Oscar Profile #364: Walter Lassally

Born December 18, 1926 in Berlin, Germany to a German father and Polish mother, Walter Lassally’s father was an engineer and industrial filmmaker. Although Protestant by religion, both parents were Jewish by heritage and his father was forced to stop working when the Nazis came to power in 1932. With his father imprisoned in 1938, his mother obtained Peruvian visas with English travel visas as his father had been promised a job in Canada. The family fled to London in June 1939, two months before the war started, but his father’s promised job in Canada did not come through. He worked through the war in various capacities, and became a German-to-English translator after the war. Walter Lassally’s middle name of “Israel” was imposed upon him by the Nazis when it was placed on his passport.

Lassally’s chosen profession as a cinematographer did not come about because of his father’s background, but because of his early and continuing love for films which he took in at local cinemas whenever he could. His first job in film was working at a photographic studio. He then found work as a clapper boy at Riverside Studios, which allowed him to work with film crews now and then. He became a photographer of documentary films while working as an assistant cameraman on such theatrical films as 1949’s Woman of Dolwyn and 1950’s Night and the City.

It wasn’t until Tony Richardson’s 1961 classic, A Taste of Honey that Lassally became a cinematographer of note. He followed that with Richardson’s equally sublime 1962 film, The Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner, followed by Richardson’s 1963 Oscar winner, Tom Jones.

Lassally won an Oscar of his own for his cinematography on Michael Cacoyannis’ 1964 classic, Zorba the Greek. His post-Oscar films included 1967’s The Day the Fish Came Out, 1968’s Oedipus Rex and Joanna, 1969’s Three Into Two Won’t Go and The Adding Machine, 1970’s Lola and Something for Everyone and 1972’s Savages, his first Merchant-Ivory film.

Most of his work over the next twelve years was for British TV, but his cinematography on Merchant-Ivory’s 1983 and 1984 theatrical films, Heat and Dust andThe Bostonians, earned him back-to-back BAFTA nominations.

Late in his career, Lassally was director of photography on three U.S. made-for-TV movies, 1985’s Stone Pillow starring Lucille Ball, 1986’s Mrs. Delafield Wants to Marry starring Katharine Hepburn and 1992’s The Man Upstairs, also starring Hepburn, the latter made during his tenure as camera chair at Britain’s National Film School from 1988-1992.

Lassally married wife Nadia in 1991. After her death in 1994, he then retired to the village of Stavros in Crete near the beach that was the backdrop for the final scene of Zorba the Greek. He donated his Oscar to Christiana’s Restaurant, a beach front tavern near the exact spot where the famous dancing scene with Quinn and Bates took space. The statuette was on display on the bar until a fire destroyed it in 2012. The following year he made his acting debut in Richard Linklater’s Before Midnight.

Walter Lassally died October 23, 2017 due to complications from surgery at the age of 90.

ESSENTIAL FILMS

A TASTE OF HONEY (1962), directed by Tony Richardson

Lassally’s extensive background in documentary film served his black-and-white cinematography well in this realistic looking adaptation of Shelagh Delaney’s play. Essentially a five-character film, this still potent drama focuses on the relationship between a selfish mother, superbly played by Dora Bryan, and her gawky adolescent daughter, played by Rita Tushingham in a star-making turn. Equally impressive are Paul Danquah as the sailor who loves and leaves Tushingham, Murray Melvin as the gay friend who supports her through her pregnancy and becomes, in effect, the baby’s father, and Robert Stephens as Bryan’s course and vulgar lover.

TOM JONES (1963), directed by Tony Richardson

With ten Oscar nominations and four wins as well as six BAFTA nominations and three wins, it’s baffling that Lassally’s striking color cinematography failed to be nominated by either organization. It seems particularly odd considering that several of Oscar’s five nominees and BAFTA’s seven nominees in his category were headscratchers to begin with. Who can forget the many delightful scenes in which the looks captured by Lassally’s camera were as much part of the action as the performances of Albert Finney, Susannah York, Hugh Griffith, Edith Evans, Joyce Redman, Joan Greenwood, Diane Cilento and the rest of the film’s wonderful cast?

ZORBA THE GREEK (1964), directed by Michael Cacoyannis

While it would take BAFTA another twenty years to recognize Lassally with back-to-back nominations for James Ivory’s Heat and Dust and The Bostonians, Oscar took notice of his talents in a big way, awarding him for his unforgettable black-and-white cinematography on Zorba the Greek. While certainly the most famous of his films for Cacoyannis, it was one of several he made for the Greek director between 1956 and 1967. He would later retire to the location of the film in Crete that was the backdrop of the final scene in the film starring Anthony Quinn, Alan Bates, Irene Papas and Lila Kedrova.

SOMETHING FOR EVERYONE (1970), directed by Harold Prince

One of the many delightful reminiscences Lassally relates in his life story on webofstories.com, is of his experiences making this one on location in Austria and Bavaria with Michael York and Angela Lansbury. He was very proud of the lenses he used for Lansbury’s closeups, and had only good thing to say about her and Katharine Hepburn with whom he later worked on two TV movies. He refused to discuss Lucille Ball, with whom he also worked on a TV movie, saying only that Lansbury and Hepburn were ladies. He also had good things to say about Prince, who he felt was abused by the film’s producers who failed to properly market his black comedy.

BEFORE MIDNIGHT (2013), directed by Richard Linklater

Lassally came out of retirement in 2001 to act as director of photography on the Turkish film, Crescent Moon, but there would be no more offers. He did, however, receive an International Achievement Award from the American Society of Cinematographers in 2008. In his late 80s, he accepted an offer to act in Richard Linklater’s 2013 film, Before Midnight, the third of the director’s “Before” trilogy, which was set in Greece. He was delightful in his featured role as Patrick, the elderly British writer in whose house Céline (Julie Delpy) and Jesse (Ethan Hawke) are spending a summer holiday.