John Frankenheimer Biography
John Frankenheimer was born in Malba (New York) in 1930. Having completed his studies at the Lasalle Military Academy, after having had an instructive experience in the photographic and audiovisual sector of the aeronautics during his military service (1951-1953), he began to work for television directing numerous successful programs. In 1957 he made his first film, The Young Stranger, which already revealed the qualities of the future, and then demonstrated, since the 1960s, his predilection for stories and characters with strong psychological connotations. F.rankenheimer approached science fiction without resorting to large investments or the use of special effects. Now famous, he directed highly commercially successful films, such as The Fixer (1968; The Man from Kiev), about a paradoxical court case mounted against a Jew in Tsarist Russia. From the end of the 1960s, however, he seemed to abruptly move away from expensive or demanding films to dedicate himself to stories with an intimate streak. From this choice his best films were born, including The gypsy moths (1969; The daredevils), and above all I walk the line (1970; A man without escape). In the films of this period, the interest and human understanding reserved by the director for his desolate protagonists are combined with a severe examination of the lazy and guilty indifference of American society. Almost as if to vindicate the desire not to be enclosed within precise classifications based on thematic and stylistic choices. After a bizarre attempt to tell the story of the Red Brigades in Italy, The year of the gun (1991), with the still unknown Sharon Stone, Frankenheimer returned to success with the spectacular thriller Ronin (1998), action story dedicated to modern masterless samurai. His last efforts were the dark Reindeer games (2000; Criminal Trap) and the television film Path to war (2002), a chiaroscuro portrait of President Lyndon Johnson debated between suspending or continuing the war in Vietnam.
