Multiple award-winning cinematographer Gilbert Taylor was born in Bushey Heath, Hertfordshire, England in 1914. Although his name may not be something you immediately recognize, you have certainly seen some of the famous films he lensed.
Early Life
At age ten, Gilbert Taylor would spend a significant amount of time with his uncle, who was a newsreel cameraman. The young man would learn how to operate and strip down camera gear, as well as how to develop film.
Taylor’s work behind the camera began in 1929 as a camera assistant at Gainsborough Studios, at the age of fifteen. His mentor was cinematographer William Shenton. They worked together on the 1930 comedy One Embarrassing Night, aka Rookery Nook. At the studio, Taylor worked with in-house director Alfred Hitchcock, becoming lifelong friends.
Taylor joined the Royal Air Force in 1939, and for the next six years, he filmed bombing raids over Germany, including Cologne and Dresden. His coverage of World War II culminated with the filming of the liberation of concentration camps, as well as the meeting with the Russian forces, and the signing of the armistice.
“My wartime experience were incredible, particularly from when I joined a flying operational unit as an air gunner on a Lancaster bomber to enable me to use the first cine cameras on a night operation over Germany. This was requested by Winston Churchill… for him to view. He was keen for the public to see what our lads were doing.”
In 1949, Taylor was one of the founding members of the British Society of Cinematographers. Their goal was to promote and encourage the pursuit of the highest standards in the craft of Motion Picture Photography in the United Kingdom. Taylor received their Lifetime Achievement Award in 2001.
Stanley Kubrick
“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. We’ll film it just like combat cameramen.’ Kubrick was a frustrated cameraman with immense talent. I sometimes felt as if his hand was on the brush and I was the paint coming off it!”
Stanley Kubrick’s Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned To Stop Worrying And Love The Bomb (1964) is noted for its monochrome photography, replete with deep, heavy shadows. Of the handheld camera work in the film, Taylor stated:
“The key is not to hold the camera completely still but to let it ‘breathe’ with you, to move with it.”
A Hard Day’s Night
On Taylor’s next project, Richard Lester’s A Hard Day’s Night (1964), his remarkable black and white photography enhanced the look of the film. In the process of filming A Hard Day’s Night, Taylor stated:
“We were up against crowds of screaming people…There was no proper script at that stage and we were following the boys using 10:1 zooms on handheld Arriflexs. We did a lot of close iris stop stuff on that and it tuned out to be brilliant.”
Gilbert Taylor had opted to decline the next Beatles project, Help (1965), as he had been “greatly disturbed” by the Beatlemania phenomena, as well as the intense hysteria and lack of privacy that went along with it.
Hitchcock and Polanski
For the 1972 film Frenzy, Alfred Hitchcock told cinematographer Gilbert Taylor that he wanted a realistic nightmare, rather than a “Hammer Horror.” He also wanted the colorful Covent Gardens as the backdrop for the film. Of his relationship with Hitchcock, Taylor would later reflect:
“Hitch loved me and I loved him…He was a gentleman and didn’t want to have anything to do with the camera, leaving anything to do with it to me.”
Taylor would work with Oscar-winning director Roman Polanski in back-to-back films; starting with Repulsion (1965), and again in Polanski’s next film Cul-De-Sac (1966). In his 1984 autobiography, Roman Polanski wrote:
“As I saw it, the only person who could do justice to our black-and-white picture was Gil Taylor, whose photography on Dr. Strangelove had deeply impressed me. I also saw his wonderful work on A Hard Day’s Night…Our executive producer protested that Gil Taylor was one of the most expensive cameramen in the business, but I held out for Taylor and I got him.”
Taylor’s wife, Dee Taylor, had claimed that Gilbert declined to work on a James Bond feature. This was so that he could work with director Roman Polanski. Taylor thought Polanski was a very interesting guy. The two would become lifelong friends.
Richard Donner
In a 2006 interview with the periodical American Cinematographer, Richard Taylor had this to say about legendary director Richard Donner and Taylor’s time spent on the production of the horror classic The Omen (1976):
“Richard was incredibly enthusiastic…loved him and worked terribly hard to get the look he wanted. I did weeks of tests to find the right diffusion, and it happened quite out of the blue just days before we were to start shooting. I told my wife what I was trying to accomplish, and she handed me a #10 Denier silk stocking. I stuck it on a Cooke 10:1 zoom, and Donner was ecstatic. That’s how The Omen got that soft look! The photography is very realistic, but that touch of diffusion gives it a bit of a dreamlike look. It was a freak thing, but when you get a wonderful cast and crew like that — Donner, Gregory Peck, Lee Remick — you pull out the stops.”
Star Wars
In a 2005 interview conducted with Lightsabre.co.uk, Taylor noted about his overall contribution to the classic film Star Wars (1977):
“I am most happy to be remembered as the man who set the look for Star Wars. I wanted to give Star Wars a unique visual style that would distinguish it from other films in the science fiction genre. I wanted Star Wars to have clarity because I think space isn’t out of focus… The cinematography was specially designed by myself so that these huge dark spacecraft could be illuminated to contain all the action. I literally tore the sets to pieces and inserted huge quartz-like panels which would give George Lucas freedom to shoot in all directions quickly without re-lighting. My special light screens used 7000 photofloods on large dimming apparatus. This powerful pattern made a huge impression on the audience.”
Taylor shot the special effects photography for The Dam Busters (1955), over twenty years earlier. He would mirror the bouncing bomb run over the dams in Star Wars. Taylor had recommended The Dam Busters to George Lucas, and in the following clip, you can see that Lucas did indeed view it.
Final Years
Taylor’s talent did not end on the silver screen. His unique vision was seen on series like The Baron (1966) and The Avengers (1968). With Star Wars behind him, Taylor set his sights on other notable works like Dracula (1979), and Flash Gordon (1980).
The final film of the incredible career of Gilbert Taylor – which spanned over six decades – was the 1994 comedy named Don’t Get Me Started. After retiring from the film industry, Taylor pursued other methods to channel his creative talent. He was an impressionist painter of landscapes, with a great love for horses and farm animals.
Gilbert Taylor passed away on August 23, 2013, at the age of 99. His was a long life that created great memories for generations in the past, present, and future.
