Robert Aldrich was a welcome troublemaker at a time when American movies, like the rest of American society, was in danger of succumbing to conformity. Throughout the 1950s, he directed a series of startling movies that rattled Hollywood conventions and tastefulness. What film of that era is more powerful of the grinding anxieties behind the tidy surface than Kiss Me Deadly (1955)? Based on a Mickey Spillane novel, that movie remains a cherry-bomb of ballsy iconoclasm, from the opening credits that run backwards to the climactic meltdown that sends humanity back into the ocean. The excitement visible on the screen, the sheer strangeness of this lurid project, made it a cult movie and a favorite of the impressionable young French critics who would go on to become New Wave directors. Godard and Truffaut loved Aldrich, yet they felt betrayed when later on he made it big with The Dirty Dozen (1967). Indeed, many historians today speak of Aldrich’s decline, but the truth is that the later projects are every bit as important as the early classics in depicting the bulldozing rebellion of this director.

Aldrich started out as an assistant director, and the directors he assisted were quite an illustrious bunch: Jean Renoir, Charlie Chaplin, Joseph Losey, William Wellman, Max Ophuls, and Robert Rossen, among others. He directed episodes for TV series (China Smith, Four Star Playhouse) before graduating to features with Apache (1954), with Burt Lancaster playing the first of the director’s many angry outsiders fighting against an oppressive society. That same year he made Vera Cruz, which pairs Lancaster with Gary Cooper in a surprisingly cynical Western that anticipates Sam Peckinpah’s later, meaner work. Kiss Me Deadly was his breakout film, and still remains his greatest, filled with unforgettable images and characters as Aldrich works towards the literally explosive ending. The Big Knife (1955) was a hard-hitting Hollywood exposé, Autumn Leaves (1956) a bizarrely sadistic soap opera, and Attack! (1956) an intense vision of hell on the battlefield. So much amazing work in so few years! The Garment Jungle (1957) was Aldrich’s first bump, not because the movie was bad but because it got him in trouble with studios and saddled with projects he wasn’t interested in, like The Angry Hills (1959) and Sodom and Gomorrah (1961). As the 1960s started, Aldrich was at a low ebb.

Whatever Happened to Baby Jane (1962), with Bette Davis and Joan Crawford screeching for our delight, was the box-office hit Aldrich needed to get back on his feet. In fact, the director’s career is a seesaw of highs and lows, daring movies that bomb and blockbusters that are safe only on the surface. There’s the Old West kinkiness of The Last Sunset (1961), the Rat Pack goofing of 4 for Texas (1963), the self-indulgent meta-exercises in The Legend of Lyla Clare (1968), and the censorship-defying dramatics of The Killing of Sister George (1968). Even the 1970s, which found a certain grubbiness creeping into his style, is full of offbeat gems, like The Grissom Gang (1971) and The Emperor of the North (1973). Hustle (1974) and The Choirboys (1977) are distasteful, and The Frisco Kid (1979) pretty bland. Still, what other movie of the time was as explicit as Twilight’s Last Gleaming (1977) in its criticism of America’s involvement in Vietnam? Aldrich was a formidable artist, swinging low and high, turning out art movies disguised as action thrillers. He was at times down, but never out. It’s fitting that his last movie, All the Marbles (1981), is about athletes who refuse to leave the arena.