The Criterion Collection

Michael Ballhaus, German cinematographer turned Academy Award–nominated Hollywood DP, is getting his due at the Cinémathèque française, in a retrospective that begins this week and runs until the end of February. The cameraman first caught moviegoers’ eyes with his work with Rainer Werner Fassbinder in the seventies, on such films as The Bitter Tears of Petra von Kant, Chinese Roulette, and The Marriage of Maria Braun. After moving to the U.S., he entered a fruitful collaboration with Martin Scorsese that began with After Hours and would encompass The Last Temptation of Christ and Goodfellas. All of the aforementioned films will screen during the Cinémathèque’s series, in addition to films Ballhaus shot for American luminaries like Mike Nichols and James L. Brooks.

A side note that may be of particular interest to Criterion viewers is Ballhaus’s connection to Max Ophuls. In a 2007 piece for Moviemaker magazine, Ballhaus wrote, “When I was seventeen or eighteen, I had my first encounter with movies when I visited a set where Max Ophuls, who was a friend of my parents, was directing Lola Montès. I was there for about a week, and it was a revelation for me.”