Twilight’s Last Gleaming

For "Kiss Me Deadly", Aldrich was hailed as the “first filmmaker of the atomic age”; with this epic thriller, he had his final say on the subject. Burt Lancaster plays a general who, along with other prison escapees, occupies a nuclear missile silo and demands a ransom as well as the U.S. president (Charles Durning) as a hostage. Above all, however, his goal is to release classified documents that would bring to light the truth about the background of the political decisions leading to the Vietnam War. The military plans to storm the silo while the Cabinet debates the situation. Using bold split-screen experiments, Aldrich combined high-tension scenes centered on the nuclear missiles with an angry political indictment, but in the age of "Star Wars", the film was ignored by audiences and, in many places (including German-speaking countries), was shown only in a heavily edited version. It was not until after Aldrich’s death that "Twilight’s Last Gleaming" was rediscovered as one of his masterpieces. (C.H.)