On the cinematography of Chungking Express and why Christopher Doyle is undervalued in formal film analysis.

Christopher Doyle is probably the most technically experimental cinematographer of the last thirty years, but because most of his work was for a director — Wong Kar-wai — who is primarily discussed in terms of his own vision, Doyle's contribution is frequently subsumed into the director's auteur account.

The step-printing in Chungking Express, the handheld movement in Happy Together, the still photography in 2046 — these are specific technical choices that Doyle made, not Wong, and they constitute a visual language that is as much Doyle's as Wong's.

Doyle's method involves extensive improvisation and a willingness to make cinematographic decisions in response to what is happening in front of the camera rather than to what was planned before filming. The result is images that feel spontaneous in a way that carefully planned cinematography does not, even when the subject is something that requires very precise technique.

The tension between planned and spontaneous, between technique and instinct, is itself an expression of what Wong Kar-wai's films are about: the gap between what you intend and what actually happens, between the relationship you planned and the one you find yourself in.