Born to music-hall performers in England in 1914, Jack Cardiff was working on movie sets by the age of fifteen. In the mid-1930s he became Technicolor's preferred camera operator. In this capacity, Cardiff worked on Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger's The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp (1943), which led him to collaborate with the writer-director team on three masterpieces of late-forties British cinema, now as the cinematographer: A Matter of Life and Death, Black Narcissus, and The Red Shoes. Cardiff remained one of British and American cinema's most sought-after cinematographers throughout the fifties. In the sixties he focused on directing, gaining particular attention for the D. H. Lawrence adaptation Sons and Lovers (1960) and the Swinging London classic The Girl on a Motorcycle (1968). Cardiff died last April at the age of ninety-four. We pay tribute to him with five films from his peak as a cinematographer, a testament to the stunning artistry of a color photographer without peer.