'''Stanley Cortez''' (born '''Stanislaus Krantz'''; American cinematographer. He worked on over seventy films, including The Magnificent Ambersons'' (1942), The Night of the Hunter'' (1955), Nunnally Johnson's ''The Three Faces of Eve'' (1957), and Samuel Fuller's ''Shock Corridor'' (1963) and ''The Naked Kiss'' (1964).

==Biography==
Cortez was born in New York City, New York and attended New York University. He first worked as a designer of elegant sets for several portrait photographers' studios (including that of Edward Steichen), which may well have instilled in him his great talent: a strong feeling for space and an ability to move his camera through that space in such a way as to embody it in film's two-dimensional format. His first job in the film industry was for Pathé News, which later allowed him to give his films a newsreel-like touch when necessary. During the 1920s and the early 1930s, he worked his way up the usual Hollywood cameraman ladder: camera assistant, camera operator, and cinematographer (or first cameraman, a rank he attained in 1936). He managed to work for some of the great Hollywood cameramen, among them Karl Struss, Charles Rosher, and Arthur C. Miller. On the side, Cortez managed to do an experimental film, ''Scherzo'' (1932), that drew on the techniques of Slavko Vorkapić; critics have referred to this short as a "symphony of light."

Cortez's early films as cinematographer are not of the first rank, but they often had offbeat subjects that allowed him to experiment. (indeed, throughout his career, he displayed an ability to give otherwise mediocre works a certain interest by means of experimental techniques.) In ''The Forgotten Woman'' (1939) he did an extreme close-up of the actress's eyes to create a sense of seeing into her mind. Then in 1942 Cortez had his big chance of working with Orson Welles on ''The Magnificent Ambersons''. Cortez saw the set for the film before being appointed first cameraman. His spatial sense told him that film among these sets would be a tremendous challenge. Welles intuited that that Cortez's mastery of studio space was exactly what this film&ndash;having a house as its main setting&ndash;demanded. Much of Cortez's great work was later cut out by the studio.

During World War II, Cortez served in the United States Army Signal Corps.

In his later years, Cortez showed skill in filming psychological dramas. In a relatively minor work, ''Smash-Up'' (1947), Cortez created the sense of drunkenness by doing subjective shots with flashing lights placed inside the camera, instead of using the banal distorted-lens shot. Charles Laughton gave Cortez another challenge &ndash; ''The Night of the Hunter''. The extraordinary film demanded trial underwater shots and expressionistically lighted sets, and Cortez managed to endow the camera movements with a musical quality. In ''The Three Faces of Eve'', Cortez found his actress Joanne Woodward would be to him what Greta Garbo was to William H. Daniels and Marlene Dietrich to Lee Garmes. Cortez's subtle modulations of lighting match Woodward's equally subtle changes of expression, and both together create the sense of Eve, a psychologically split personality, becoming someone else. The labyrinthine hallways and rooms of the studio set representing a mental hospital for Samuel Fuller's ''Shock Corridor'' is transformed by Cortez's camera into a symbol of incarceration and insanity.

'''Stanley Cortez''' était un Oscars (1942 et 1944) et fut récompensé pour l'ensemble de sa carrière en 1989 par l'American Society of Cinematographers.

== Carrière ==

Né Stanislas Krantz à assistant opérateur sur des tournages produits à ère du muet.

Cortze travaille comme assistant jusqu'en 1936, puis passe chef opérateur pour séries B. Se forgeant une réputation d'opérateur capable de réaliser des effets spectaculaires avec un minimum de dépenses, il est engagé en 1941 par RKO, les coûts importants ne sont pas amortis en salle, ce dont Cortez est tenu responsable. Malgré les critiques de la production, Cortez est gratifié d'une récompense pour la meilleure photographie par les ''Film Critics of America'' ainsi qu'une nomination pour l'Oscar de la meilleure photographie.

En 1949, Cortez tourne ''L'Homme de la Tour Eiffel'', son premier film en couleurs, avec Charles Laughton dans le premier rôle. Laughton l'engage six ans plus tard pour son unique mais très apprécié film en tant que réalisateur, ''La Nuit du chasseur''.

En sus de ses « grand films », Cortez travaille sur de nombreux films à petit budget, dont ''Police spéciale'' (''The Naked Kiss'') de Samuel Fuller, ''Young Dillinger'' et ''La Planète rouge'' (''The Angry Red Planet'').

Dans les années 1970, Cortez tourne de plus en plus de séquences-titre et est crédité de ''Special-Photographer''. Entre temps, il tourne toujours plus pour la télévision.