Robert Aldrich

Robert Burgess Aldrich (August 9, 1918 – December 5, 1983) was 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). Containing a "macho mise-en-scène and resonant reworkings of classic action genres," Aldrich's films 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 work displays "a subversive sensibility in thrall to the complexities of human behaviour." Several of his films later influenced 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 (between 1975 and 1979), and becoming the namesake for its Robert B. Aldrich Achievement Award.