Cinematography Style: Gregg Toland

INTRODUCTION

In the early days of cinema, while the very medium was still being shaped, breakthroughs were achieved by bold artistic visions and practical innovations. 

Gregg Toland wasn’t just a cinematographer - he was a technical pioneer who helped invent many aspects of the visual language of modern cinema. From deep focus to layered composition and a bold use of shadow, his innovations shaped how stories are told on screen, creating a style that still defines the look and feel of cinema today.

Let’s examine his influence by going over some of his philosophical ideas and his technical execution of them in today’s Cinematography Style.

BACKGROUND

Gregg Toland began his journey into cinematography in the silent film era, starting as an assistant at Samuel Goldwyn Studios in the 1920s. One of the cinematographers who he assisted, Arthur Edeson, had a great influence on his later style, introducing him to angular, low angle compositions and lighting with lots of shadow.

He gained a reputation for his technical skill and curiosity, quickly working his way up from camera assistant to cinematographer by his 20s. Unlike today where cinematographers mainly work as freelancers, jumping from production to production, under the old studio system crew were hired to individual Hollywood studios on long term contracts.

Although he was occasionally ‘loaned out’ to other studios the majority of his work was done for Goldwyn - who he stayed in a contract with from 1926 until the end of his career. This meant he had an enormous output, normally working on around three or four studio films per year for a variety of famous directors such as: Howard Hawks, John Ford and, famously, Orson Welles.

PHILOSOPHY

Toland’s cinematography was driven not just by technical mastery, but by a deep philosophical belief in storytelling through visuals. He rejected the conventions of the Hollywood star system, where often the lead actress had to be lit in soft, flattering light to emphasize youth and beauty. 

In particular in his work with actress Gloria Swanson - where he felt the photography was compromised by being forced to make her always appear glamorous in every shot. He believed that the images should serve the narrative and atmosphere demanded by the script, not vanity.

For him, a film’s visual style had to be dictated by the story itself. This meant breaking away from polished, studio-standard lighting in favor of bold, expressive choices that enhanced mood and meaning. He embraced deep shadows, stark contrasts, and unconventional low-angle compositions - techniques that grounded the camera in the world of the characters rather than elevating them above it.

For certain screenplays which demanded a more realistic look, such as The Grapes of Wrath, he used real, practical sources like candles or kerosene lamps, which could be seen on screen and cast unflattering but realistic light across faces. 

For many day exteriors he shot straight towards the sun, backlighting characters so that their faces became shrouded in darkness, or were hit with a hard shadow. Contrasting the classical Hollywood expectation of always keeping actors brightly and flattering exposed with a frontal light source.

However this wasn’t always the case. For other stories like Wuthering Heights which had scenes with a more romantic, soft, fantastical tone, he adapted the cinematography. Using soft light, defocused backgrounds and a diffused, dreamy look. Saving low angles and deep shadows for moments in the story which warranted a darker tone.      

Toland’s philosophy prioritized emotional truth and thematic clarity over aesthetic gloss, and that ethos helped define how cinematography could function - not just to show, but to say something.

His famous work on Citizen Kane is a testament to this. The use of low angles and dark, moody lighting accentuated the idea of power and its corrupting influence. Showing that photography could be used to emphasise ideas and themes rather than merely using stock standard flattering but flat light and neutral camera angles.

GEAR

They say that necessity is the mother of invention. This was definitely the case with much of Toland’s breakthroughs in cinematography - even from his earliest work on a 1928 short film.

The prevailing lighting style of the time was to fully illuminate actors with a classic three point setup - which used a strong frontal key light and fill light to brightly illuminate the face, and a backlight, behind the subject, to separate them from the background. 

Basically surrounding the characters with light from all sides.

On the micro budget short, ‘The Life and Death of 9413’, Toland was initially promised two lights, however when one of them burned out before shooting had even started, he had to make do with only one 400 watt bulb.

He used this bulb to side-light his characters, sometimes even from a low angle, which threw shadows across their face and kept the background dark and moody. 

This single source, chiaroscuro lighting technique where he pushed light from one direction so that shadow dominated the image, which was perhaps inspired by German Expressionist silent filmmakers, is something he’d often push in his later work. 

At times taking it even further by positioning his single light source behind his subject to completely backlight and silhouette them, using haze to accentuate the direction of the light beam. 

Rather than always using a shallow depth of field to show the audience which part of the frame to look at, he used shadow and light as his tool for directing the audience’s gaze.

He’d often create pockets of backlit shadow which the characters would walk through before finally landing in a pool of light. 

This idea of underexposing parts of the frame and letting actors’ faces get engulfed in shadow went against conventions of the time - but is now a cornerstone of contemporary cinematography.    

Another way that necessity helped shape his lighting technique happened on ‘Citizen Kane’. Most studio movies of the time which were filmed in soundstages used sets without ceilings, and overhead trusses which they could attach frontal high angle lights to - which would often create quite a flat, front lit look.

On Citizen Kane they planned to use many low angle shots where the camera was positioned below the eye level of the actor, tilted upwards. This meant they needed to add ceilings to the sets.

Toland therefore abandoned the idea of overhead lighting, in favour of placing his lamps on stands directly on the floor. This meant he’d do things like push light sources through set windows, or motivate his lighting by using practical light sources like bedside lamps.

He used twin arc broadsides which were high output carbon arc lamps. These were bright enough that they could provide enough light even when placed far away outside of the set. He supplemented these with various incandescent tungsten spotlights: 2K fresnels that they called Juniors and 5Ks which they called Seniors.

There were two main reasons he needed to use such powerful sources. Firstly, the stocks that he was shooting with at the time were extremely slow by today’s standards. 

The fastest available black and white film on the market, Eastman Super-XX, had an ASA of merely 64. When compared to today’s cinema cameras, which on average come with a native ISO of at least 800. These extra 3 1/3 stops meant Toland required around six and half times more light than modern cameras would.

Although he did occasionally use Technicolor film on some musicals, which colour was usually reserved for, he disliked it, partly due to the technical limitations of the two-colour green and red negative process - which couldn’t capture blues, purples and yellows - and partly because he preferred to work in monochrome on more dramatic subject matter.   

The second reason he needed a lot of light was due to a technique he started to push in many films in the later half of his career - shooting with deep depth of field. This means that more of the deeper background will be rendered in sharp focus, rather than the conventional method of using a shallow depth of field which renders backgrounds soft and blurry.

To do this he often stopped the lens down to f/8, f/11 or even f/16. Each time he stopped down the aperture he needed to double the amount of light to expose the image correctly. Hence why he needed many powerful carbon arc sources.

To further aid in creating deep depth of field shots, he regularly used wider focal length lenses, especially a 24mm, instead of the standard 50mm lens which was often used at the time. 

This allowed him to photograph actors sharply in both the foreground, middleground and background of the shot - allowing them to move around the frame clearly in focus so that they could play out shots in longer takes. Eliminating the need to cut to a variety of close ups which filmmakers shooting standard coverage would usually do.

This deep depth of field also allowed him to keep objects in the foreground, such as text, sharp, while also holding focus on actors in the background. This comes back to his philosophy of using the photography to give the audience information and better tell the story.

Using a wide angle 24mm meant that he needed the camera to be nearer to actors to get a close up. The issue was that many cameras of the time were excessively noisy which made recording sync sound difficult. To overcome this he used a camera called the Mitchell BNC - where the B stood for blimped and the N stood for noiseless. 

This blimp system lined the inside of the camera with a soundproof material that decreased the whir of the film flying through the gate and made recording sync sound possible. 

The BNC was also lightweight for its time and allowed Toland to move the camera around more easily on a dolly, getting more dynamic motion than the statically photographed early sync sound movies.

CONCLUSION

Gregg Toland is an innovator and pioneer, not only in his use of certain gear and techniques, but also in the way that he used photography as a means to impart a mood, tone and information to the audience. 

Rather than just seeing his role to be that of a technician, he pushed the idea that photography is its own visual language, which can be used alongside the other elements of cinema to tell a story and elevate the narrative.