Éric Gautier

Éric Gautier (born 2 April 1961) is a French cinematographer. He has received numerous accolades for his work, including a César Award for Those Who Love Me Can Take the Train and an Independent Spirit Award for The Motorcycle Diaries. Gautier was born and raised in Paris; he grew up in eleventh, twelfth, nineteenth, and twentieth arrondissements with his construction engineer father, mother, and younger sister. During his youth, he excelled in music, and from the age of eleven played the piano and organ. He originally aspired to become a professional musician before becoming disillusioned with the field and deciding to pursue a career in cinema instead, which he felt combined many different creative pursuits. He attended the film school of the Louis Lumière College. After graduating from the Louis Lumière film school in 1982, Gautier began work as an assistant camera operator director on Alain Resnais's film Life Is a Bed of Roses. He left the job soon after, however, and chose instead to work as the director of photography on short films. He shot 60 films before returning to feature film work. The first feature-length film he photographed was La Vie des morts, released in 1991 and directed by Arnaud Desplechin. He won a César Award for his cinematography on Those Who Love Me Can Take the Train (1998), and received nominations for his work on Sentimental Destinies (2000), Clean (2004), Gabrielle (2005), Private Fears in Public Places (2006), and A Christmas Tale (2008). He has worked on many other French films, collaborating most often with Resnais and the directors Olivier Assayas, Arnaud Desplechin, and Claude Berri. Gautier began working in international film in the early 2000s, beginning with The Motorcycle Diaries, for which he won the Independent Spirit Award for Best Cinematography and the 2004 Cannes Film Festival Technical Grand Prize, and was nominated for the BAFTA Award for Best Cinematography. After seeing The Motorcycle Diaries, American actor/filmmaker Sean Penn approached Gautier to shoot the 2007 film Into the Wild, for which he won a Lumière Award. He subsequently served as director of photography on the American films Taking Woodstock (2009) and Grace of Monaco (2014).

Éric Gautier grandit à Paris et commence, après son baccalauréat, des études de cinéma à l'Université Paris III Sorbonne-Nouvelle, puis intègre l' École nationale de photographie et cinématographie, dont il sort diplômé dans la promotion Cinéma 19821. Le directeur de la photographie Bruno Nuytten l'engage alors comme assistant opérateur sur La vie est un roman d'Alain Resnais en 1982. Dès 1984, il devient chef-opérateur de nombreux courts-métrages et rencontre alors plusieurs élèves de l'IDHEC, devenue depuis la Fémis, parmi lesquels Émilie Deleuze et Arnaud Desplechin. Pendant les années 1980, il travaille encore trois fois comme assistant avec Bertrand Chatry sur Paris minuit de Frédéric Andrei en 1985, Bruno Affret sur Le Couteau sous la gorge de Claude Mulot en 1986, et Macari Golferichs sur Entreacte de Manuel Cussó-Ferrer, avant que Bruno Nuytten ne lui offre en 1991 le poste de directeur de la photographie sur son deuxième long-métrage, Albert souffre. Ses collaborations régulières avec Arnaud Desplechin, Olivier Assayas, Patricia Mazuy ou encore Marion Vernoux font de lui, dans les années 1990, l'un des techniciens les plus représentatifs du « jeune cinéma français » et l'un des chefs-opérateurs les plus reconnus1, travaillant également avec Patrice Chéreau, Catherine Breillat ou Raoul Ruiz. Sa carrière prend une envergure internationale en 2004 avec Carnets de voyage de Walter Salles, pour lequel Éric Gautier est nommé pour le BAFTA en Angleterre, le prix Silver Condor en Argentine, et reçoit un Independent Spirit Award aux États-Unis. Il obtient cette même année au Festival de Cannes le Prix Vulcain de l'artiste technicien décerné par la Commission supérieure technique de l'image et du son pour Clean et Carnets de voyage. Il collabore ensuite avec Wong Kar-wai sur une publicité pour Lacoste.