autobiography, films, drama films, romance 

In his amiable and informative autobiography, The Light On Her Face , Walker quotes Columbia head Harry Cohn: "Y'know, there's one thing that's always made me curious about you. Practically every money-making picture we've had at Columbia, you've worked on it. How do you account for that? And don't tell me it's the photography! Photography doesn't sell pictures!" Maybe not. But those silvery images stay in the mind long after the movies' plots have faded from memory. The elegance of Walker's cinematography even survives the indignities of being shrunk down and contrasted out for television, though the delicacy of his lighting suffers on video. Walker, like many another of his gifted peers who worked predominantly in black-and-white, seem sadly relegated to a medium for which their work was not designed and which does not have the sensitivity properly to display the beautiful and precious images it chews up as so much fodder. But should the viewer have the willingness and the opportunity to return to Walker's films as they were originally intended-on 35 mm film-he or she will find that there were few more gifted practitioners of the art of cinematography.

-Frank Thompson - from Amzon