KEY POINTS:
* Freddie Francis, cinematographer, aged 89.
During his 70-year career Freddie Francis won two Oscars - for Sons and Lovers in 1960 and Glory in 1989.
His credits include Saturday Night and Sunday Morning (1960), The French Lieutenant's Woman (1981) and Cape Fear (1991).
Francis' last film was The Straight Story, directed by David Lynch and released in 1999.
He always maintained there is "good photography, bad photography and then there is the right photography".
Born in London on December 22, 1917, Francis studied engineering before becoming an apprentice to a feature stills photographer at 17.
A year later he entered the British film industry as a clapper boy at Elstree Studios.
In the space of a few years he was promoted to camera assistant making what he described as "quota quickies" and "dreadful films".
When war broke out in 1939 he became a clerk in the Army and was eventually assigned to the Army Kinematograph Unit at Wembley as cameraman and director, where he made training films.
After the war he worked as a camera operator on films including The Elusive Pimpernel (1950), The Fallen Idol (1948) and Moulin Rouge (1952).
He worked as second unit cameraman on Moby Dick (1956) for the whaling sequences and special effects.
His first job as director of photography was on A Hill in Korea, in 1956.
Sons and Lovers earned him his first Oscar in 1960 and a year later he made the gothic classic The Innocents, which remained his favourite film.
In 1961 he turned to directing with his first feature Two and Two Make Six. Over the next 20 years he directed a large number of films, many of them Hammer horrors which have become cult classics - among them Dr Terror's House of Horrors (1965) and Tales from the Crypt (1972).
Francis worked with Joan Crawford, Rita Hayworth, Oliver Reed and Peter Cushing in this period.
In 1980 he returned to cinematography when director David Lynch chose him to direct photography for The Elephant Man.
The next two decades saw him work on Dune (1984), Glory (1989), The Man in the Moon (1991), Cape Fear (1991) and Princess Caraboo (1994) before ending with The Straight Story.
- NZPA
