Wexler and Zsigmond, RIP

Within a week of each other, two great American cinematographers left us. Haskell Wexler, whose credits included Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf, In the Heat of the Night, Bound for Glory, Coming Home, Matewan, and most of One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, died on December 27. Vilmos Zsigmond, the DP of McCabe and Mrs. Miller, Deliverance, Close Encounters of the Third Kind, and The Deer Hunter, passed away on January 1. Both played important parts in the "New Hollywood" phenomenon of the 1970s, both were Oscar winners, both received Lifetime Achievement Awards from the American Society of Cinematographers. I join with my fellow cinephiles in bidding a fond farewell to these two legends.