Robert Aldrich

About the Robert Aldrich

Robert Burgess Aldrichwas an American film director, producer, and screenwriter. An iconoclastic and maverick auteur working in many genres during the Golden Age of Hollywood, he directed mainly films noir, war movies, westerns and dark melodramas with Gothic overtones. His most notable credits include Vera Cruz (1954), Kiss Me Deadly (1955), The Big Knife (1955), Autumn Leaves (1956), Attack (1956), What Ever Happened to Baby Jane? (1962), Hush…Hush, Sweet Charlotte (1964), The Flight of the Phoenix (1965), The Dirty Dozen (1967), and The Longest Yard (1974).

Aldrich’s directorial style combined “macho mise-en-scene and resonant reworkings of classic action genres” and were known for pushing the boundaries of violence in mainstream cinema, as well as for their psychologically-complex interpretations of genre film tropes. The British Film Institute wrote that Aldrich’s films “subversive sensibility in thrall to the complexities of human behaviour.” Several of his films later proved influential to members of the French New Wave.

Aside from his directorial work, Aldrich was also noted for his advocacy as a member of the Directors Guild of America, serving as its President for two terms, and becoming the namesake for its Robert B. Aldrich Achievement Award.