"His decades-long career, which spanned the silent
era, Hollywood’s golden age and the New Hollywood renaissance of the 1960s and
’70s, was emblematic of a creative spirit that persisted despite changing fashions,
industry upheavals and discriminatory practices. He revolutionized the way
films communicated visually, developing new techniques that could convey
feelings without the need for words or even performers — like the
expressionistic use of wide-angle and fish-eye lenses in John Frankenheimer’s
body-swapping science-fiction drama, Seconds (1966); or one of the earliest
aerial shots in the final moments of Joshua Logan’s Technicolor romantic comedy
Picnic (1955)."