Karl Freund
Camera
Awards
Won 1 Academy Award
Academy Awards 1 won · 2 nominated
- 1942 Best Cinematography, Color Nominated Blossoms in the Dust
- 1942 Best Cinematography, Black-and-White Nominated The Chocolate Soldier
- 1938 Best Cinematography Won The Good Earth
Award data from Wikidata (CC0). Coverage may be incomplete.
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From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.
Karl W. Freund, A.S.C. (January 16, 1890-May 3, 1969) was a cinematographer and film director. Born in Dvůr Králové (Königinhof), Bohemia, his career began in 1905 when, at age 15, he got a job as an assistant projectionist for a film company in Berlin where his family moved in 1901. He worked as a cinematographer on over 100 films, including the German Expressionist films The Golem (1920), The Last Laugh (1924) and Metropolis (1927). Freund emigrated to the United States in 1929 where he continued to shoot well remembered films such as Dracula (1931) and Key Largo (1948). He won an Academy Award for Best Cinematography for The Good Earth (1937).
In 1937, he went to Germany to bring his only daughter, Gerda Maria Freund, back to the United States, saving her from almost certain death in the concentration camps. Karl's ex-wife, Susette Freund (née Liepmannssohn), remained in Germany where she was interned at the Ravensbrück concentration camp and eventually taken in March, 1942 to Bernburg Euthanasia Center where she was murdered.
Between 1921 and 1935, Freund also directed ten films, of which the best known are probably The Mummy (1932) starring Boris Karloff, and his last film as director, Mad Love (1935) starring Peter Lorre. Freund's only known film as an actor is Carl Dreyer's Michael (1924) in which he has a cameo as a sycophantic art dealer who saves the tobacco ashes dropped by a famous painter. At the beginning of the 1950s, he was persuaded by Desi Arnaz at Desilu to be the cinematographer in 1951 for the televisions series I Love Lucy. Critics have credited Freund for the show's lustrous black and white cinematography, but more importantly, Freund designed the "flat lighting" system for shooting sitcoms that is still in use today. This system covers the set in light, thus eliminating shadows and allowing the use of three moving cameras without having to modify the lighting in-between shots. And where Freund did not invent the three camera shooting system, he did perfect it for use with film cameras in front of a live audience. Freund and his production team also worked on other sitcoms produced at/through Desilu such as "Our Miss Brooks".
Description above from the Wikipedia article Karl Freund, licensed under CC-BY-SA, full list of contributors on Wikipedia.
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Filmography
— top 60 of 138
Other credits
53 credits
Metropolis
All Quiet on the Western Front
Dracula
Key Largo
The Last Laugh
Pride and Prejudice
The Suffragette
The Robber Bride
The Golem: How He Came into the World
The Great Ziegfeld
Camille
The Good Earth
Countess Kitchenmaid
Undercurrent
Bright Leaf
Murders in the Rue Morgue
Montana
Golden Boy
The Bad Sister
Air Mail
A Guy Named Joe
Parnell
Tortilla Flat
Panic in the House of Ardon
The Seventh Cross
Du Barry Was a Lady
Cry 'Havoc'
Green Hell
The Thin Man Goes Home
Back Street
The Earl of Chicago
Fräulein Else
Three Comrades
The Lottery Bride
The Affairs of Martha
Without Love
Tail Spin
The Spiders: Part 1 - The Golden Sea
Blossoms in the Dust
Michael
Florian
Balalaika
Conquest
That Hagen Girl
South of St. Louis
Letter of Introduction
Berlin: Symphony of a Great City
Tartuffe
The Kiss Before the Mirror
Two Smart People
Variety
Rose of Washington Square
The Decision of Christopher Blake
Acting
5 credits
Directing
4 credits
Producing
2 credits
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