Star Wars cinematographer Gilbert Taylor dies aged 99
Gilbert Taylor, the British cinematographer behind hit movies like Star Wars, The Omen and Dr Strangelove, has died. He was 99. His death on Friday at home on the Isle of Wight was confirmed by his wife, Dee, the BBC reported.
Gilbert Taylor, the British cinematographer behind hit movies like Star Wars, The Omen and Dr Strangelove, has died. He was 99.
His death on Friday at home on the Isle of Wight was confirmed by his wife, Dee, the BBC reported.
Taylor brought a cinéma-vérité sensibility to black-and-white pictures like the 1964 Beatles comedy A Hard Day's Night and Stanley Kubrick's cold war satire Dr Strangelove, or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb. He ensured that the battle footage in Dr Strangelove was disturbingly realistic by shooting it like a documentary.
"Stanley could handle a camera, so I told him, 'For all this war stuff, we'll both put on battle dresses and take Arriflexes into the action'," Taylor said in a profile in American Cinematographer. "We'll film it just like combat cameramen."
Roman Polanski chose Taylor to work on Repulsion, his 1965 psychological thriller.