Jan de Bont Night

Jan de Bont has now lived in Los Angeles so long, a lot of people think he’s American. But De Bont was born in 1943 in Eindhoven, ‘the Netherlands’, and raised eyebrows as Paul Verhoeven’s cameraman, with whom he shot controversial films such as Turkish Delight, Katie Tippel and The Fourth Man – based on the book by Gerard Reve.

It was with Verhoeven that De Bont made the daring jump across the Atlantic to the US, where he specialised in camerawork for big, spectacular action films such as Die Hard, Lethal Weapon (3) and – again with Verhoeven – Basic Instinct.

A little extra

De Bont’s fame preceded him as a master of dynamic camerawork and lover of layered action scenes with lots of special effects. His eye for the psychological use of colour also made him a cameraman who had just that little extra that directors are always looking for.

Verhoeven returned to the Low Countries, whereas De Bont moved into directing and enjoyed great success with nail-bitingly tense action films such as Speed (1994) and Twister (1996); in typically American style, De Bont also had a few flops, including Speed 2: Cruise Control (1997) and The Haunting (1999).

Black Rain: Super-35mm

For Black Rain (1989), this evening’s main feature, De Bont took over the scintillating camerawork (Super35-mm) when cameraman Howard Atherton bailed on the project because of the frustratingly slow progress of shooting in Japan. For the lead roles – two New York detectives accompanying a Yakuza being extradited to Japan – Ridley Scott chose Michael Douglas, Andy Garcia and Ken Tanaka.