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Conversations With Filmmakers Series
Robert Aldrich: Interviews
Film -- Biography In this collection of interviews, Robert Aldrich (1918-1983) tells fascinating stories of making motion pictures with such film legends as Burt Lancaster, Lee Marvin, Jack Palance, Robert Mitchum, Bette Davis, Joan Crawford, James Stewart, Charles Bronson, Eddie Albert, and Burt Reynolds. As he speaks of them, of his on-going battles with censors, and of his audacious but failed attempt to create his own studio, he talks bluntly, sometimes ferociously, about struggling to make movies that accented his uncompromising view of life.
Among Aldrich's interviewers are Richard Combs, Peter Bogdanovich, Alain Silver, Pierre Sauvage, and David Sterritt. In dialogue with these critics and film scholars he recounts a life in filmmaking that encompassed both old Hollywood's studio system and the spirited independence that took American cinema in a new direction in the 1960s and '70s.
Although he was a member and a kinsman of wealthy, powerful families (the Aldriches of Rhode Island and the Rockefellers of New York), he gained a reputation as an anti-authoritarian maverick whose films condemned corruptive power. While succeeding as popular entertainment, they also were personal attacks on hypocrisy and intolerance.
Aldrich redefined genres and undercut the conventions they portrayed. Kiss Me Deadly transformed the detective film into a satire on Cold War America. Vera Cruz disclosed the corruption at the heart of the traditional western. The Dirty Dozen and Twilight's Last Gleaming rendered the ambiguous underside of combat and the military. Whatever Happened to Baby Jane? and Hush . . . Hush, Sweet Charlotte shaped horror films into psychological studies of female loneliness and alienation.
Eugene L. Miller is the author, with Edwin T. Arnold, of The Films and Career of Robert Aldrich.
Edwin T. Arnold, a professor of English at Appalachian State University, is co-editor of Perspectives on Cormac McCarthy and A Cormac McCarthy Companion: The Border Trilogy (both published by the University Press of Mississippi).
Among Aldrich's interviewers are Richard Combs, Peter Bogdanovich, Alain Silver, Pierre Sauvage, and David Sterritt. In dialogue with these critics and film scholars he recounts a life in filmmaking that encompassed both old Hollywood's studio system and the spirited independence that took American cinema in a new direction in the 1960s and '70s.
Although he was a member and a kinsman of wealthy, powerful families (the Aldriches of Rhode Island and the Rockefellers of New York), he gained a reputation as an anti-authoritarian maverick whose films condemned corruptive power. While succeeding as popular entertainment, they also were personal attacks on hypocrisy and intolerance.
Aldrich redefined genres and undercut the conventions they portrayed. Kiss Me Deadly transformed the detective film into a satire on Cold War America. Vera Cruz disclosed the corruption at the heart of the traditional western. The Dirty Dozen and Twilight's Last Gleaming rendered the ambiguous underside of combat and the military. Whatever Happened to Baby Jane? and Hush . . . Hush, Sweet Charlotte shaped horror films into psychological studies of female loneliness and alienation.
Eugene L. Miller is the author, with Edwin T. Arnold, of The Films and Career of Robert Aldrich.
Edwin T. Arnold, a professor of English at Appalachian State University, is co-editor of Perspectives on Cormac McCarthy and A Cormac McCarthy Companion: The Border Trilogy (both published by the University Press of Mississippi).
222 pages, Paperback
First published February 1, 2003
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Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews
August 18, 2024
Revealing collection of interviews with notable American film producer and director Robert Aldrich. Edited by Eugene L. Miller Jr., and Edwin T. Arnold, "Robert Aldrich: Interviews" provides interesting insight into the man who directed such popular movies such as VERA CRUZ, KISS ME DEADLY, WHATEVER HAPPENED TO BABY JANE?, THE DIRTY DOZEN and THE LONGEST YARD. Arguably superior to any attempt at biography, Aldrich's own thoughts and words appear to tell his story better than writer ever could.
As is revealed in the various interviews contained in the book, whether it be from the 1950s or from the early 1980s, Robert Aldrich maintained a friendly humility and pragmatism about both his work and working in Hollywood in general, and also a fundamental idealism which permeated his story sensibility in specific. However, one can see the subtext in some of Aldirch's words, an undercurrent of passive-aggressive pride, arrogance and resentment. For example, Aldrich would praise the work of director Sam Peckinpah, and in the same sentence boast that Peckinpah was not as good a director as he was.
Also illuminating in "Robert Aldrich: Interviews," is the story of Robert Aldrich's life, as told by the man himself. Born into a wealthy and well-known family in Rhode Island, Aldrich was drawn into show business during his years booking bands during his time at the University of Virginia. As movies interested him, a relative helped Aldrich get a job as a clerk at RKO Pictures, where he worked himself up to assistant and Assistant Director jobs working for men who became his mentors: Abraham Polonsky, Charles Chaplin, William Wellman, and Joseph Losey. Eventually Aldrich began directing for live television in New York, and later was hired to make a feature film by a program at MGM.
"Robert Aldrich: Interviews" includes discussions about almost all of Robert Aldrich's thirty feature films that he was involved with. Unfortunately, 1979's THE FRISCO KID is not discussed, which is a shame, as it would have been interesting to learn Aldrich's thoughts about his final western. Given that the film was not a hit, it's possible Robert Aldrich would have disparaged it in some way, as he did with his final motion picture, 1981's ...ALL THE MARBLES. From the interviews, the impression given by Aldrich was that he took full responsibility for his film failures, and only modest credit for his successes.
If you were not a fan of Aldrich movies such as WORLD FOR RANSOM, TEN SECONDS TO HELL, THE ANGRY HILLS, THE LAST SUNSET, 4 FOR TEXAS, SODOM AND GOMORRAH, THE LEGEND OF LYLAH CLARE, TOO LATE THE HERO and EMPEROR OF THE NORTH, Robert Aldrich would probably agree with you, which is remarkable. It's remarkable for a successful Hollywood filmmaker to admit that nearly a quarter of the movies he made had mistakes in them which either hurt the quality of the film, or its box office success. Robert Aldrich was indeed a rarity. It's good that a book like "Robert Aldrich: Interviews" exists, as it serves as an intriguing study of a man who did some great things...and some not so great things, and lived to tell the tale.
As is revealed in the various interviews contained in the book, whether it be from the 1950s or from the early 1980s, Robert Aldrich maintained a friendly humility and pragmatism about both his work and working in Hollywood in general, and also a fundamental idealism which permeated his story sensibility in specific. However, one can see the subtext in some of Aldirch's words, an undercurrent of passive-aggressive pride, arrogance and resentment. For example, Aldrich would praise the work of director Sam Peckinpah, and in the same sentence boast that Peckinpah was not as good a director as he was.
Also illuminating in "Robert Aldrich: Interviews," is the story of Robert Aldrich's life, as told by the man himself. Born into a wealthy and well-known family in Rhode Island, Aldrich was drawn into show business during his years booking bands during his time at the University of Virginia. As movies interested him, a relative helped Aldrich get a job as a clerk at RKO Pictures, where he worked himself up to assistant and Assistant Director jobs working for men who became his mentors: Abraham Polonsky, Charles Chaplin, William Wellman, and Joseph Losey. Eventually Aldrich began directing for live television in New York, and later was hired to make a feature film by a program at MGM.
"Robert Aldrich: Interviews" includes discussions about almost all of Robert Aldrich's thirty feature films that he was involved with. Unfortunately, 1979's THE FRISCO KID is not discussed, which is a shame, as it would have been interesting to learn Aldrich's thoughts about his final western. Given that the film was not a hit, it's possible Robert Aldrich would have disparaged it in some way, as he did with his final motion picture, 1981's ...ALL THE MARBLES. From the interviews, the impression given by Aldrich was that he took full responsibility for his film failures, and only modest credit for his successes.
If you were not a fan of Aldrich movies such as WORLD FOR RANSOM, TEN SECONDS TO HELL, THE ANGRY HILLS, THE LAST SUNSET, 4 FOR TEXAS, SODOM AND GOMORRAH, THE LEGEND OF LYLAH CLARE, TOO LATE THE HERO and EMPEROR OF THE NORTH, Robert Aldrich would probably agree with you, which is remarkable. It's remarkable for a successful Hollywood filmmaker to admit that nearly a quarter of the movies he made had mistakes in them which either hurt the quality of the film, or its box office success. Robert Aldrich was indeed a rarity. It's good that a book like "Robert Aldrich: Interviews" exists, as it serves as an intriguing study of a man who did some great things...and some not so great things, and lived to tell the tale.
August 16, 2016
Robert Aldrich was a maverick filmmaker, one of the first true independents. He made some big commercial hits (WHAT EVER HAPPENED TO BABY JANE?, THE DIRTY DOZEN) and he made some quirky cultish films (KISS ME DEADLY, THE EMPEROR OF THE NORTH POLE). This books gathers together every interview with Aldrich that the editors could get their hands on. Starting with a puff piece about THE BIG LEAGUER, his first film in 1953, and ending with a career retrospective thirty years later, Robert Aldrich candidly and thoroughly describes the life of a pragmatist is a shifting profession. There is a tremendous amount of overlap in this brief tome; Aldrich loves to tell the same story, although not always with the same details. What comes through is the philosophy of a craftsman with integrity, a realist in an industry based on sham and pretense. He admits his faults, explains his ambiguities, and defines the political underpinnings of his body of work. Aldrich never saw himself as an artist. He was simply a man who made pictures to the best of his ability. He learned his craft working as an assistant director to some of the greatest names in film history (Renoir, Chaplin). The French love him, the hipster American critics called him a fascist (he was a lefty, by the way), but over a 30 film career, he remained a unique and vital voice in American film. We shall not see his like again.
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews