Twilight's Last Gleaming

Aldrich was hailed as the “first filmmaker of the atomic age” for KISS ME DEADLY (1955); with this epic thriller, he had his final say on the subject. Burt Lancaster plays a general who occupies a nuclear missile silo together with other prison escapees and demands a ransom as well as the US President (Charles Durning) as a hostage. Above all, however, his aim is to publish secret documents that would bring the truth about the political decisions leading to the Vietnam War to light. The military plans to storm the silo while the cabinet debates the situation. Using bold split-screen experiments, Aldrich combined high-tension scenes centred on the nuclear missiles with a furious political indictment; yet in the era of STAR WARS (1977), the film was ignored by audiences and was only shown in many places (including German-speaking countries) in a heavily abridged version. It was only after Aldrich’s death that it was rediscovered as one of his masterpieces. Aldrich had already briefly used split screen in EMPEROR OF THE NORTH (1973) and THE LONGEST YARD (1974), but in TWILIGHT’S LAST GLEAMING he took the technique to a whole new level, leading it to be acclaimed as a breakthrough by filmmakers such as Martin Scorsese. (Christoph Huber)

Courtesy of the Cinémathèque de la ville de Luxembourg. 

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