Otto Heller


Otto Heller, B.S.C. was a Czech cinematographer long resident in the United Kingdom. He worked on more than 250 films, including Richard III, The Ladykillers and Peeping Tom.

Life

Otto Heller was born in a Jewish family in Prague on 8 March 1896. As a teenager, he became a projectionist in the Lucerna cinema. During World War I, he worked in a film laboratory in Vienna. After the war, he started to work as a documentary cameraman at Pragafilm. During the 1920s, he was the most requested cinematographer in Czechoslovakia. Together with Karel Lamač, Anny Ondra and Václav Wasserman, he made many movies both for domestic and international audience. He often worked with Svatopluk Innemann, Martin Frič and Jan S. Kolár. Because of the rise of Nazism, he left Czechoslovakia in 1938 with Lamač.
In an interview for the extra materials on the Blu-ray Disk version of The Ipcress File, Michael Caine recollects how Otto Heller told the story of leaving Nazi Germany in 1939. His camera crew were all Germans and they kept telling him to leave but he did not believe he needed to go and he would refuse, saying they were having a great time doing movies. Then one day his camera operator came dressed in an SS uniform and told him that he has joined the SS and urged Heller to go "now". Heller told Michael Caine that he "went to the toilet, went out through the toilet window and I never stopped running till I got to London".
He became a British citizen in 1945. Heller continued to live and make movies in UK until his death.
He died in London on 19 February 1970.

Selected filmography

The Arrival from the Darkness The Poisoned Light The Cross by the Brook White Paradise The Lantern The Countess from Podskalí The Kreutzer Sonata Suzy Saxophone Eve's Daughters Sinful and Sweet Street Acquaintances The Girl with the Whip Sin of a Beautiful Woman Prague Seamstresses The Caviar Princess The Cabinet of Doctor Larifari Fairground People St. Wenceslas The Typist Die Fledermaus The Private Secretary Mamsell Nitouche The Ringer Kiki Make-Up A Night in Paradise The Love Hotel Daughter of the Regiment Public Not Admitted Simone Is Like That Polish Blood The Switched Bride Little Dorrit A Woman Who Knows What She Wants The Young Count Raging Barbora The Eleventh Commandment Knockout Dreams Come True Tomorrow We Live Port Arthur Secret Lives Threats Sarajevo Gaiety George They Made Me a Fugitive Golden Arrow The Queen of Spades I'll Get You for This The Rainbow Jacket The Divided Heart The Ladykillers Richard III The Vicious Circle The Silent Enemy Peeping Tom Victim Light in the Piazza West 11 The Curse of the Mummy's Tomb Woman of Straw The Ipcress File Masquerade That Riviera Touch Alfie Funeral in Berlin Billion Dollar Brain I'll Never Forget What's 'Isname Duffy Can Heironymus Merkin Ever Forget Mercy Humppe and Find True Happiness?