Peter Yates passed away on Sunday, January 9th, 2011. He was 81 years old. I recently reviewed one of Yates’ many masterpieces, “The Friends of Eddie Coyle,” here last year. The performance that Yates gets out of Robert Mitchum is one of the best of his career
Yates is most famous for “Bullitt” and its masterful car chase sequence — a scene barely topping another amazing chase sequence in Yates’ other great crime masterpiece, “Robbery.”
This is one of several excellent chase scenes throughout the film. It was Steve McQueen who saw this film in England and then recommended Yates for the Bullitt gig asking that he replicate and top the London car chase sequences, which he did. Unfortunately, “Robbery” is currently unavailable on DVD in the states, though streams of it pop-up on-line from time to time.
Though best known for this trio of crime films, Yates also directed the cult-fantasy epic “Krull,” as well as some more mainstream dramas like “Breaking Away” and “The Dresser.”
The New York Times has posted a detailed obituary for Yates here: