LYCOS RETRIEVER 
John Frankenheimer: Director John Frankenheimer
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When Seconds was released in 1966, 36-year-old John Frankenheimer was a member of the new breed of directors trained in the medium of television (Sidney Lumet being another notable example). Through his work in television drama, he had developed a complex and visually innovative style for the big screen, beginning with The Young Stranger (1959) and then progressing with an impressive array of features including: The Young Savages (1961), All Fall Down (1962), The Birdman of Alcatraz (1962), Seven Days in May (1964), and The Train (1965). Also, of particular importance in relation to Seconds was The Manchurian Candidate (1962), a political thriller which focused on the mind of a brainwashed man. This film combined a plot that centred on paranoia, with the creative use of baroque black-and-white photography and elaborate production design (LoBrotto, 99) that was to provide Frankenheimer with a visual and narrative framework for his later work on Seconds.
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With his work in television and film spanning more than 40 years, John Frankenheimer is one of the few working directors whose career dates back to the Golden Age of Hollywood. And with three of his movies — Ronin, The Holcroft Covenant, and The Train — all recently released in special editions to DVD, this is a great time to look at the career and work of this fine craftsman.
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Director John Frankenheimer, by a special process that reduces primary colours and exagerates the black, had all colours muted. In addition, no actor wears bright clothes. All that enhances the movie's film noir feeling. Despite all good intentions, Ronin has some too calculated cheap elements in it. As stated in the beginning, the film is above all worth watching for the impressive acting by Stellan Skarsgard.
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At first, listening to a two-hour DVD commentary track by director John Frankenheimer on his 1965 film sounds like a dreadful time. His sparse commentary is the antithesis of the thrilling film, the last major black-and-white action picture. However, Frankenheimer warms up, filling us in on the problems in shooting the film, including bad luck (star Burt Lancaster injured his knee--playing golf), good luck (an old train yard was going to be mothballed--why not just blow it up for the film?), and his five-film relationship with the star ("Nobody moves like Lancaster," he insists). Also included are the long trailer and a music-only track highlighting Maurice Jarre's score. The result is a rewarding disc with a beautiful transfer of one of Hollywood's best and grittiest thrillers. --Doug Thomas
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The American film director John Frankenheimer died in Los Angeles of a stroke July 6 after complications from surgery. He was 72. Frankenheimer is best known for works he directed in the 1960s, The Manchurian Candidate, Seven Days in May and The Birdman of Alcatraz in particular. After suffering a decline in the 1970s and 1980s, Frankenheimer returned to some prominence, primarily as a director of historical films for television ( Andersonville, George Wallace), in the mid-1990s. His most recent effort was Path to War, which examined the process by which the US, under Lyndon B. Johnson, became embroiled in a full-scale intervention in Vietnam.
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John Frankenheimer is sometimes likened to a "wunderkind in the tradition of Orson Welles" because he directed numerous quality television dramas while still in his twenties. He is ... one of a handful of directors who established their reputation in high-quality, high-budget television dramas and later moved on to motion pictures.
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Director John Frankenheimer