DP Ed Lachman ASC used KODAK 35mm, 16mm and 8mm color & 35mm B&W filmstocks to create sumptuous looks for Pablo Larraín's 'Maria'

Realized on Kodak 35mm, 16mm and 8mm color and 35mm B&W filmstocks by DP Ed Lachman, director Pablo Larraín's Maria depicts the beautiful, tumultuous and tragic story of Maria Callas, one of the world's greatest female opera singers, fusing reality with illusion to depict her final days in Paris during the 1970s.

It is the third and final film in Larraín's trilogy of 20th century iconic women, following Jackie (2016, DP Stéphane Fontaine AFC) and Spencer (2021, DP Claire Mathon AFC), both of which also implemented Kodak film in their visual storytelling. Maria represents Lachman's second collaboration with Larraín following their collaboration on the B&W El Conde (2023).

Set principally in Callas' luxurious Parisian apartment, the week before her death from a heart attack, Larraín's expressionistic, non-linear narrative relives and reimagines poignant moments in Callas' life – such as her grand operatic performances, her lifestyle and love affair with shipping tycoon Aristotle Onassis, and her childhood trauma with her mother in wartime Greece under Nazi occupation.

High on tranquilizing drugs during her last few days, the film additionally depicts delusional reveries of her interactions with a fictional documentary film crew, as Maria pursues an overwhelming desire to recover her voice from a disabling disease, the voice that made her so famous and adored around the world.

The film premiered at the 2024 Venice International Film Festival, where it received an eight-minute standing ovation, critical praise and awards-season buzz around Angelina Jolie's performance of the tragic diva, along with great kudos for Lachman's sumptuous cinematographic achievement.

Lachman always studies the subject matter of the films he shoots, in order to create the emotional structure for the project, and reveals that his own personal research encompassed historical, cultural, social and political references, along with the art, fashion and the cinematic language of the film's time period.

He also made a point of learning more about Callas' private and public life in advance of production. Along with taking in recordings of her operatic performances, including the selection of music that Larraín chose for the film, the DP immersed himself in a multitude of biographies about the diva, as well as documentary/archive footage and previous feature films.

"Maria Callas was one of the greatest coloratura soprano singers the world has ever known, where her personal emotions colored her voice and her spirit. This was a story of an artist who had devoted herself to her art," Lachman says.

"From my research it was clear to see that there was a reserved grandeur about her and how she presented herself. As a diva she lived her life in a heightened sense of reality, but in private she struggled with her health and personal happiness.

"She was betrayed and manipulated in her closest relationships, by her mother and also by men in her life – her husband Giovanni Meneghini, who extorted her, and then her lover Aristotle Onassis, who left her for Jackie Kennedy. She tried to overcome all of that through her inner-strength and determination, through the music and her voice.

"However, the ultimate tragedy was that when she lost her voice to a debilitating disease, she also lost herself and the power to resist her personal demons. The irony is that the story of Maria Callas' life mirrors the tragedy in many of the great operas she graced. Maria stated herself that the stage and opera was her mind. Her life became a sum of the tragedies that she played on stage."

Discussing the visual treatment of the movie with his director, Lachman recounts, "What I find compelling is that Pablo works in a different visual language for each of his films. Where El Conde was a chiaroscuro, gothic-noir vampire film, Maria was to be visually-operatic with a stylized expressionistic look.

"Pablo wanted to shoot this film as if it were an opera in itself, to have a proscenium of the stage in the style framing and movement of the camera, for our audience to inhabit Maria's emotional space in the way a theatre audience would during a staged performance – through the mise-en-scène, the precise blocking with the actors, an observational camera that would move gracefully, along with expressionistic lighting to make the most of the sets, props and costumes. You can see and feel that mannered influence throughout the film."

Speaking about visual inspirations, Lachman reveals, "I had a number of visual references beginning with Antoni Taulé, a Spanish artist who paints the psychology and mood of his subjects through light, color and space with a kind of impressionistic realism. John Stezaker, the British artist who uses collage, and Belgian artist Katrien De Blauwer who creates collages with appropriated photographic images, were both inspirations for the different color and B&W formats – Super8mm, 16mm, Super 16mm and 35mm – we would use in the visual storytelling. I also looked at the work of photographer Todd Hido for the ethereal color palette and cinematic quality he brings to the visual image.

"For the B&W flashbacks, I was fascinated by Fan Ho, the Chinese photographer, who's images are always contemplative with a feeling of isolation even in busy urban environments, and also the American art and fashion photographer Maura Sullivan with her use of layered abstract imagery."

As for cinematic influences, Lachman says the visual style in movies by filmmaker, theater and opera director Luchino Visconti, along with melancholic quality in features directed by Max Ophuls, and the luscious Technicolor visuals in melodramas by Douglas Sirk, were all reference points for giving a sense of heightened reality with the camera, light and use of color.

"I took particular inspiration from two films about troubled performers in the twilight of their lives, George Cukor's A Star is Born (1954, DP Sam Leavitt ASC) and Bob Fosse's Lenny (1974, DP Bruce Surtees ASC)," Lachman reveals, adding. "I also observed Andrei Tarkovsky's Mirror (1975, DP Georgy Rerberg) and Federico Fellini's Juliet of the Spirits (1965, DP Gianni Di Venanzo AIC) for their use of memory and dreams in representing psychic landscapes."

Working out of production offices at Origo Studios in Hungary, with a camera and lighting package supplied by ARRI Rental in Budapest, filming on Maria got underway in October 2023 at interior and exterior locations around the city that would double for Paris, including several grand theaters to shoot re-enactments of Callas' operatic performances. The production also shot in Greece, at the Trocadero in Paris, and at La Scala opera house in Milan. Production wrapped in December, after 41 shooting days.

For the later period in the film, depicting scenes in Callas' life during the 1960s and '70s, Lachman employed an ARRICAM ST 3-perf 35mm camera, fitted primarily with his own set of Ultra Baltar lenses, switching to Canon K35 primes for evening scenes when needing an extra stop, and exposing on KODAK VISION3 35mm 50D Color Negative Film 5203, 250D 5207 and 500T 5219 filmstocks.

To depict the documentary film crew investigating Maria's life, the DP used his own vintage Aaton LTR and ARRI 416 cameras using a 10.4-52mm Cooke S16 zoom, filming with KODAK VISION3 16mm 250D 7207 and 500T 7219. Classic Pro and KODAK Super 8mm cameras, plus Cooke, Schneider and Angénieux zoom lenses were used for the home movie footage and clips of private moments with the people Callas was closest to, using KODAK VISION3 Super 8mm 50D Color Negative Film 7203 and 500T/7219.

The scenes depicting Maria's past – such as her encounters with Onassis and her youth in wartime Greece – were shot on KODAK DOUBLE-X 5222 B&W 35mm negative using the Ultra Baltars.

"For character-driven stories like this, I prefer to shoot on film," says Lachman. "There's a life and depth to the film negative, through the exposure of the RGB layers and the random grain structure, that seems to breathe and feels very human. Also, for me, film is like oil paint in the way it renders color and mixes between the colors. Digital just does not have the same depth or texture from the flat, pixel-fixated plane of the sensor.

"As Maria's story takes place between the 1930s and 1970s, the 35mm, 16mm and 8mm color filmstocks, together with the 1.85:1, Super16mm 1.66:1, 16mm 1.37:1 and Super8mm 4:3 aspect ratios, were ways to reference the times and the way she would have looked back then.

"I push-processed the 500T 5219 at the lab to give this material more of a feeling of the grain structure and color saturation of filmstocks of the 1970s. The range of the tonal contrast and grain in the DOUBLE-X B&W negative has not really changed in 50 years, and I combined it with the Ultra Baltar lenses, which I created with Zerø Optik and deployed on El Conde, and shot using B&W filters.

"I used the Ultra Baltars as they were used over a similar time period on movies like The Magnificent Ambersons (1942, dirs. Orson Welles, Fred Fleck, Robert Wise, DP Stanley Cortez), parts of Citizen Kane (1941, dir. Orson Welles, DP Gregg Toland ASC), and The Godfather (1972, dir. Francos Ford Coppola, DP Gordon Willis ASC). They have a six-element design, beautiful field curvature and fall-off on the edges. This, along with the early single-layer coatings, contributed to the period looks we could not have achieved with modern glass."

Film-processing and 4K scanning was done at Magyar Filmlabor/Hungarian Filmlab in Budapest, with the final DI grade conducted by Joe Gawler at Harbor Picture Company in New York.

Maria was a single-camera shoot, with Diego Miranda from Chile operating Steadicam and 1st AC Daniel Erb, from Berlin, pulling focus. Attila Szücs led the grip team, and the gaffers were Thorsten Kosselek ICLS and Janosch Voss from Germany, and Daniel Toth from Hungary.

"I was really impressed by my camera and electrical crew," says Lachman. "Pablo always brings Diego with him for Steadicam work, as he is brilliantly poetic in his moves. I was lucky to have Attila, the foremost key grip and dolly/crane technician in Budapest, who is another artist in movement. Likewise, my trio of gaffers, and their team who were hard-working and great problem-solvers."

In keeping with the Larraín's proscenium style and operatic mise-en-scène, Lachman opted for gentle and elegant camera moves, frequently with imperceptible push-ins, as well as a number of long oners, using a Panther dolly, along with Technocrane 15 and Scorpio 45 cranes. Handheld was sometimes employed for more emotionally connected scenes but was again used with graceful restraint.

Lachman says his approach to lighting Maria was expressionistic naturalism, keeping the authenticity of the locations, while also being able to stylize the look with a heightened sense of reality. Always being aware of setting the time of day for each scene, the interiors of the Parisian apartment, ballrooms and foyers of theaters, were lit from the exterior, using 18K HMIs and the first of then brand-new generation of ARRI SkyPanel X LED softlights. The interiors were typically supplemented by China Balls judiciously placed over chandeliers above the actors and by practicals around the set.

Due to the cost and regulations of filming at La Scala, in Milan, the production was only able to shoot on the stage for four hours. To maximize the time, Lachman used the existing house and stage lighting, operated by the in-house lighting director. However, due to the need for additional ambient lighting, this was supplemented with Parcans bouncing off the ceiling, plus a higher-powered spotlight for Jolie's stage performance, due to the long throw.

Looking back at his experience on the film, Lachman remarks, "At the start of this production Pablo said to me, 'If there's no mystery, there's no cinema. If it's all processed and explained it doesn't allow the audience to participate in the story'.

"Maria was entrapped and betrayed by what she desired. She could never obtain in her personal life what she had in her public life from the adoration and love of her fans and the public. That was her ultimate tragedy. Angelina delivered a sublime performance, that was both enigmatic and mysterious. She encompassed her character so deeply that it was difficult not to be part of it.

"I think Pablo's relationship to the material, to Angelina, and his contribution with the camera, created a certain emotional quality to what the audience will feel and experience.

"His trilogy of Jackie, Spencer and now Maria has depicted female characters that aren't necessarily seen as feminist, but in his portrayal of them you see their resistance and strength to the society and times they're inhabiting, and their capacity to be empowered."