Biography
Walter Riml (1905–1994) was an Austrian cinematographer and actor. Born in Innsbruck, he trained as a carpenter and interior designer before working as a skier and entering film in the late 1920s. He appeared as an actor in several mountain films directed by Arnold Fanck, including Der weiße Rausch (1931).
Riml moved into cinematography as an assistant to Hans Schneeberger and Richard Angst. He served as second cameraman and still photographer on Leni Riefenstahl’s Das blaue Licht (1932) and was one of the cameramen on her Triumph des Willens (1935). His work included expeditions to Greenland for S.O.S. Eisberg (1933) and to Japan for Die Tochter des Samurai (1937). After the Second World War he contributed second-unit photography to The Great Escape (1963) and the mountain sequences of On Her Majesty’s Secret Service (1969), and worked on more than 100 films and documentaries.
