25° TORINO FILM FESTIVAL

The Dirty Dozen

The Dirty Dozen

Country: USA
Year: 1967
Duration: 145'


France, 1944. The American Army wants Major Reisman to cross the German lines into occupied France, take over the Nazi headquarters and eliminate the enemy. To do this suicide mission, Reisman is given twelve criminals of the worst possible and must train them to form a team. The mission is completed but only the Major and one of the “dirty dozen” survive.

“I’m a great friend of John Cassavetes – some actors are critical of the ‘rigidity’ of my concept, others are uncomfortable with the way John does his pictures. Everybody does it differently. I say to the actors, ‘Look, if you’re uncomfortable with the line, come up with one that you’re comfortable with that says the same thing.’ We try it once or twice. If it works, we keep it. If it doesn’t, we throw it out. It’s as simple as that.” (Robert Aldrich)

Biography

film director

Robert Aldrich

Robert Aldrich (Cranston, Rhode Island, 1918 - Los Angeles, 1983) was borninto a family of bankers; after finishing his university degree he decided to move to Hollywood and begin a career in the movies. He first worked as assistant director for filmmakers like Jean Renoir, Abraham Polonsky, Joseph Losey and Charlie Chaplin, and debuted as a director in 1953 with the MGM film The Big Leaguer, about the world of baseball. His film World For Ransom (1954) began to trace the outline of his poetics, a brutal realism which pairs a fight for survival and exaltation of male virility before the background of a violent, petty society. That same year he tried his hand at westerns with Apache and Vera Cruz, both starring Burt Lancaster, the first of a series of Aldrich male role models later incarnated by actors like Charles Bronson, Jack Palance, Ernest Borgnine and Burt Reynolds. His next film, Kiss Me Deadly (1955), which was praised by “Cahiers du Cinéma,” marked the beginning of his critical success, as Aldrich concentrated on typical hard boiled themes, to which he returned many years later with Hustle (1975). The Big Knife (1955), the first film Aldrich made with Associates & Aldrich – the independent production company which produced the majority of his films – was a bitter tirade against Hollywood and the world of  entertainment, arguments which he brought up once again in The Legend of Lylah Clare (1968) and The Killing of Sister George (1968). The relationship between tyrannical system and individual was the central theme of Attack! (1956), a digression into war films, to which Aldrich frequently returned, with Ten Seconds to Hell (1959), The Dirty Dozen (1967), his greatest public success, and Too Late the Hero (1969), which repeated the same “patrol movie” formula of his preceding, successful film. Between 1962 and 1964 he directed Bette Davis in What Ever Happened to Baby Jane? and Hush… Hush, Sweet Charlotte (1965), films which combined thriller, grand guignol and female melodrama. He went on to study the world of prisons in The Longest Yard (1974) and put the spotlight on the corruption of power in the political fantasy Twilight’s Last Gleaming (1977), culminating in the violent and blasphemous The Choirboys (1977). In 1981 he ended his career as an independent filmmaker, foreign to the logic of the Hollywood establishment, with …All The Marbles, an excursion into the world of women’s sports.

FILMOGRAFIA

The Big Leaguer (Il grande alleato, 1953), World for Ransom (Singapore: intrigo internazionale, 1954), Apache (L’ultimo Apache, 1954), Vera Cruz (id., 1954), Kiss Me Deadly (Un bacio e una pistola, 1955), The Big Knife (Il grande coltello, 1955), Autumn Leaves (Foglie d’autunno, 1956), Attack! (Prima linea, 1956), The Garment Jungle (La giungla della 7a strada, non accreditato/uncredited, 1957), The Angry Hills (Le colline dell’odio, 1959), Ten Seconds to Hell (Dieci secondi con il diavolo, 1958), The Last Sunset (L’occhio caldo del cielo, 1961), What Ever Happened to Baby Jane? (Che fine ha fatto Baby Jane?, 1962), Sodom and Gomorrah (Sodoma e Gomorra, 1961-62), 4 for Texas (I 4 del Texas, 1963), Hush… Hush, Sweet Charlotte (Piano, piano, dolce Carlotta, 1964), The Flight of the Phoenix (Il volo della fenice, 1965), The Dirty Dozen (Quella sporca dozzina, 1967), The Legend of Lylah Clare (Quando muore una stella, 1968), The Killing of Sister George (L’assassinio di Sister George, 1968), The Greatest Mother of ‘em all (cm, 1969), Too Late the Hero (Non è più tempi d’eroi, 1969), The Grissom Gang (Grissom Gang - Niente orchidee per Miss Blandish, 1971), Ulzana’s Raid (Nessuna pietà per Ulzana, 1972), The Emperor of the North Pole (L’imperatore del Nord, 1973), The Longest Yard (Quella sporca ultima meta, 1974), Hustle (Un gioco estremamente pericoloso, 1975), Twilight’s Last Gleaming (Ultimi bagliori di un crepuscolo, 1977), The Choirboys (I ragazzi del coro, 1977), The Frisco Kid (Scusi, dov’è l’West?, 1979), …All The Marbles (California Dolls, 1981)

Cast

& Credits

regia/director Robert Aldrich
soggetto/story dal romanzo omonimo di/from the homonymous novel by E. M. Nathanson
sceneggiatura/screenplay Nunnally Johnson, Lukas Heller
fotografia/director of photography Edward Scaife
scenografia/set design W.E. Hutchinson
costumi/costume design Elsa Fennell
montaggio/film editor Michael Luciano
musica/music Frank DeVol
suono/sound John Poyner, Van Allen James
interpreti e personaggi/cast and characters Lee Marvin (maggiore/major Reisman), Ernest Borgnine (generale/general Worden), Charles Bronson (Joseph Wladislaw), Jim Brown (Robert Jefferson), John Cassavettes (Victor Franko), Richard Jaeckel (sergente/sergeant Bowren), George Kennedy (maggiore/major Max Ambruster), Trini Lopez (Pedro Jiminez), Ralph Meeker (capitano/captain Stuart Kinder), Robert Ryan (colonnello/colonel Everett Dasher Breed), Telly Savalas (Archer Maggott), Donald Sutherland (Vernon Pinkley), Clint Walker (Samson Posey), Robert Webber (generale/general Denton), Tom Busby (Milo Vladek), Ben Carruthers (Glenn Gilpin), Stuart Cooper (Roscoe Lever), Colin Maitland (Seth Sawyer)
produttore/producer Kenneth Hyman
produzione/production MKH Productions, Metro Goldwyn Mayer, Seven Arts
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