Dir: Robert Aldrich | US Psychological Drama 107’
Robert Aldrich takes what initially appears to be a conventional melodrama and steers it into considerably darker psychological territory, with Joan Crawford playing a middle-aged woman whose lonely existence is suddenly disrupted by the arrival of a handsome young man, played by Cliff Robertson, with a decidedly murky past.
This is no straightforward spring-autumn romance, but a combustible encounter between two damaged souls, with desire, desperation and emotional dependency simmering beneath the surface. Aldrich wheels out very trope in the toxic romantic playbook in this perceptive outing that would lead on to Crawford playing another troubled female in What Happened to Baby Jane?
Aldrich, who wrote the part specifically for Crawford, understood that beneath her formidable screen persona lay an actress capable of exposing something far more fragile. Their collaboration, however, nearly foundered before the cameras had properly warmed up. Crawford, accustomed to exercising considerable control over her performances, attempted to bring in her own writer, threatening to derail the director’s carefully conceived vision. It was a clash of egos that might easily have poisoned the production. Instead, an unexpectedly emotional moment helped bring the two together. When Crawford delivered a particularly tender and vulnerable interpretation of the character, Aldrich was moved to tears. Seeing the director so genuinely affected by her performance helped dissolve the antagonism between them, forging a friendship out of what had threatened to become a professional stand-off.
That reconciliation gives the film an added resonance. Crawford brings every ounce of her hard-won star power to the role, but there is something striking about the moments when the familiar steeliness gives way to loneliness and need. She understands the indignity of wanting to be loved, the fear of being discarded and the lengths to which an isolated woman might go to hold on to the possibility of happiness. Robertson, meanwhile, provides an intriguing counterweight, his youthful attractiveness concealing the menace and uncertainty that gradually turn the romance into something more unsettling.
Aldrich was never a director to leave melodrama comfortably contained within its genre. Here, emotional excess becomes a form of suspense, and the prospect of romantic fulfilment is shadowed by the suspicion that neither character can quite escape the past. The film’s real fascination lies in that uneasy balance between tenderness and threat. Crawford and Robertson give it their all, but it is Crawford’s willingness to expose the vulnerability beneath her formidable image that provides its beating heart. What begins as an unlikely love affair becomes a more disturbing study of loneliness, obsession and the dangerous price of wanting to be needed.
ROBERT ALDRICH RETROSPECTIVE | VIENNALE 2026