In praise of film director ROBERT ALDRICH

What other Hollywood director of his time worked in so many genres?

http://www.sensesofcinema.com/2002/great-directors/aldrich/

The Legend of Lylah Clare is finally available from the Warner Archive, if you feel like springing for it. Glenn Kenny:

http://somecamerunning.typepad.com/some_came_running/2011/11/tales-from-the-warner-archives-12-the-legend-of-lylah-claire-robert-aldrich-1968.html

Someone needs to put out Ulzana's Raid.

What other Hollywood director of his time worked in so many genres?

Preminger perhaps?

I like The Big Knife and Ulzana's Raid best but I just consulted his filmography and it's vaster than I thought.

There are two substantially cuts of Ulzana's Raid, the Region 2 DVD of it is 'the european cut', i think

underrated: all the marbles
something of a letdown: emperor of the north

POLL ME DEADLY ... the films of Robert Aldrich

Ben Sachs on Ulzana's Raid (showing tnite in Chi)

http://www.chicagoreader.com/chicago/robert-aldrich-vietnam-allegory-western-ulzanas-raid/Content?oid=10643066

anyone seen The Last Sunset? R Hudson, K Douglas, D Malone... written by Trumbo. Leonard Maltin called it Strange on the Range.

no, but i've got twilight's last gleaming cued up for tonight.

I don't know if there's a thread for "Horrific Scenes in No-Horror Movies", but the murder in The Longest Yard certainly fits the bill.

how's Autumn Leaves?

ain't seen

what did you see it on?

Included in that Joan Crawford in the Fifties set released a few years ago. Harriet Craig too.

NYC retro coming, all 35mm!

http://metrograph.com/series/series/38/the-associates-and-aldrich

Nice, would esp love to see his rare - and apparently disastrous - Hammer co-production Ten Seconds to Hell in a 35mm print.

this guy made more good movies than anyone had any right to. he was also a stand-up guy -- passionate hollywood liberal and strong unionist. as prez of the DGA he was a staunch supporter of the artistic rights of directors and also renounced the guild's past mccarthyite tendencies.

i've been watching some of his later films, and you can kind of see him getting indifferent to niceties of style, even though his approach remained satisfyingly lean. but the mies-en-scene of the later films is often downright ugly, and that often includes the grizzled veterans he casts in 'em. twilight's last gleaming has got to be some kind of triumph-slash-nadir of decrepitude. but the very great longest yard isn't much prettier.

hustle (1975) might be my favorite aldrich film, and just how much better it is than save the tiger (written by the same guy, covering many of the same themes) is really a lesson in what a director brings to the table. as written both films are overly rhetorical, with some conceits (like reynolds's detective watching "moby dick" on late-nite TV) that tread the line between apposite and embarrassingly heavy-handed. in save the tiger they almost all fall on the pretentious side of that divide, while pretty much everything in hustle just /works/.

prioritizing ...all the marbles of course

ulzana's raid kinda blew me away when i saw it

i just picked up the kiss me deadly criterion, pretty "psyched" to watch it

still haven't watched Hush...Hush, Sweet Charlotte. Should I?

me neither

The Last Sunset is all over the place... incest! two guys who need to kill each other hanging out on a cattle drive! Joseph Cotten's most humiliating role! D Malone and young C Lynley fare best.

man, Hustle's only ten years after A Man and a Woman but with the the casting of Deneue, the scene where Deneueve and Reynolds watch the 1966 film in a revival house, Reynolds and Paul Winfield reminiscing about Bogart and Garfield, and the very '70s we-don't-get-our-kids overtones, it's already nostalgic for pre-hippie times.

he mies-en-scene of the later films is often downright ugly, and that often includes the grizzled veterans he casts in 'em.

Oh yeah. It reminds me of Dean Martin's celebrity roasts from the period: sixtysomething Hollywood vets with sideburns and long hair stumbling through vile curtains in a drunken fog.

Hustle was written by Steve Shagan, who kinda specialized in that stuff for a few years (Jack Lemmon's unloved angsty businessman Oscar in Save the Tiger)... like a second-tier Paddy Chayefsky.

but Hustle makes you contemplate the forensic leavings of Eddie Albert's and Vegas comic Jack Carter's "joy juice," so all is forgiven.

i think i like the shipwreck of the Eileen Brennan/Ben Johnson marriage more than their performances in The Last Picture Show

It's much better than Save the Tiger; I want my symphony for the autumnal years played in a genre piece.

The bar convo b/w Brennan and Reynolds had a nice, casual rhythm to it. I don't think Reynolds is well cast. Although he's not bad and years before he went rancid, he's not persuasive when called upon to be sympathetic.

I caught Paul Winfield looking at Reynolds' butt a couple times. I wonder how out he was?

discreetly noncommital in the press.

Reynolds' quipping reminded me too much of his ubiquitous Carson show appearances. otherwise fine.

Somehow thought the was an ILM thread and you were talking about Simon Reynolds.

imdb trivia for Vera Cruz (1954):

Gary Cooper was taking so much medication, that he was impotent for the duration of filming. He also hated working with Sara Montiel, who he claimed smelled bad and never washed her hair.

I have Attack! dvdr'd. Worth a watch?

one of the best war films

This book is surely the only one in existence that features back cover pull quotes from Andrew Sarris and Burt Reynolds pic.twitter.com/fuI5s7aM23

— Matt Prigge (@mattprigge) July 30, 2018

Robert Aldrich hated working with studio technicians and instead built his own list of non-union crew. Paid them 25% above guild rates and had them over for cocktails to watch the big boxing matches.

— Peter LabuzAAAHH! (@labuzamovies) October 29, 2019

Looking forward to Arm0nd's autobiography.