- Born
- Died
- Birth nameWalter Israel Lassally
- Walter Lassally was born on December 18, 1926 in Berlin, Germany. He was a cinematographer and director, known for Zorba the Greek (1964), Before Midnight (2013) and Heat and Dust (1983). He was married to Nadia Lassali. He died on October 23, 2017 in Crete, Greece.
- SpouseNadia Lassali(1991 - 1994) (her death)
- Lassaly retired to the village of Stavros in the 1990s, near the beach that served as the backdrop for the final scene of Zorba the Greek. He donated his Academy Award to Christiana's Restaurant, a beach front taverna 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.
- Moved to London as a boy, a refugee from Nazi Germany.
- Member of the British Society of Cinematographers (BSC).
- His long and productive association with Merchant-Ivory Films got him the job of director of photography on The Ballad of the Sad Cafe (1991), which Ismail Merchant and James Ivory produced and which Simon Callow directed. However, his relationship with Callow, who had never directed a film before, was almost entirely adversarial.
- A young stage director preparing to make his first film once declined an offer of my services with the comment "I don't want to make one of those films the critics say is mediocre, but beautifully photographed by Walter Lassally." Neither do I, but it's deuced difficult to see them coming.
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