Peter Yates
1929 - 2011The son of an army officer, he attended Charterhouse School as a boy, graduated from the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art and worked for some years as an actor, director and stage manager. In the 1950s he started in the movie industry as a dubbing assistant and later an assistant director for Tony Richardson.
Summer Holiday (1963), his first film as director, was a "lightweight" vehicle for Cliff Richard. Yates had directed the original Royal Court production of N. F. Simpson's play One Way Pendulum and was chosen to make the film version released in 1964. Robbery (1967), a crime thriller, is a fictionalised version of the Great Train Robbery of 1963. This led to Bullitt (1968), of which Bruce Weber has written, "Mr. Yates’s reputation probably rests most securely on “Bullitt” (1968), his first American film — and indeed, on one particular scene, an extended car chase that instantly became a classic."
Yates was nominated for the BAFTA Award for Best Direction for Bullitt (1968). Yates produced and directed Breaking Away (1979), which was nominated for five Academy Awards ("Oscars") including Best Director and Best Film for Yates. Yates also produced and directed The Dresser (1983), which was an adaptation of the Ronald Harwood stage play. The film received seven BAFTA and five Oscar nominations, including the BAFTA Award for Best Film and for Best Direction and the Academy Award for Best Film and for Best Director for Yates. The Dresser was also entered into the 34th Berlin International Film Festival.
Yates died in London on 9 January 2011. He was 81 years old.
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Breaking Away
Peter Yates
Dennis Quaid, Daniel Stern
Dave, nineteen, has just graduated high school, with his 3 friends, The comical Cyril, the warm hearted but short-tempered Moocher, and the athletic, spiteful but good-hearted Mike. Now, Dave enjoys racing bikes and hopes to race the Italians one day, and even takes up the Italian culture, much to his friends and parents annoyance.
Breaking Away
Cameraman: The Life and Work of Jack Cardiff
Craig McCall
Jack Cardiff, Martin Scorsese
In 2001 Jack Cardiff (1914-2009) became the first director of photography in the history of the Academy Awards to win an Honorary Oscar. But the first time he clasped the famous statuette in his hand was a half-century earlier when his Technicolor camerawork was awarded for Powell and Pressburger's Black Narcissus. Beyond John Huston's The African Queen and King Vidor's War and Peace, the films of the British-Hungarian creative duo (The Red Shoes and A Matter of Life and Death too) guaranteed immortality for the renowned cameraman whose career spanned seventy years.
Cameraman: The Life and Work of Jack Cardiff
The Dresser
Peter Yates
Albert Finney, Tom Courtenay
In a touring Shakespearean theater group, a backstage hand - the dresser, is devoted to the brilliant but tyrannical head of the company. He struggles to support the deteriorating star as the company struggles to carry on during the London blitz. The pathos of his backstage efforts rival the pathos in the story of Lear and the Fool that is being presented on-stage, as the situation comes to a crisis.
The Dresser
Bullitt
Peter Yates
Steve McQueen, Robert Vaughn
Senator Walter Chalmers is aiming to take down mob boss Pete Ross with the help of testimony from the criminal's hothead brother Johnny, who is in protective custody in San Francisco under the watch of police lieutenant Frank Bullitt. When a pair of mob hitmen enter the scene, Bullitt follows their trail through a maze of complications and double-crosses. This thriller includes one of the most famous car chases ever filmed.
Bullitt
Eleni
Peter Yates
Kate Nelligan, Джон Малкович
Nick is a writer in New York when he gets posted to a bureau in Greece. He has waited 30 years for this. He wants to know why his mother was killed in the civil war years earlier. In a parallel plot line we see Nick as a young boy and his family as they struggle to survive in the occupied Greek hillside. The plot lines converge as Nick's investigations bring him closer to the answers.
Eleni
Murphy's War
Peter Yates
Peter O'Toole, Siân Phillips
Murphy is the sole survivor of his crew, that has been massacred by a German U-Boat in the closing days of World War II. He is rescued, and ends up at a forgotten mission station near the mouth of the Orinoco, and begins to plot his vengeance. He wishes to sink the U-Boat by means of any method imaginable to him, and sets about to make the courageous attempt, assisted by Louis, the administrator of the local oil company.
Murphy's War
Suspect
Peter Yates
Cher, Dennis Quaid
When a Supreme Court judge commits suicide and his secretary is found murdered, all fingers point to Carl Anderson, a homeless veteran who's deaf and mute. But when public defender Kathleen Riley is assigned to his case, she begins to believe that Anderson may actually be innocent. Juror Eddie Sanger, a Washington lobbyist, agrees, and together the pair begins their own investigation of events.
Suspect
An Innocent Man
Peter Yates
Tom Selleck, F. Murray Abraham
Jimmie Rainwood was minding his own business when two corrupt police officers (getting an address wrong) burst into his house, expecting to find a major drug dealer. Rainwood is shot, and the officers frame him as a drug dealer. Rainwood is convicted of drug dealing, based on the perjured evidence of a police informant. Thrown into a seedy jail, fighting to prove his innocence is diffucult when he has to deal with the realities of prison life, where everyone claims they were framed.
An Innocent Man
'Bullitt': Steve McQueen's Commitment to Reality
Ronald Saland
Steve McQueen, Bill Hickman
A behind the scenes look at the making of the movie Bullitt with a strong focus on the attention to details taken. It features some of the preparations made before shooting began, but is mostly focused on the onsite filming locations which brings a strong amount of reality to the film as the title suggests.
'Bullitt': Steve McQueen's Commitment to Reality
Koroshi
Peter Yates, Michael Truman
Patrick McGoohan, Yoko Tani
Secret agent John Drake (aka Danger Man) goes to Japan to infiltrate a secret society that specializes in murder. - This film was originally conceived as part of the fourth season of the "Secret Agent" TV series. However, this was the first episode of the season and Patrick McGoohan quit shortly after filming it. Thus it was decided to package a double-episode from a TV show as a full-length movie. Patrick McGoohan quit "Secret Agent" to create "The Prisoner" TV series. - The original individual episodes of "Danger Man" that made up this movie were released for the first time on video in the 1990s. - The original two one-hour episodes that made up this film were broadcast in limited fashion in the UK in 1968.
Koroshi
