Cinematographer whose work in the Martin Scorsese films Raging Bull and Taxi Driver exhibited breadth and grandeurThe cinematographer Michael Chapman, who has died aged 84, had a ringside seat for many of the towering works of postwar
American cinema, including Raging Bull (1980), based on the life of the middleweight champion Jake LaMotta (played by Robert De Niro). That film, which brought Chapman the first of two Oscar nominations, was one of four he made with Martin Scorsese; it was preceded by Taxi Driver (1976), the concert movie The Last Waltz and the documentary American Boy: A Profile of Steven Prince (both 1978).
“His relationship with the camera and the film that was running through it was intimate, mysterious, almost mystical,” said Scorsese, who called him “a great artist”.