Pioneering cameraman who worked with Martin Scorsese

Michael Ballhaus, who has died in Berlin, at the age of 81, was one of the great cinematographers, known in particular for his collaborations with the German director Rainer Werner Fassbinder (with whom he made 16 films) and Martin Scorsese (seven). He garnered three Oscar nominations – the most recent, for Scorsese’s Gangs of New York (2002) – and pioneered a much-imitated camera technique, said The Guardian: the 360-degree pan. In Fassbinder’s TV melodrama Martha (1974), the camera circles the two lead actors as they, too, rotate. “The result is a spectacularly disorienting high-speed update of the 360-degree kissing shot in Hitchcock’s Vertigo.” It became Ballhaus’s signature shot, used most famously in The Fabulous Baker Boys (1989).

“Working with Fassbinder was hard, both mentally and physically,” he once said. “He used to emotionally abuse me… I never understood his behaviour, but I learned so much from him. Most of all, I learned how to be agile and ready for anything.” Scorsese tested him too, in other ways. Ballhaus deplored violence, and found his work on Scorsese’s mob drama Goodfellas (1990) almost unbearable. “I wouldn’t have done this movie with another director,” he said. “These discussions – whether there is enough brain in the blood – are so absurd that you almost want to throw up.” But Scorsese relied on him hugely to create the visual dynamism he aspired to, often with the use of fast zooms (where the camera runs right up to a face, or object). “It was Michael who really gave me back my sense of excitement in making movies,” Scorsese said. “For him, nothing was impossible.” On Goodfellas, Ballhaus oversaw the famous “Copa shot”, when Henry Hill leads his future wife into New York’s Copacabana nightclub via its labyrinthine kitchen, in one brilliantly choreographed tracking shot. He had come up with the idea when the crew were denied permission to shoot at the entrance.

Born in Berlin in 1935, Ballhaus was the son of two stage actors who also ran a small theatre. His aunt was married to the director Max Ophüls, and it was while visiting the set of one of his films, and seeing the director of photography at work, that he decided on his future career. He started out in television and made his first film with Fassbinder in 1971; their collaboration would endure until Fassbinder’s death, in 1982, aged 37. Ballhaus then accepted an invitation to Hollywood, to work on a film with John Sayles. Scorsese first employed him on After Hours, in 1984. The film was shot at breakneck speed, on a tight budget – but after Fassbinder’s demands, nothing could faze Ballhaus. His last film with Scorsese was The Departed (2006), which won a best picture Oscar.