John Frankenheimer, born on February 19, 1930, in New York City, and passing away on July 6, 2002, in Los Angeles, remains a significant figure in American cinema. Often mentioned alongside Sidney Lumet, John Frankenheimer emerged from the vibrant era of live television drama in the United States. This period, flourishing before its commercial and technological decline around 1960, profoundly shaped his early directorial style. Frankenheimer’s subsequent acclaim and his recurrent fondness for live television have cemented his reputation as a quintessential product of this unique medium. However, this perception, while common, overlooks the nuances of his innovative approach to television and his broader cinematic contributions.
I. From Live Television to Cinematic Innovation
The aesthetic of live television was inherently defined by limitations—both temporal and spatial. Productions were confined to the real-time constraints of an hour or half-hour broadcast and the physical dimensions of a studio set. The narratives crafted by emerging television writers like Rod Serling, Paddy Chayefsky, and Reginald Rose often depicted intimate, working-class environments, aptly termed “kitchen dramas,” as these were logistically feasible for live staging.
Directors such as Sidney Lumet and Delbert Mann, who approached television productions with a theatrical mindset, thrived within this realm of emotional intensity and spatial confinement. However, John Frankenheimer instinctively sought to transcend these limitations. He actively explored material and visual techniques that could expand the boundaries of live television. In a notable instance, Frankenheimer daringly filmed a show outdoors amidst an unexpected snowfall. In another groundbreaking move, he directed the first half-hour of a program without a single edit, showcasing his technical prowess and ambition. Paradoxically, Frankenheimer welcomed the advent of videotape, which replaced live broadcasts, because it offered the possibilities of retakes and basic editing—tools that enhanced his cinematic vision. As a live television director who consistently pushed the medium towards a more cinematic expression, John Frankenheimer was, in essence, an outlier, not a typical representative of the form.
His transition to film was a natural progression, beginning with The Young Stranger (1957). This film, his debut feature, was adapted from his own television work, specifically a Climax episode. Penned by Robert Dozier, the film was an autobiographical exploration of father-son dynamics. While Frankenheimer personally identified with the theme of being overshadowed by a dominant father figure, The Young Stranger shares more thematic ground with the trend of adapting live TV dramas to film, a movement sparked by the unexpected success of Marty. Many of these adaptations, however, suffered from a dilution of their gritty realism, overwhelmed by studio gloss. The Young Stranger was not immune to this issue.
A promotional poster for “The Young Stranger”, highlighting James MacArthur. The film marked John Frankenheimer’s feature directorial debut, adapted from his television work.
Frankenheimer encountered creative friction with the seasoned RKO crew during the production of The Young Stranger. He felt constrained in realizing his artistic vision and subsequently returned to television for four years before venturing into his second film, The Young Savages (1961). The Young Savages tackled the social issue of juvenile gangs—envisioned as West Side Story without musical numbers. Frankenheimer’s direction in this film reveals a certain detachment from the material, particularly evident in the improbable courtroom climax. His directorial energy in The Young Savages was primarily channeled into the opening title sequence. This sequence is a striking showcase of visual dynamism, employing Dutch angles, fisheye lenses, handheld camera work, and authentic Manhattan locations, culminating in a murder depicted through the reflection in the sunglasses of the blind victim.
II. Developing a Signature Visual Style
These stylistic devices showcased in The Young Savages foreshadowed the distinctive visual language that John Frankenheimer would refine in his subsequent films, becoming a hallmark of his directorial identity. While Frankenheimer often cited classic Hollywood directors such as William Wyler, Billy Wilder, Alfred Hitchcock, George Stevens, and Carol Reed—the latter being a particular favorite—as influences, his own style was notably more flamboyant. His preference for long takes and deep-focus lenses resonated more with the cinematic approaches of Orson Welles and Max Ophuls. A recurring compositional motif in Frankenheimer’s work is the juxtaposition of a performer in extreme close-up with another figure positioned far in the background, both sharply in focus. This long-lens photography style demanded meticulous lighting and precise choreography. Consequently, Frankenheimer’s early film output became characterized by a cinema of exactitude, prioritizing meticulous planning over spontaneity.
The period between 1961 and 1970 marks a particularly fertile and interconnected phase in John Frankenheimer’s filmography. The sheer volume and thematic and stylistic interconnections within this period are substantial. This era gave rise to his acclaimed “paranoia trilogy”: The Manchurian Candidate (1962), Seven Days in May (1964), and Seconds (1966). Concurrently, he crafted a “hard action trilogy”—The Train (1965), Grand Prix (1966), and The Horsemen (1971)—films centered on physical conflicts between men within contexts of combat or sport. Additionally, a “rural trilogy” can be identified, comprising All Fall Down (1962), The Gypsy Moths (1969), and I Walk the Line (1970). These films prioritize the atmosphere of their middle American settings, often over conventional plot or suspense elements.
III. The Paranoia Trilogy: Masterpieces of Suspense and Subtext
The Manchurian Candidate, released in 1962, stands as a monumental achievement in John Frankenheimer’s career. Its impact is so profound that it often overshadows other works in critical evaluations of his filmography. The film has attained a unique status in popular culture, partly due to its eerie prescience of the Kennedy assassination the following year, and is revered among cinephiles as a cult classic rich in complex subtexts and surreal imagery. The most iconic sequence is undoubtedly the brainwashing scene. Here, Frankenheimer seamlessly transitions between an objective viewpoint—depicting captured soldiers in a communist indoctrination seminar—and a subjective one, showing the same soldiers seemingly attending a benign meeting of the Ladies’ Garden Society. This tour de force is a distilled essence of Frankenheimer’s television techniques, commencing with a deliberate 360-degree pan that exploits the “wild” sets characteristic of television production, allowing cameras to navigate seemingly impossible positions.
Frankenheimer’s stylistic influences also incorporated elements of cinéma vérité. The climactic political convention scene, with its stark lighting and waving placards, echoes the visual style of Robert Drew’s documentary Primary (1960). The senate hearing sequences, featuring James Gregory’s portrayal of a boorish senator decrying varying numbers of communist infiltrators in a McCarthy-esque manner, mirror the televised Army-McCarthy hearings. (Emile de Antonio’s Point of Order [1964], compiled from kinescopes of these broadcasts, serves as a compelling companion piece).
Within this documentary-styled mise en scène, John Frankenheimer subtly embeds a series of Buñuelian images. These surreal moments are presented with such understated nonchalance that their effect is genuinely hallucinatory. An ingenue character appears dressed as a giant playing card. Another character is shot through a milk carton, causing him to “bleed” white. Perhaps most strikingly, there is the assassin armed with a rifle, his Medal of Honor pinned directly beneath his priest’s collar. Frankenheimer situates each of these bizarre moments within an utterly realistic context, never signaling to the audience to acknowledge their inherent absurdity. Viewed multiple times, the film’s dominant tone might be interpreted as black comedy. Critics who dismiss these “set pieces” as merely adaptations from Richard Condon’s novel and George Axelrod’s screenplay miss a crucial point. The biting satire and frenetic bizarreness—trademarks of both writers—are vividly realized because Frankenheimer films them with unwavering seriousness. The stark contrast becomes evident when comparing The Manchurian Candidate to the self-indulgent farces later directed by Axelrod himself, where each joke is practically telegraphed with exaggerated cues, underscoring Frankenheimer’s unique contribution.
The Manchurian Candidate movie poster
With Seven Days in May, released in 1964, John Frankenheimer risked thematic repetition, delving again into political conspiracy and the clash of wills between men in uniform. However, while Manchurian oscillates between surrealism and vérité, Seven Days in May deliberately eschews any stylistic flamboyance. Remarkably, this thriller is largely driven by dialogue. Seven Days in May unfolds as a series of conversations, predominantly staged against backdrops that subtly amplify the underlying sense of menace. These settings include bunker-like Pentagon conference rooms, vast, cavernous White House chambers that dwarf the actors, and a strangely desolate desert café.
Despite Seven Days in May occasionally succumbing to didactic, Rod Serling-esque speeches towards its climax, it stands as a significant work in which Frankenheimer refines the formula of the paranoid thriller. Frankenheimer establishes a narrative pattern characterized by prolonged tension buildup leading to only brief moments of catharsis. Key events, such as a fatal plane crash, a kidnapping in the desert, and another abduction at an airport, all occur off-screen. Even the single chase sequence is abruptly cut short before its resolution is revealed. The film maintains a strict adherence to the perspectives of the informer, Jiggs Casey, and his allies, ensuring that Burt Lancaster’s sinister General Scott remains an enigmatic figure throughout. By intentionally withholding the audience’s desire for complete comprehension of the conspiracy’s scope, Frankenheimer places the onus on the spectator’s imagination, echoing Val Lewton’s approach in his RKO horror cycle, where the supernatural was often suggested rather than explicitly shown. Mirroring real-life paranoia, the more assurances are given that nothing is amiss, the more suspicion is engendered.
The subtle clues John Frankenheimer strategically places to tantalize the audience—a rumor about a generals’ betting pool, a crumpled piece of paper, a minor deception from Casey’s superior—initially hold little significance for Casey until he witnesses a televised speech by Scott. This speech retroactively recontextualizes all the fragmented pieces of information he has gathered. Television screens, recurring motifs throughout both The Manchurian Candidate and Seven Days in May, become a recognizable Frankenheimer signature. In an era when Hollywood studios often deliberately ignored television—perceiving it as competition—Frankenheimer became a pioneering filmmaker who acknowledged television’s pervasive role in modern society. He depicted it both as an intrusion into privacy and as a tool wielded by the powerful for manipulation. In Manchurian, Angela Lansbury silently mouths the words of a speech simultaneously delivered on television by her senator husband, subtly revealing the true source of power to the audience. Similarly, in Seven Days in May, the movements of Pentagon personnel are constantly monitored via closed-circuit cameras. Frankenheimer, who makes a cameo appearance in Black Sunday (1977) as a sports broadcast director, may have fostered the notion that his ubiquitous television screens were a nostalgic in-joke. However, they more accurately represent a pointed critique of media dishonesty, a theme akin to Network subtly woven throughout numerous films where television persistently encroaches on the periphery of daily life. Frankenheimer’s video screens almost invariably highlight a divergence between the truth presented to the audience and the carefully constructed narrative intended for the characters within the film. The prescience of John Frankenheimer’s fascination with this theme is undeniable.
IV. Action, Spectacle, and the Shift Towards Naturalism
In his videodisc commentaries, John Frankenheimer could become deeply engrossed in technical details, often specifying the lens used for particular shots. Late in life, he still fondly recalled the names of his preferred live television cameramen. Grand Prix (1966), his expansive three-hour chronicle of a Formula One racing season, seems to stem from this technically inclined aspect of Frankenheimer’s personality.
Grand Prix is undeniably a showcase of technical achievements. Its use of multiple images within the Super Panavision frame sparked a trend for split-screen imagery in the late 1960s, and his innovative application of car-mounted cameras later became standard practice in televised sports coverage. Frankenheimer, himself an amateur race driver, effectively captured the sensation of high-speed motion and sensory deprivation experienced by drivers with unprecedented verisimilitude for a sports film. The racing sequences, where music or voiceover replaces the roaring engines and crowd noise, possess a strange, almost poetic beauty. In a sequence as delightfully tangential as the elephant parade in Hatari!, Maurice Jarre’s upbeat score orchestrates an abstract montage of cars, track, and spectators. Having strategically diffused any suspense by implicitly assuring the audience of Yves Montand’s character’s eventual victory in the race, Frankenheimer shifts focus to examining auto racing as a purely aesthetic spectacle.
However, Grand Prix starkly juxtaposes formal innovation with formulaic content. Conceived rather casually as a variation on Grand Hotel (1932), Grand Prix is populated with stereotypical characters reciting clichéd romantic dialogues and uttering aphoristic lines intended to explain the allure of auto racing. The apparent indifference of the all-star cast towards the material is mirrored by Frankenheimer’s own directorial detachment, as if he prioritized the Ferraris over any demonstrative acting performances.
The poster for “Grand Prix,” a film where John Frankenheimer explored technical innovation in depicting the high-speed world of Formula One racing.
Seconds (1966), in stark contrast to the commercial and somewhat superficial Grand Prix, is an artful and enigmatic film. It feels like a cinematic playground, deliberately borrowing themes and techniques from the European New Wave movement, akin to Arthur Penn’s contemporaneous Mickey One. Collaborating with the esteemed cinematographer James Wong Howe, Frankenheimer incorporated a range of New Wave stylistic devices into his visual vocabulary: authentic locations, handheld cameras, extreme close-ups, first-person point-of-view shots, fisheye lenses, jump cuts, and sets designed with forced perspective. Almost every shot is visually striking.
Yet, Seconds’ narrative—centered on a discontented middle-aged banker who undergoes a radical transformation into a bohemian figure embodied by Rock Hudson—attempts rather clumsily to literalize the pervasive alienation found in Antonioni’s L’Eclisse, or the dreamlike, symbolic imagery of political and bodily unease in Bergman’s The Silence (two films that appear to have significantly influenced Seconds). Hiroshi Teshigahara’s The Face of Another, produced in Japan around the same period as Seconds, explores a similar premise of a man granted a new physical identity through science. Teshigahara brilliantly delves into the metaphysical implications of this fantastical loss of self, while Seconds often feels hesitant, lingering just at the threshold of profound metaphor.
Seconds extends the theme of clandestine, homicidal conspiracies from The Manchurian Candidate and Seven Days in May into the private sector. In this context, the sensory overload of Frankenheimer’s visual style becomes almost oppressively unsettling and claustrophobic, effectively creating a cinematic language of paranoia. However, this thematic thread never fully integrates with the personal narrative of Tony Wilson (formerly Arthur Hamilton). To emphasize the sinister (and somewhat improbable) operations of the shadowy corporation providing new identities to “seconds,” Frankenheimer opted to discard writer Lewis John Carlino’s original ending, which would have reunited Hamilton/Wilson with his abandoned family. It’s plausible that Frankenheimer, still exhibiting the volatile temperament on set that earned him a reputation as television’s enfant terrible, was not yet ready to confront the consequences of male vanity in his art. This would evolve in the subsequent, and arguably most fruitful, phase of his career.
V. Mature Themes and Character-Driven Action
John Frankenheimer’s reputation largely rests on his proficiency in directing action and his thematic preoccupation with masculinity. These two aspects of his work are often discussed as intertwined elements. Frankenheimer himself succinctly defined his métier as “character-based action movies.” The Train (1965), a terrifically engaging film, epitomizes this synthesis. The intricate cat-and-mouse game between a resourceful French resistance fighter (Burt Lancaster) and a cultured Nazi officer (Paul Scofield) over a train car loaded with stolen paintings provides the philosophical foundation of the film. Frankenheimer’s central thesis—that human life is inherently more valuable than art—might seem simplistic, yet it adds a crucial moral dimension to what could otherwise be perceived as merely a lavish, live-action rendition of an electric train set scenario.
Prior to The Gypsy Moths, the majority of John Frankenheimer’s films predominantly focused on male characters. The Manchurian Candidate, Seven Days in May, and The Train all revolved around contests of will between men. Birdman of Alcatraz (1962), Grand Prix, and The Fixer (1968) were set in exclusively male-dominated environments, with female characters often relegated to afterthought roles. Yet, Frankenheimer’s work lacks the anguished explorations of courage and bravado or the misogynistic undertones found in Sam Peckinpah’s films, and certainly avoids the bellicose endorsement of aggression and bullying that marred some of John Ford’s work. It often appeared that Frankenheimer was simply drawn to settings that evoked the familiar dynamics of his live TV apprenticeship: intense, fast-paced, all-male arenas of ego and power struggles.
This dynamic shifted with Frankenheimer’s consecutive masterpieces of 1969–70, The Gypsy Moths and I Walk the Line. These often-underappreciated films introduced new stylistic and thematic dimensions into Frankenheimer’s oeuvre as he moved away from the pronounced formalism of Seconds and Grand Prix. In these films, he began to probe beneath the hardened exteriors of his archetypal male action heroes and, for the first time, introduced female characters with significant substance and depth.
These films marked John Frankenheimer’s immersion of his signature style into the naturalism of authentic locations far from Hollywood. The Gypsy Moths chronicles a languid, leisurely holiday weekend through the eyes of three barnstorming skydivers who arrive in a small Kansas town to perform a parachute jumping act for the holiday festivities. I Walk the Line is a country-infused variation of The Blue Angel, where a lawman in rural Tennessee jeopardizes his life and moral principles in pursuit of a captivating moonshiner’s daughter. Both films built upon themes explored in All Fall Down (1962), an earlier foray into William Inge territory. All Fall Down, while earnest, felt somewhat confined by its studio setting and Method acting approach, often mistakenly considered an anomaly in Frankenheimer’s filmography. Frankenheimer himself was reportedly dissatisfied with the contrast between All Fall Down’s vibrant Florida exteriors and its studio-bound interiors. However, in Gypsy Moths and I Walk the Line, he fully realized his interest in the quiet atmosphere of small summer towns and the deep-seated passions of taciturn middle Americans. Unlike the verbose politicians of The Manchurian Candidate and Seven Days in May, these characters required Frankenheimer’s camera to become the primary instrument for expressing their inner lives.
Frankenheimer’s passion for location shooting had begun with The Train, but in The Gypsy Moths and I Walk the Line, the settings provide more than just verisimilitude. The characters’ homes reveal unspoken aspects of their lives: the serene yet stiflingly conventional middle-class residence of the Brandons in Gypsy Moths, and the dilapidated shack of the moonshiner clan in I Walk the Line, accessible only via a precarious bridge. Extensive helicopter shots and lengthy scenic montages under the opening titles of both films immediately establish the context in which these characters exist.
John Frankenheimer drew inspiration from the paintings of Andrew Wyeth. The sharp lines and forceful camerawork of his earlier films gave way to scenes of unadorned Americana. The lighting is often subtly beautiful, yet the settings are austere, even somewhat shabby—like the women’s club hall filled with folding chairs and the lackluster strip joint in The Gypsy Moths. I Walk the Line reverses the visual palette of the sun-drenched Gypsy Moths, with its bright blue skies and parachute jumps into golden wheat fields. For Line, a more pessimistic work, Frankenheimer deliberately avoided warm colors, timing all outdoor scenes for overcast days, resulting in a film saturated in muted blues and grays. In I Walk the Line, Frankenheimer’s camera pauses to capture portraits of the real-life citizens of the Tennessee town, a silent chorus of non-Hollywood faces. The Gypsy Moths’ title is elucidated in a silent long shot where Rettig (Burt Lancaster), the self-destructive parachutist, pauses to observe moths drawn to and consumed by a lamp on the Brandons’ front lawn—an image poignant enough to transcend the obviousness of its symbolism.
I Walk the Line movie poster
The most empathetic characters in both films are women. In I Walk the Line, the loyal and bewildered wife (Estelle Parsons) struggles to maintain her marriage and her dignity. In The Gypsy Moths, Deborah Kerr’s repressed college-town housewife displays unexpected sexual boldness but ultimately confesses that “the thought terrified me” when offered an escape from her monotonous marriage. Sheree North’s uninhibited topless dancer has a casual one-night stand with Gene Hackman’s boorish character and then casually reveals (to the audience) that she has no regrets, even though her true desire was for Lancaster’s Rettig.
The male protagonists of these films initially appear as archetypal figures of admiration: an adventurous, iconoclastic daredevil in The Gypsy Moths and a soft-spoken lawman in I Walk the Line. However, John Frankenheimer subtly undermines these outward images. Burt Lancaster’s Mike Rettig is revealed to be a terminal thrill-seeker, a man intentionally detached from human connection, finding life only in defying death. While this character archetype could easily become a cliché, Lancaster’s and Frankenheimer’s restrained approach keeps his emotions enigmatic and internalized. Similar to other characters in the film, the audience only glimpses fleeting insights into the man’s inner world. Here, more so than in Seconds, Frankenheimer connects with Antonioni’s pervasive sense of ennui.
While The Gypsy Moths examines the courage or cowardice individuals display at pivotal moments of decision, the more somber I Walk the Line suggests that obsession overrides choice entirely. It is a stark portrayal of a midlife crisis, rendered poignant by its complete lack of condescension. Frankenheimer had previously satirized the cliché of middle-aged discontent in Seconds (consider Tony Wilson’s meticulous construction of a Malibu artist’s persona, stubbornly staring at a blank canvas as if willing creativity into existence). However, in I Walk the Line, he shows no contempt for Henry Tawes, regardless of how ludicrous his infatuation with his young love interest becomes.
John Frankenheimer’s nuanced portrayal of the both pathetic and poignant Henry Tawes succeeds because the director subtly subverts his star’s established persona, a technique akin to Ford’s in The Searchers or Hitchcock’s in Vertigo. Just as those films hinge on the tension between the destructive, neurotic behaviors of characters played by John Wayne or James Stewart and the audience’s ingrained desire to identify with their typically likeable screen images, I Walk the Line dismantles Gregory Peck’s To Kill a Mockingbird-era image. The man initially perceived as another wise, taciturn Southern authority figure is gradually exposed as a repressed, ineffectual, and somewhat ridiculous figure. His inarticulateness masks not depth but rather a lack of intelligence and character. Peck’s inherent dignity, paradoxically, allows the audience to be both shocked by Henry’s degradation and yet find a degree of redemption for the character, even in his most abject moments. Less precisely, Seconds had questioned assumptions about Rock Hudson’s physical attractiveness, and The Gypsy Moths’ reunion of a middle-aged Burt Lancaster and Deborah Kerr, tentatively embracing in the dark on a living room sofa, can be interpreted as a bittersweet counterpoint to their iconic beach scene in From Here to Eternity.
VI. Later Career and Legacy
Many accounts attribute John Frankenheimer’s subsequent career decline to personal tragedies: the assassination of Robert Kennedy, a friend who was staying at Frankenheimer’s Malibu home at the time; a period of severe alcoholism spanning from Black Sunday to The Challenge (1982); and a willingness to accept less demanding projects to live and work in Europe. However, The Gypsy Moths and I Walk the Line together form a coherent personal artistic statement, and the collective critical and popular indifference towards both films likely left Frankenheimer questioning his path to achieving further recognition in his field. Had either film garnered appropriate acclaim, Frankenheimer might have dedicated the following decade to creating mature, sensitive films akin to the styles of Robert Altman or Sam Peckinpah. With this possibility seemingly foreclosed, Frankenheimer’s subsequent output became creatively inconsistent and often purely commercial.
After the largely unreleased Impossible Object (1973), all of John Frankenheimer’s theatrical releases can be categorized as action films. While individual sequences often demonstrated technical brilliance, none of his later works achieved the crisp, unpretentious efficiency of genre films by directors like Don Siegel or Andre de Toth. Disenchanted with the “action director” label he had always resisted, Frankenheimer’s later films often felt embittered. His work in the late 1970s and 1980s is less impersonal than it is vulgar and amoral, as if the visuals were designed to accompany the cold synthesizer scores of Ennio Morricone and Gary Chang, rather than the other way around. The lasting impressions from these films are often brutish and sordid: the pistol-in-mouth interrogation in Black Sunday, the offensive gay and racial stereotypes in 52 Pick-Up (1986), and the uninspired love scenes in Year of the Gun (1991). Infamously, in Dead Bang (1989), the hungover detective protagonist (Don Johnson) vomits on a thug he has just apprehended. One might speculate that Frankenheimer was attempting to push the boundaries of pulp sensationalism in some of these films, but the viewer often feels like the target of his cynicism.
Hopes for a career resurgence arose in the 1990s when Frankenheimer found renewed purpose directing made-for-cable movies. The scripts and casts were generally superior to what he had been offered in years, and the subject matter—often recent historical events, including biopics of George Wallace and Lyndon Johnson—recalled the political themes of Frankenheimer’s most celebrated period. Ronin (1998) was perceived by some as a return to form. David Mamet’s deliberately ambiguous screenplay added little to Frankenheimer’s earlier explorations of masculine posturing, but the director did stage an extended, thrilling car chase sequence that perhaps served as cinema’s farewell to pre-digital action choreography. If action was to be his epitaph, John Frankenheimer demonstrably retained his mastery of it until the end.
Comparing John Frankenheimer to Jean-Luc Godard might seem incongruous, yet consider this: both directors were born in the same year, and they shared an admiration for many of the same classic Hollywood directors. Each became the most formally innovative and politically engaged filmmaker in his respective country during the early 1960s. Both directors experienced a decline in critical favor around the same time, as Frankenheimer moved toward mainstream cinema and Godard shifted towards increasingly obscure and experimental work.
Is there a vast imaginative gulf between the revolutionary French New Wave and the more traditional, though evolving, Hollywood mode in which Frankenheimer began his career? Undoubtedly, and this disparity may explain why contemporary critics often undervalued John Frankenheimer’s achievements. Pauline Kael and Andrew Sarris, writing during Frankenheimer’s peak period, both dismissed him as an overreaching, minor talent. Sarris criticized his “synthetic technique,” while Kael lamented his tendency towards “sanctimoniousness.” Manny Farber famously deemed The Gypsy Moths “singularly square.”
However, a critical reappraisal is warranted. Frankenheimer’s reverence for the work of Wyler and Welles connects him to the classicism of the late studio era. Yet, in retrospect, The Gypsy Moths and I Walk the Line anticipate the style and thematic concerns of the American New Wave. In his 1960s films, one can trace a lineage from the terse professionalism of Anthony Mann and Budd Boetticher in the 1950s to the messy, visceral violence of Francis Ford Coppola and William Friedkin in the 1970s. He also bridges the gap between the contained emotionalism of Elia Kazan and Nicholas Ray and the raw humanism of Altman and John Cassavetes. John Frankenheimer’s rightful place in cinema history is as a pivotal transitional figure between these two significant eras.
Endnotes
Filmography
Theatrical Features
The Young Stranger (1957)
The Young Savages (1961)
Birdman of Alcatraz (1962)
All Fall Down (1962)
The Manchurian Candidate (1962)
Seven Days in May (1964)
The Train (1965)
Seconds (1966)
Grand Prix (1966)
The Extraordinary Seaman (1967; released 1969)
The Fixer (1968)
The Gypsy Moths (1969)
I Walk the Line (1970)
The Horsemen (1971)
The Iceman Cometh (1973)
Impossible Object aka Story of a Love Affair (1973)
99 and 44/100% Dead (1974)
The French Connection II (1975)
Black Sunday (1977)
Prophecy (1979)
The Challenge (1982)
The Holcroft Covenant (1985)
52 Pick-Up (1986)
Dead Bang (1989)
The Fourth War (1990)
Year of the Gun (1991)
The Island of Dr. Moreau (1996)
Ronin (1998)
Reindeer Games (2000)
Select Bibliography
Charles Champlin (ed.), John Frankenheimer: A Conversation with Charles Champlin, Riverwood, Burbank, 1995.
Gerald Pratley, The Films of Frankenheimer, Cygnus Art/Lehigh University Press, Bethlehem, PA, 1998.
Articles in Senses of Cinema
A Key Unturned: Seconds by Peter Wilshire
Web Resources
Archive of American Television Interview with John Frankenheimer Parts 1-13 Frankenheimer’s six-hour oral history can be viewed for free, in thirty-minute segments.
John Frankenheimer Survives Hollywood Interview by Tim Rhys and Ian Bage in Issue 18 (April 1996) of Moviemaker.
John Frankenheimer The Museum of Broadcast Communications’ Encyclopedia of Television overview of Frankenheimer’s television work.
John Frankenheimer Memorial Gallery The Directors Guild of America’s Frankenheimer Memorial Photo Gallery.
Film Directors – Articles on the Internet Several online articles can be found here
Click here to buy John Frankenheimer DVDs and videos at Facets
Click here to search for John Frankenheimer DVDs, videos and books at
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