Woody Allen’s “You Will Meet a Tall Dark Stranger” follows a pair of married couples, Alfie (Anthony Hopkins) and Helena (Gemma Jones), and their daughter Sally (Naomi Watts) and husband Roy (Josh Brolin), as their passions, ambitions, and anxieties lead them into trouble and out of their minds.
After Alfie leaves Helena to pursue his lost youth and a free-spirited call girl named Charmaine (Lucy Punch), Helena abandons rationality and surrenders her life to the loopy advice of a charlatan fortune teller.
Unhappy in her marriage, Sally develops a crush on her handsome art gallery owner boss, Greg (Antonio Banderas), while Roy, a novelist nervously awaiting the response to his latest manuscript, becomes moonstruck over Dia (Freida Pinto), a mystery woman who catches his gaze through a nearby window.
Despite these characters’ attempts to dodge their problems with pipe dreams and impracticable plans, their efforts lead only to heartache, irrationality, and perilous hot water.
Taking its title from the prediction fortune tellers use to beguile their marks, “You Will Meet a Tall Dark Stranger,” illustrates with wry humor how easy it is for our illusions to make fools of us all.
The Director of Photography for “You Will Meet a Tall Dark Stranger” is the famed Vilmos Zsigmond:
Vilmos Zsigmond ASC (Director of Photography) was born and raised in Szeged, Hungary, a small town whose main industry was a rope factory. He was barely in his teens when World War II ended, and the Russian government and army established a communist regime which cut off all contact with the Western world. Zsigmond developed a keen interest in still photography when he was 17 years old while reading “The Art of Light,” a book filled with photographs taken by Eugene Dulovits.
Communist authorities initially denied him the privilege of continuing his education, because his parents were bourgeois. Instead, Zsigmond was put to work in the rope factory. He saved money to purchase a camera and became a self-taught still photographer. Zsigmond organized a camera club at the factory where he taught his fellow workers how to take pictures. He was rewarded by being allowed to study cinematography at the Academy for Theater and Film Art in Budapest. The idea was that he would come back to the factory and teach his fellows how to make home movies. On October 23, 1956, shortly after Zsigmond graduated from the Academy, there was a spontaneous public uprising against the communist regime. Zsigmond and Laszlo Kovacs, ASC, who was still a student, borrowed a motion picture camera and recorded thousands of feet of 35mm black-and-white film documenting the slaughter of brave civilians fighting Russian tanks and soldiers on the streets of Budapest.
After the rebellion was crushed, Zsigmond and Kovacs carried the film out of the country during a perilous journey across the border into Austria. They wanted the world to see what happened. Zsigmond and Kovacs migrated to the United States as political refugees with a dream of becoming Hollywood cinematographers in February, 1957. They didn’t speak a word of English, and had no connections in the film industry. Zsigmond supported himself by working at odd jobs and spending weekends and evenings shooting 16 mm educational and student films.
He found a niche in the TV commercial industry, and also began shooting low-budget features aimed at drive-in theaters during the mid-late 1960s. In 1971, Robert Altman asked Zsigmond to shoot McCabe & Mrs. Miller. That was his entry into mainstream Hollywood.
Zsigmond has compiled some 80 narrative film credits during his storied career. He received The British Academy Award (BAFTA) for THE DEER HUNTER, and the American Academy Award for CLOSE ENCOUNTERS OF THE THIRD KIND and has had many nominations both in the United States and internationally for the his body of work. When he earned the Oscar® for innovative cinematography on CLOSE ENCOUNTERS OF THE THIRD KIND in 1977, he dedicated that award to his mentors at the film school in Hungary during a memorable acceptance speech that was seen on television by millions of people around the world. There were other Academy Award nominations for THE DEER HUNTER in 1978, THE RIVER in 1984 and THE BLACK DAHLIA in 2006. Zsigmond also won an Emmy Award for the television film Stalin in 1992 and another nomination for THE MISTS OF AVALON in 2001.
In 2005, Zsigmond and Kovacs were among the first four recipients of The Legends Award from the Hungarian Society of Cinematographers. The award is a tribute to cinematographers whose lives and film are an inspiration to other filmmakers around the world. Zsigmond just recently returned from his alma mater in Budapest where he mentored film students in a master class. He and Kovacs helped to create the concept for the semi-annual summer master class in 1994. Zsigmond is and has been a regular participant in master classes all over the world.
Zsigmond is now completing shooting on BOLDEN to be released with LOUIS, a pair of films he has photographed for director Dan Pritzker that are a cinematic tribute to a pioneer of the early history of American jazz in BOLDEN and his subsequent influence on the great Louis Armstrong in the silent movie LOUIS.
There have been many other tributes, including Lifetime Achievement Awards from the CamerImage International Festival of the Art of Cinematography in 1997 and the American Society of Cinematographers in 1999. His body of work includes many other now classic films, including Blow OUT, DELIVERANCE, THE LONG GOODBYE, THE SUGARLAND EXPRESS, CINDERELLA LIBERTY, THE ROSE, HEAVEN’S GATE, THE WITCHES OF EASTWICK, SLIVER, and two previous films with Woody Allen; MELIND AND MELINDA and CASSANDRA’S DREAM.