Background
Wolfgang Suschitzky was born in 1912 in Vienna, Austria. His father was a Viennese social democrat of Jewish background, but had renounced his faith and become an atheist, or "konfessionslos".
Wolfgang Suschitzky was born in 1912 in Vienna, Austria. His father was a Viennese social democrat of Jewish background, but had renounced his faith and become an atheist, or "konfessionslos".
Suschitzky studied at Graphische Lehr- und Versuchsanstalt in Vienna in 1933, then moved to London in 1935.
A freelance cinematographer, he works on features, documentaries, commercials and television shows. His films include Falling in Love Again, Living Free, Get Carter, Entertaining Mr. Sloan, Ring of Bright Water and Ulysses. He travelled to England in 1935 and became a film cameraman for Paul Rotha, with whom he had a long working relationship. Their work during the war included World of Plenty (1943) and government-sponsored information shorts and magazine programmes. With Rotha he graduated to feature films, working on No Resting Place (1951), which was one of the first British feature films shot entirely on location. The film was nominated for a BAFTA Award for Best Film in 1952. He then photographed Colin Lesslie's production, the comedy The Oracle (1953), followed by another Rotha film, Cat and Mouse (1958). He also worked on Jack Clayton's short film The Bespoke Overcoat which won an Oscar for "Best Short Subject, Two-reel" at the 1956 Oscars.
Suschitzky belongs to the Association of Cine and Television Technicians, the Zoological Society (Fellow), the British Kinematograph Sound and Television Society, the British Film Academy and the British Society of Cinematographers.
Quotes from others about the person
Andrew Pulver described Suschtizky in 2007 as "a living link to the prewar glory days of the British documentary movement." Steve Chibnall writes that Suschitzky "[developed] a reputation as an expert location photographer with a documentarist's ability to extract atmosphere from naturalistic settings."