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flashback
Star Man
Star Man
An interview with Gil Taylor BSC
Gil Taylor is a man whose work spans generations, and its influence contin- ues to this day. In a career that lasted over 60 years, moving from the final British silent films to the brave new world ushered in by Star Wars and its ilk, he has seen trends come and go. But in spite of recently celebrating his 86th birth- day he is intent on looking for-
ward rather than back, learning an entirely new art. Painting.
“I actually feel I’m getting somewhere with it,” he smiles. “I hope one day to become a rea- sonable artist.”
Ask him about this second career and Gil Taylor will explain that it is really his third, adjudging his farming days in the 60s and 70s to be the one closest to his heart. Which is remarkable considering his track record in movies. In an eight year period between 1958 and 1966 he made 22 films, including Ice Cold In Alex, A Hard Day’s Night, Dr Strangelove, Repulsion and Cul- de-Sac.
When he first set out in the
film business it was against the better judgement of his father, a religious man mistrustful of films and film people. But Taylor’s uncle was a Universal newsreel cameraman and, while earning pocket money polishing the brass on his Williamson cam- era, the young Gil marveled at his stories, and learned his first tentative lessons on the craft that would dominate his life.
Entering the business in 1929, he began his film education in earnest at studios in and around London. At one of these he crossed the path of another rising star, Alfred Hitchcock, who was work-
ing on the suspense tale Number Seventeen.
One day, after rebuffing the unwelcome atten- tions of Hitch’s over attentive cameraman, Taylor
was summoned to the presence.
“This was a huge set, with a staircase in it, and
he was sitting at the top with some people round him. I walked in, stood at the bottom, and he said: ‘Is it true what I hear, my son?’. I was going a little
course, I hadn’t because I never had a 42mm lens. But he was wonderful. Every morning I got a list of 12 shots to do that day, and that was it. If we did those, then we’d done our day’s work.”
After his first encounter with Hitchcock, Gil Taylor spent the 1930s learning the job under a vari- ety of different cameramen. The war interrupted his cinematic education in a way, but two years into the
conflict he joined the RAF Film Unit and was involved in aerial recon- naissance, taking night pictures over Germany for Winston Churchill.
After the war he found himself at Two Cities, operating first for Gunther Krampf on Fame Is The Spur, and then for Harry Waxman on Brighton Rock. A year later, 1948, he made his bow as DP on The Guinea Pig, under Roy Boulting’s direction. Confident in his abilities, very practical and with the shrewd business sense he had inherited from his father, Taylor began to make a name and a healthy living for himself. Always in demand he worked extensively with the Boulting Brothers and J. Lee Thompson.
But it is during the 1960s that he did his best work, cutting edge cinematography that is as impressive today as when the films were
first released.
“My films come on TV now and they look great,
because they were properly exposed. They weren’t up and down like a fiddler’s elbow. I took a pride in what I did, it’s a standard. Some of my films, like Dr Strangelove, went through within two printer points from end to end. And yet I only used the light meter once a week.”
Of his peers Taylor professes an admiration for the work of Ossie Morris, Freddie Young and Guy
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red in the face and said ‘Yes, I’m afraid so’, and he said: ‘Well come up here, my boy‚’ and a great cheer went up. He said ‘Now you’re promoted to second camera assistant.’
Forty years later Taylor would work for Hitchcock again – as cinematographer on Frenzy. “I could never understand why he never looked through the camera. I asked him once, and he said ‘because I’ve got you. You’re brilliant at this sort of thing.’ Cameramen love to hear that sort of thing. He used to say ‘I want this to be intimate‚’ or he’d ask ‘Have you got my 42mm lens on?’ and, of
Photo: Alfred Hitchcock with Gil Taylor BSC on the set of Frenzy
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