His most notable credits included Orson Welles' The Magnificent Ambersons (1942), Charles Laughton's The Night of the Hunter (1955), Nunnally Johnson's The Three Faces of Eve (1957), and Samuel Fuller's Shock Corridor (1963) and The Naked Kiss (1964).
He first worked as a designer of elegant sets for several portrait photographers' studios (including that of Edward Steichen)[citation needed], which may have influenced his strong spatial awareness and ability to effectively use camera movement: a strong feeling for space and an ability to move his camera through that space in such a way as to embody it in film's two-dimensional format.
In The Three Faces of Eve (1957), Cortez found his actress: Joanne Woodward would be to him what Greta Garbo was to William H. Daniels and Marlene Dietrich to Lee Garmes.
In Samuel Fuller's 1963 film Shock Corridor, the labyrinthine hallways and rooms of the studio set are transformed by Cortez's camera into a symbol of incarceration and insanity.
Fuller used Cortez again on The Naked Kiss and sought him for The Big Red One in 1978 but the producer Gene Corman said the low-budget film shot in Israel couldn't afford him.
[4] Cortez started Chinatown (1974), but director Roman Polanski replaced him after a few days of shooting due to a disagreement over visual style.