Walter Lassally was born on the 18th December 1926 in Berlin. Despite belonging to the Protestant church, the Jewish roots in Lassally's family led to them being classified by the Nazis as non-Aryans- which led to increasing persecution. in 1939 the family left Germany for England.
Walter Lassally was involved in the British Free Cinema movement from its beginning. He met Lindsay Anderson when Anderson was editing "Sequence" magazine, and shot a number of films for the movement, including Anderson's "Thursday's Children", Karel Reisz's "We Are The Lambeth Boys" and Reisz's and Tony Richardson's "Momma Don't Allow".
Walter Lassally shot over 90 films during his career, many in the Third World, such as Pakistan's first feature "Day Shall Dawn". He made a number of films in Greece with Michael Cacoyonnis, including "Zorba the Greek" for which Lassally won an Oscar in 1964 as well as working extensively with Merchant Ivory.
Walter Lassally is almost unique in the history of cinematography in the way he has combined work on mainstream features, international art films and documentary- always allowing each discipline to influence the other- and he was instrumental in both the Free Cinema movement that revolutionized British filmmaking in the 1950s and in the rise in acceptance on Greek cinema via his work with Cacoyonnis. He currently lives in Crete, below the mountain made famous in "Zorba the Greek".
If you are already a Peoples Archive subscriber, we suggest the following stories as good places to start within the collection.
- "A Taste of Honey": working with the weather
- "Tom Jones": the camera style and shooting- then and now
- Meeting Michael Cacoyannis for the first time
- "The Day Shall Dawn": meting the head of the village
- "Savages": the story
- "Dan" and "The Greeks"