. In the end, he was involved in more than 80 films,
the last of them Jean-Jacques Annaud's Name of the Rose.
On viewing Natanson's handiwork at a private screening during the making of
Satyricon, Federico Fellini turned excitedly to him declaring: "Pure
Fellini". The tall, imposing Pole corrected him courteously: "No, pure
Natanson."
This followed Natanson's move in the early 1950s from London to Italy, where
he collaborated with many leading Italian filmmakers, including Vittorio De
Sica, Sergio Leone, Pier Paolo Pasolini, and Franco Zeffirelli, as well as
numerous other visitors to Cinecitta, from John Huston to Joseph Mankiewicz.
Joseph (originally Jozef) Pawel Natanson was born in Cracow on January 3
1909, the third child and only son of Stefan Natanson, an activist in the
struggle for Poland's independence and a talented pianist; Josef's mother
was an accomplished painter. During the First World War the father's
political activities took the family into temporary exile in Switzerland,
where Josef was sat upon the knee of Henryk Sienkiewicz, the Nobel-prize
winning author of the novel Quo Vadis?.
Having studied at the Warsaw Academy of Art, in 1934 Natanson worked his
passage on a yacht sailing from Gdynia and made his way to Paris. He studied
Art History at the Ecole du Louvre, where he also earned a certificate in
Museography, and continued to paint. His modest student existence was
enlivened by invitations to the grand houses of his Natanson cousins, a weal
thy Parisian banking family which had emigrated to France in the 1870s to
become prominent patrons of contemporary art.
On the outbreak of the Second World War, Natanson made his way to Coetquidan
in Brittany - where the Poles were reforming their scattered forces and
recruiting new volunteers - and joined the Polish Highland Brigade. This
unit formed part of the Allied force mustered to expel the Germans from
Narvik, and was landed from French transports south of the town. The brigade
was the subject of ariel bombardment and engaged in fierce fighting as it
advanced northwards to capture Narvik, suffering many casualties.
When the Allies evacuated Narvik, Natanson returned briefly to France,
before reaching Britain. He then collaborated with the writer Karol
Zbyszewski to produce one of the most vivid personal memoirs of the war: The
Fight for Narvik: Impressions of the Polish Campaign in Norway. Natanson's
bold drawings for the book are outstanding for their power and immediacy.
Still in uniform, Natanson found himself detailed to travel around Britain,
organizing exhibitions and lecturing on Polish art and culture. After
demobilisation he established the Studio of Decorative Arts on the Old
Brompton Road, where he and other Polish artists worked in a number of
media. Among their activities was hand-painting and gilding wartime utility
ware, which was then sold at Harrods. He became a British citizen in 1949.
Natanson's broad knowledge of the fine and decorative arts brought an
invitation from Sir Harold and Lady [Zia] Wernher to catalogue and publish
their collection at Luton Hoo in Bedfordshire. He subsequently produced two
more specialised volumes, Gothic Ivories of the 13th and 14th Centuries
(1951) and Early Christian Ivories (1953), which are still standard
reference works.
By then, Natanson's painting skills had caught the attention of the film
studios. Powell and Pressburger asked him to assist with special effects for
their ambitious Technicolor production, The Red Shoes, and he revealed an
exceptional flair for this work.
His principal task was painting and filming "matte-shots", miniature scenes
and additional elements on glass, that were blown up by the camera to create
magnificent backdrops, cityscapes, vistas and details that would have been
prohibitively expensive to construct, or impossible to engineer and
co-ordinate while shooting the main action.
Natanson was dispatched to Italy a number of times in the early 1950s, to
participate in various international co-productions at Cinecitta in Rome,
the new "Hollywood on the Tiber". He moved there in 1955, but meanwhile had
been asked by Encyclopaedia Britannica to provide definitive new entries on
ivories. The young English journalist Ann Pearce, who had recently arrived
in Rome, answered his small ad for editorial assistance. They married in
1957.
Long before the use of computerised effects, Natanson had ingenious tricks
of the trade; for Mankiewicz's Cleopatra, using a castle in the sea near
Anzio as a point of view, he managed, with the landscape artist Mary Bone,
to create a vast panorama of ancient Alexandria. However, after a delay in
filming, when Elizabeth Taylor was indisposed, he noticed that due to a
change in the weather, the distant chain of the Italian Apennines, until
then shrouded in mist, had suddenly become startlingly visible. The sets
were hastily repainted.
On another occasion, when a shot in Marco Ferreri's Marcia Nuziale, showing
a naked woman seen from behind sashaying up a staircase, proved too much for
the censors, the painter was called in to provide suitable drapery, framed
to move in time with the unclad figure.
Although he kept in touch with family members in Poland, Natanson did not
return there until 1994, when a retrospective of his paintings went on a
tour of four cities. His autobiography, The Creaking of the Gate, was
published in Warsaw earlier this year.
Joseph Natanson was a congenial and enthusiastic host, both in his Rome
apartment and at the studio-house he designed above Trevignano, overlooking
Lake Bracciano, where he cultivated vines and olives. He had a great
affection for the Italians, and was an amused observer of their foibles.
"Never back your car in Naples," was one of his many useful tips - some
buffoon would be bound to throw themselves on the ground, claiming you had
knocked them over.
He died on September 15, and is survived by his wife, and their son and
daughter.