September 2023

A Transcendent Career Foretold: Vilmos Zsigmond, ASC

This article originally appeared in AC Feb. 1999. Some images are additional or alternate. A fine art gallery in Los Angeles recently featured an extraordinary display of still photographs taken by Vilmos Zsigmond, ASC. The shots included a compelling self-portrait taken nearly 50 years ago in an empty field near Szeged, Hungary, where Zsigmond was born and raised during the Nazi and Soviet occupations of his homeland. Five decades later, he explains his pensive stare: “A gypsy [fortune-teller] told me I was destined to sail on a ship across a great ocean to a big city, where I’d become an important artist.” “My rule is that if a movie doesn’t say something of value for the audience, I don’t think it’s worth making. You only have time to...more