The New Biographical Dictionary of Film: Completely Updated and Expanded Read Online Free PDF Page A

that caught the madness in American emotionalism. But The Dirty Dozen succumbed to the complacent strength Lee Marvin was prone to. Compare Marvin in that and Emperor of the North Pole with the ravaged sensitivity of Jack Palance in The Big Knife and Attack! , and the subtle disowning of Ralph Meeker’s Hammer in Kiss Me Deadly . (Compare Aldrich’s Marvin with The Killers or Point Blank. ) It seems odd now to recollect the distinguished apprenticeship Aldrich served as assistant director: The Southerner (45, Jean Renoir); The Story of G.I. Joe (45, William Wellman); The Private Affairs of Bel-Ami (47, Albert Lewin); Body and Soul (47, Robert Rossen); Arch of Triumph (48, Lewis Milestone); Force of Evil (48, Abraham Polonsky); The White Tower (50, Ted Tetzlaff); The Prowler (51, Joseph Losey); M (51, Losey); Limelight (52, Charles Chaplin). Did Aldrich’s first vitality grow out of the noir paranoia in Polonsky and Losey?
    He tried to be his own man: the Associates and Aldrich was set up in 1955, and he had his own studio for a few years on the booty of The Dirty Dozen . But he had to sell it after a series of flops, and found himself back in the jungle again, suffering cuts from the interesting Twilight’s Last Gleaming , and ending his life on a run of coarse, disagreeable movies. Hustle , though, was closer to the old style and his feeling for pain, a bleak cop/prostitute picture that paired Burt Reynolds’s masochism with the lofty glamour of Catherine Deneuve.
    Then there is Ulzana’s Raid —a sequel to Apache , one of the best films of the seventies, and a somber adjustment of the Western to the age of Vietnam. Burt Lancaster has become the weary scout helping the cavalry track down a rogue Apache in a movie that uses terrain and loyalty as interactive metaphors. From a fine Alan Sharp script, Ulzana’s Raid is austere and fatalistic. It is the one film in which Aldrich seems old, wise, and afraid. Suppose he had made only that and Kiss Me Deadly —he would loom as a master, magnificent in his sparing work. But he had to keep busy, and so his energy often went astray.
    Marc Allégret (1900–73), b. Basel, Switzerland
1927: Voyage au Congo (d). 1929: Papoul . 1930: La Meilleure Bobonne; J’Ai Quelque Chose a Vous Dire; Le Blanc et le Noir (codirected with Robert Florey). 1931: Les Amants de Minuit (codirected with Augusto Genina); Mam’zelle Nitouche; Attaque Nocturne . 1932: Fanny; La Petite Chocolattère . 1934: Le Lac-aux-Dames; L’Hôtel du Libre-Echange; Sans Famille; Zou-Zou . 1935: Les Beaux Jours . 1936: Sous les Yeux d’Occident; Aventure à Paris; Les Amants Terribles . 1937: Gribouille . 1938: La Dame de Malacca; Entrée des Artistes; Orage . 1939: Le Corsaire . 1941: Parade en Sept Nuits . 1942: L’Arlésienne; Félicie Nanteuil . 1943: Les Petites du Quai aux Fleurs . 1944: Lunégarde; La Belle Aventure . 1946: Pétrus . 1947: Blanche Fury . 1949: The Naked Heart/Maria Chapdelaine . 1951: Blackmailed; Avec André Gide; La Demoiselle et Son Revenant . 1952: Jean Coton . 1953: Julietta . 1954: L’Amante di Paridi; Femmina . 1955: Futures Vedettes; L’Amant de Lady Chatterley . 1956: En Effeuillant la Marguerite/Mamzelle Striptease . 1957: L’Amour Est en Jeu . 1958: Sois Belle et Tais-Toi . 1959: Un Drôle de Dimanche; Les Affreux . 1961: “Sophie,” an episode from Les Parisiennes . 1962: Le Démon de Minuit . 1963: L’Abominable Homme des Douanes . 1970: Le Bal du Comte d’Orgel .
    The older brother of Yves Allégret and adopted nephew of André Gide, Marc Allégret had a long, pedestrian record, illustrating the way French cinema has sustained mediocre talents through warfare, the New Wave, and the pinched conditions of commercial cinema. Allégret’s first film was made in his capacity as secretary to Gide on a trip to Africa in 1925. According to Gide, on their return Allégret languished, “… or at least has not really worked; I fear that, for greater facility, he may give up the