Oregon Movies, A to Z

From R. J.Thompson’s assessment Robert Aldrich: an independent career

In the late 1960s, I saw what I remember as a 70mm print of The Dirty Dozen (USA 1967) in a big Chicago first-run house, but what was most important was hearing it. For the first time, I could hear different levels and layers of the soundtrack or what we now call sound design. Of course, I knew about sound mixing and music/dialogue/effects as separate tracks, but this was my discovery experience of the manipulation of levels, volumes, registers, and apparent spatial relationships. None of this seems to survive in current videotapes, 16mm prints, or television screenings. And of course, being Aldrich, and worse, being Aldrich making a naughty boys film, the first thing that called attention to the sophisitication of Claude Hitchcock and Franklin Milton’s sound work was an ensemble dialogue scene in which, behind the principle dialogue, one could just hear, if one tried hard, John Cassavetes’ Franko character muttering obscenities.

Robert Aldrich came to Oregon to make Emperor of the North Pole in 1973.