The Himalayan peaks and mists transported to Pinewood Studios in Black Narcissus. Switching between a monochrome afterlife and Technicolor Blitz Britain in A Matter Of Life And Death. Dazzling, rapturous dance sequences leaping off the screen in The Red Shoes. Bogart's alcoholic sea captain and Hepburn's prim missionary falling in love on the Ulanga river in The African Queen. They're some of the most memorable images committed to film and they're all the work of British cinematographer Jack Cardiff, who died last year aged 94.

Cardiff's extraordinary career is the subject of Cameraman, a documentary film by Craig McCall. If his life were the plot of a novel it would be considered too contrived - too Hollywood - because it mirrored that of cinema itself. He began as a child actor in silent films in 1918 and was a teenage camera assistant on Alfred Hitchcock's The Skin Game in 1931; he spent years as a groundbreaking, visionary cinematographer on Michael Powell's finest films, using light to paint the nuances of human emotion, and subsequently collaborated with directors such as John Huston, John Ford, Laurence Olivier and Joseph L. Mankiewicz; he had an eclectic directorial career that included retro-fitted British New Wave in Sons And Lovers and Swinging Sixties hedonism in The Girl On A Motorcycle; then during the blockbuster era he worked on box-office-bothering fluff like Rambo: First Blood Part 2 and Conan The Destroyer. He was a constant participant in the 20th Century's greatest art form.

Devotee Martin Scorsese speaks passionately in Cameraman about the huge influence Cardiff had on his work ('I began to have a very strong affinity towards British cinema,' he says, 'because of my recognition of Jack Cardiff's name'), while stars like Kirk Douglas, Lauren Bacall and Kathleen Byron chip in with very funny on-set anecdotes. But, appropriately enough, the man himself is the star of the show. Displaying a sharp wit and powers of recall that belie his years, Cardiff comes across as a warm and unaffected master of his craft. It's a genuine delight when he shows the photographic portraits he took of some of the screen goddesses he worked with. There's a chiaroscuro Audrey Hepburn, a blazing-eyed Sophia Loren and Marilyn Monroe looking more beautiful than she ever did on the big screen.

Cardiff's genius was rewarded during his lifetime by an Oscar for Black Narcissus in 1948 and an Honorary Academy Award in 2001 (he was the first cinematographer ever to be presented with an Honorary Oscar). The films live on, of course, but this documentary is a fitting tribute to one of cinema's true legends.

Cameraman: The Life And Work Of Jack Cardiff (Optimum Releasing) is out now on DVD.

Colin Houlson