While cinematographer John Alton was adept with color photography, he was at his arguable best when using black and white. Indeed it is in the shadowy realm of film noir that he is best known. In that genre, Alton possessed the rare ability to photograph exterior shots as effectively as studio work. Starting at MGM as a lab technician in 1924, Hungarian-born Alton became a cameraman within four years. He went to Europe with Ernst Lubitsch to film backgrounds for The Student Prince (1927) and ended up staying in Paris for a few years heading the camera department of Joinville Studios. Alton moved to Argentina in 1932 to design the country's first sound film studio. He spent seven years there and returned to Hollywood with a dozen films under his belt, a directorial credit for …  » Read more