Peter Yates RIP

Peter Yates
Peter Yates, the director who died on Sunday aged 81, made his name with film's definitive car chase in Bullitt.

The hubcap spinning, tramcar dodging, engine growling, tyre-screeching, high-speed pursuit through the streets of San Francisco was a triumph for Yates and his cinematographer, William Fraker, who made the daring decision to mount cameras on the cars themselves rather than shoot the scene from a distance. "The whole idea was to allow the audience to experience the chase like they were in the cars," said Fraker. Despite spawning a host of imitations, it is still regarded as the original and best car chase sequence in cinema.

It did not just depend on new techniques. Steve McQueen, whom Yates described as "a lot of macho", revelled in the death-defying driving scenes. To capture one segment, Yates joined him in the car. "I was in the back of the Mustang and Steve was going about 120mph," Yates recalled. "We came to the last downhill section and when we got to the top of the hill Steve was still going pretty fast. I tapped him on the shoulder and said: 'We can slow down now, we're almost out of film.' Steve said very calmly: 'We can't. There aren't any brakes.'"

The car duly flew past cast and crew members before McQueen managed to steer it on to an incline to bring it to a halt. "If it was anyone else, we might not have made it," said Yates. "Steve was a great driver."

Yates's path to films was idiosyncratic. The son of a soldier, he was born on July 24 1929 in Aldershot, Hampshire, and educated at Charterhouse. He went to the Royal Academy of Dramatic Arts and at 19 began in repertory. His notices as an actor were so execrable, however, that he abandoned the stage for motor cars and from 1949 to 1953 became assistant works manager at HW Motors in Surrey, which had a racing team led by Stirling Moss. The experience contributed richly to Bullitt some 20 years later.

In 1953 Yates entered the film industry as a dubbing assistant on foreign language films. He then edited documentaries before rising to become assistant director on several pictures, including the celebrated war epic The Guns Of Navarone (1961). He also directed television episodes of The Saint and Danger Man before taking charge of his first feature, Summer Holiday (1963), starring Cliff Richard And The Shadows.

His next film was an adaptation of the play One Way Pendulum (1965), a comically absurd tale which he had directed on stage at the Royal Court. It had little commercial success, and it was his third picture, Robbery (1967), an effective retelling of the Great Train Robbery, that set the template for the rest of his career. Its opening scene, a tautly thrilling car chase, won Yates the job on Bullitt.

Though a genial character, Yates was his own man and infuriated McQueen when he refused to collaborate on Le Mans, another car caper that was to be the sequel to Bullitt. Yates explained: "I was afraid that no self-respecting actor would want to work with me if I did two 'machine' films together. Although action films are great fun, films about relationships are really much more satisfying."

He was not always so successful in making such films, however. His best efforts included John And Mary (1969), a gentle sentimental comedy which drew fine performances from Dustin Hoffman and Mia Farrow; Breaking Away (1979); and The Dresser (1984).

Breaking Away, an affecting study of teenage dreams built around cycle racing in Indiana, attracted four Academy Award nominations and prompted The Daily Telegraph's Patrick Gibbs to write: "For the first time Yates communicates considerable humanity as well as his usual efficiency as a director."

The Dresser (1984) won five further nominations and again steered well clear of car chases – the pyrotechnics confined instead to the acting of Albert Finney and Tom Courtenay. Filmed almost entirely in a dressing room, the piece keeled over under the weight of the performances and the stifling theatricality of the production. A chase scene would have been welcome.

Yates, who spent much of his life in New York, accepted that he was likely to be remembered as a proficient, reliable performer behind the camera. Of his own work, he said: "I put it somewhere below meals for the aged, but a little way above manufacturing toothpaste."

Other films he directed included Murphy's War (1971), an engaging adventure story with Peter O'Toole; The Hot Rock (1972); For Pete's Sake (1974); The Friends of Eddie Coyle (1973); The Deep (1977); Eyewitness (1981); Krull (1983); Eleni (1985); Suspect (1987); The House on Carroll Street (1988); An Innocent Man (1989); Year of the Comet (1992); Roommates (1995); and Curtain Call (1999). Don Quixote (2000), with John Lithgow as the fantasist hero, and A Separate Peace (2004), an unremarkable adaptation of John Knowles's coming-of-age novel, (both filmed for television) brought his career to a close.

Of these, The Deep, about divers hunting treasure off a Caribbean island, was a notable success, though its most enduring contribution to popular culture may be the wet T-shirt contest, for which a craze began after stills were released of actress Jacqueline Bisset thus attired. Bisset claimed to be "extremely upset" by the pictures, but Newsweek promptly declared her "the most beautiful actress of all time". Krull, a turgid sci-fi picture, was another popular, if not critical, hit.

The Friends of Eddie Coyle, an unvarnished adaptation of the George V Higgins novel, was probably his best film, with Robert Mitchum outstanding in the title role.

To the end, however, Yates admitted that "chases continue to fascinate me". His formula was simple: "In the beginning you establish anticipation. The middle should confuse people so you're not sure where everyone is going. The end is where the good guys come out best."

Peter Yates married Virginia Pope in 1960. She survives him with three children.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/obituaries/culture-obituaries/8251219/Peter-Yates.html