Key
Genres: Action, Thriller, Drama, Western, Crime, War, Melodrama
Key
Collaborators: Michael
Luciano (Editor), Frank DeVol (Composer), Joseph Biroc
(Cinematographer), William Glasgow (Production Designer), Ernest
Borgnine (Leading Character Player), Lukas Heller (Screenwriter), Ernest
Laszlo (Cinematographer), Wesley Addy (Character Player), Burt Lancaster
(Leading Player), Richard Jaeckel (Leading Character Player)
Highly
Recommended: The
Big Knife (1955), Kiss
Me Deadly (1955), Autumn Leaves (1956)
Recommended: Apache
(1954), Vera Cruz (1954), Attack (1956), The Last Sunset (1961), What Ever Happened to Baby Jane? (1962),
Hush...Hush, Sweet Charlotte (1965), Flight of the Phoenix (1966), The
Dirty Dozen (1967), Ulzana's Raid (1972), Twilight's Last Gleaming
(1977)
"At his
best, Aldrich employed vicious irony, muscular acting and vivid,
sophisticated compositions to evoke a world divided by
self-interest and forever on the verge of violent anarchy. At
the same time those ingredients, when applied to an ill-focused
script, led to overstatement and vulgarity." - Geoff
Andrew (The Film Handbook, 1989)
"While
Stanley Kubrick (whose 1950's
films bear striking stylistic and thematic similarities to those
of Aldrich) found it necessary to retreat to England, reducing
his output to two or three films a decade, Aldrich chose to
fight it out in Hollywood, where his capacity for money-making
allowed him the space to vent his own personal anger at the
compromises we all must make." -
Ed Lowry (International Dictionary of Films and Filmmakers,
1991)
"The
decline in Aldrich, in the sixties especially, was a sad thing
to behold. Distinct talent is no sure defense against the
pressures of vulgarization and commerce, to say nothing of the
talent's urge towards sensationalism." -
David Thomson (The New Biographical Dictionary of Film, 2002)
"Started
out directing tough genre films (Vera Cruz, Kiss Me
Deadly), which grew increasingly graphic and satirical with
time (What Ever Happened to Baby Jane?, Ulzana's Raid)." -
William R. Meyer (The Film Buff's Catalog, 1978)
"I
don't think violence on film breeds violence in life. Violence
in life breeds violence in films." -
Robert Aldrich