Frankenheimer, John

Frankenheimer, John (1930-2002), American film director. Born in Malba, an affluent suburb of New York, he was the son of a stockbroker. He first became involved in films while serving in the Air Force, and made his television debut with a documentary while still in uniform. On being demobbed in 1953 he joined CBS, and was soon hailed as a leading light of the “Golden Age” of American television, directing some 125 live TV dramas. His movie debut, The Young Stranger (1957), a film version of a play he had directed on television, was unsuccessful, and for a while he retreated back to the small screen.

Frankenheimer returned to the cinema in 1961, establishing himself as one of the foremost young American directors with a contrasted trio of films. All Fall Down (1962) was an intense family melodrama in a small-town setting. The Birdman of Alcatraz (1962), the true story of an imprisoned killer who becomes a brilliant ornithologist, drew a masterly performance from Burt Lancaster. Most stylish and striking of the three was The Manchurian Candidate (1962), a political conspiracy thriller that satirized the “American Way”.

Three such assured and distinctive films in the space of a year seemed to mark Frankenheimer out for greatness. Seven Days in May (1964), another political thriller, was well received, but The Train (1964), a World War II drama, and the science-fiction satire Seconds (1966), were flawed by their scripts. After Grand Prix (1966), a motor-racing film, Frankenheimer aimed for high seriousness with a period drama set in tsarist Russia, The Fixer (1968), that reaped damning criticisms.

Frankenheimer’s career took a long time to recover from this series of setbacks, though French Connection II (1975), a sequel to the brutal thriller of William Friedkin, was reckoned a partial return to form. It wasn’t until Ronin (1998) that he again scored any critical or popular success, and its follow-up Deception (2000; US title: Reindeer Games) showed he was still a long way short of fulfilling his early promise. The re-release in the 1990s of The Manchurian Candidate, looking better than ever, only served to emphasize the high standard he had set himself.