Behind the scenes: Motherless Brooklyn

Dick Pope, who is Mike Leigh’s regular collaborator behind the camera from Life is Sweet to Peterloo, jumped at the chance to photograph a film noir for director Edward Norton.

“It’s a dream for any cinematographer to be asked to recreate fifties New York with all the visual flourishes of a noir,” Pope says of Motherless Brooklyn, which Norton wrote, produced, stars in and directed.

• Read more: Craft Leader: Edward Norton 

“I was brought up on noir film. My father idolised noir actors of that era and was a number one fan of Dick Powell (whose Philip Marlowe in 1944’s Farewell My Lovely is considered definitive). That’s why he called me Richard.”

Motherless Brooklyn is an adaptation of a bestselling novel by Jonathan Lethem about a private detective in New York investigating a murder and uncovering corruption. The twist is that the central character has Tourette’s, which manifests in head twitches and odd vocabulary but a knack for joining the dots in a puzzle…