A Conversation with Cinematographer Vilmos Zsigmond | Cinema Sojourns

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Hungarian cinematographer Vilmos Zsigmond

*This is an archival interview from 2004 that originally appeared on the Turner Classic Movies website.

One of the great cinematographers to emerge in the second half of the 20th century was Vilmos Zsigmond (1930-2026). His rise to prominence occurred around the same time as the Hollywood Renaissance of the 1970s when such directors as Martin Scorsese, Steven Spielberg, Dennis Hopper, Hal Ashby, Brian De Palma, Francis Ford Coppola and other young directors changed the way movies were made.

Vilmos Zsigmond (left) and his fellow film school classmate Laszlo Kovacs emigrated to the U.S. in 1958 after the Hungarian Revolution.

Zsigmond was born on June 16, 1930 in Szeged, Hungary and became interested in photography as a teenager. While working in a factory, he earned enough to buy his first camera and taught himself how to use it, eventually organizing a camera club for his fellow factory workers. He later studied cinematography at the University of Theatre and Film Arts in Budapest and graduated in 1955. During the Hungarian Revolution of 1956, he and fellow classmate Laszlo Kovacs captured street scenes of those chaotic days with a camera hidden in a shopping bag and smuggled it out of Hungary (and sold the footage to CBS). Both Zsigmond and Kovacs ended up immigrating to the U.S. in 1958 as political refugees and eventually settled in Los Angeles. At first Zsigmond supported himself by working in photo labs but soon moved on to shooting educational films.

THE SADIST (1963) was the first feature film Vilmos Zsigmond shot in Hollywood.

His Hollywood career began in the early 1960s when he broke into feature filmmaking by shooting numerous low-budget horror/sci-fi and exploitation films like The Sadist (1963), The Time Travelers (1964), The Incredibly Strange Creatures Who Stopped Living and Became Mixed-Up Zombies (1965), The Name of the Game is Kill (1968), Satan’s Sadists (1969), and Horror of the Blood Monsters (1970). He achieved a major breakthrough in 1971 when he was hired to shoot McCabe & Mrs. Miller for Robert Altman and The Hired Hand by Peter Fonda. After that, he became an in-demand cinematographer for most of the major directors in the film industry. Among his many awards and honors are four Oscar nominations for Best Cinematography – 1978’s Close Encounters of the Third Kind (which he won), The Deer Hunter (1979), The River (1985) and The Black Dahlia (2007).

TCM: According to the Internet Movie Database, your first feature film as a cinematographer was Hajnal Elott in 1955. Is that correct?

Zsigmond: Hajnal Elott (Before Dawn) was my diploma film for the Academy of Film and Theater in Budapest. It was a 35mm film I photographed and was distributed by MAFILM along with 3 other short films made by graduation students. These films were financed by the government and had to be good enough to be presented to the general public in theaters.

Actor John Savage (second from left) and cinematographer Vilmos Zsigmond (lower right) shooting THE DEER HUNTER (1978).

TCM: How did you become a cinematographer?

Zsigmond: I had some photography experience, taking family pictures with a Kodak camera, developing and printing them at home; then became an assistant in a photo studio for a year in my home town – Szeged. I was admitted to the Academy in 1951 through a rigorous screening process (16 cinematography applicants were selected out of several – hundred) – only four of us graduated 4 years later.

A scene from the Hungarian Revolution of 1956.

TCM: Did You immigrate to the U.S. with your fellow countryman Laszlo Kovacs or did you arrive separately?

Zsigmond: We shot some documentary footage during the Hungarian Revolution in 1956 October and November; then escaped to Austria – smuggling 10 thousand feet of film of the events. I immigrated to the U.S. at the same time as Laszlo Kovacs in 1957 January. We got separated for a year and a half. He went to Seattle, I went to New York. We were reunited in the summer of 1958 in Los Angeles where we shot a short film in 35mm Eastman color [The Blue of the Sky].

The 1968 film short PRELUDE received an Oscar nomination for Best Live Action Short Film and helped Vilmos Zsigmond get hired as cinematographer on Peter Fonda’s THE HIRED HAND (1971).

TCM: How did you first establish yourself in Hollywood?

Zsigmond: It was very difficult to find employment in Hollywood in those days. After learning some English some doors started to open for us: 16mm documentaries at Wolper Productions, educational films for independent producers.

TCM: Is there a film from your early career that you still think of as a major turning point for your craft?

Zsigmond: John Austin’s Prelude, a live action short film got an Academy Award nomination. This film opened the door for me to photograph Peter Fonda’s The Hired Hand and McCabe & Mrs....