Robert Eggers doesn’t make movies about everyday modern foibles, he makes films that look and feel like living history. His folk horror sensation The Witch accurately recreated pilgrim farm life with painstaking accuracy, and his new psychological nightmare The Lighthouse eerily realizes the isolation and dialogue of salty seamen, as torrential winds, alcohol and – possibly – supernatural forces from the ocean depths tear them apart.

But The Lighthouse isn’t just a trip into New England’s history, it’s also a vivid step backwards into early sound cinema. Robert Eggers’ film is the most beautifully photographed black-and-white film in many years, thanks in part to old school techniques, classical influences and a rarely used aspect ratio. 

We asked Eggers which films influenced the distinct and haunting look and feel of The Lighthouse, and he had an intriguing take on the film’s cinematography. He says it’s not as classical as it seems!

“The lighting in this movie is not very similar to old movies aside from the fact that it’s got very exaggerated chiaroscuro,” Eggers says, referring to the film’s highly contrasted images, with bright lights and extreme darks.

“But we use the practical lighting sources that are in the story.”

Practical lighting sources, for those who don’t know, are lights that appear and exist within the movie’s story. “So [we used] the kerosene lantern to light the movie, whereas if [Ingmar] Bergman was using a lamp in one of his movies that takes place on the Isle of Fårö, we would see the flame and there would be an off-camera light that was lighting Liv Ullman and Max Von Sydow.”

That doesn’t mean The Lighthouse didn’t have to cheat a little bit, but Eggers explains that they had to cheat the light in a different way. Instead of using off-camera lights, they sneakily manipulated the lights they used on-camera.

“The bar on this film stock hasn’t changed since the 1950s, so it requires a lot more light to get exposure than film stock does today, or certainly a digital format,” Eggers says. “So the flame from a kerosene lantern, we wouldn’t get exposure. So rather than have an actual flame in that practical lighting source we have a 600w halogen bulb on a flicker dimmer, and that’s how all of the lanterns were. So rather than have an actual flame in that practical lighting source we have a 600w halogen bulb on a flicker dimmer, and that’s how all of the lanterns were.”

When asked why it was so important to film The Lighthouse using practical lighting sources, Eggers admits that “We just like that approach.”

“I feel like when I watched these movies from the 30s and 40s, particularly from the 40s, where the black and white lighting is so sophisticated, it kind of makes me embarrassed about the work Jarin [Blaschke, cinematographer] and I have done, even though we’re really kind of proud of it,” Eggers confesses. 

“Because the level of technique and craft that these people had, these cinematographers, far exceeds ours because they were working with this format all the time. So the amount of depth and detail that they could get… I mean, it’s pretty flabbergasting,” Eggers continues.

But the choice goes beyond mere taste and homage, according to the filmmaker.

“I still find the false lighting fixtures… it just seems dated. It doesn’t seem essential and believable. So even though it works when Orson Welles is playing Rochester in Jane Eyre with a clearly fake nose and everything has a kind of falseness to it, it works very well, but in this movie [The Lighthouse] we’re trying to achieve a kind of naturalism in the atmosphere and specificity of the world,” Eggers says. “The lighting should reflect the same kind of choices.”

As for the film’s aspect ratio, many have been erroneously describing it as “Academy Ratio,” which was the prevalent film format for many years in Hollywood before widescreen cinema became widely used in the 1950s. But that’s not the case, not at all.

“If I may be respectful and delicate, we actually shot the film in 1.19:1, which is an early sound aspect ratio that’s slightly narrower than Academy Ratio,” Eggers politely points out.

But regardless of its official name, the film’s almost square aspect ratio gives The Lighthouse a very different aesthetic than most modern movies. It evokes an earlier era, and also makes the film feel more claustrophobic.

“Yes to both!” Eggers confirms. “Very simply and on a surface level it says ‘Old movie!’”

And yet, as with most artistic decisions Eggers makes, there’s more to it than that. 

“If you could custom build new cinemas for every release of every movie, I think filmmakers would work in a lot of different aspect ratios. Cinemascope has become synonymous with ‘epic,’ and absolutely if you’re shooting armies and certain kinds of vast landscapes, you do want that panoramic canvas to work on. But if you look at art history there’s not a whole lot of epic paintings that are in that aspect ratio,” Eggers explains with a laugh, pointing that there are engravings of the apocalypse “in a completely vertical aspect ratio, and it feels perfectly apocalyptic, you know?”

“But yes, knowing this was going to be in cinemas, this screen, this boxy aspect ratio is going to be more claustrophobic and good for framing these cramped interiors, and good for framing vertical objects like lighthouses,” Eggers continues. “And also, frankly, a good aspect ratio for close-ups of these two magnificent faces. Like, why have a bunch of flab on either side of their heads when you just want to see their heads??

As for his influences, “Of course I mentioned those Bergman chamber pieces, and clearly a lot of early sound cinema from Fritz Lang and [G.W.] Pabst and Jean Grémillon and Jean Epstein’s nautical films [and] his films in Brittany. Among many, many influences,” Eggers explains. But not all of his influences were making films 90 years ago.

“Like, obviously I love Béla Tarr but on the other hand the wind never stopped on that godforsaken rock that we shot on [in The Lighthouse], so we didn’t need to bring a helicopter to get ‘Béla Tarr wind.’ Nor did we need to consciously conjure any nods to Béla Tarr because we were living it!” Eggers laughs, referring to the internationally acclaimed director of Sátántangó and The Turin Horse. “We were living the Tarr misery.”