In 1969, a critic and biographer of director John Frankenheimer, who died on July 6th aged 72, wrote: "In the comparatively brief span of 10 years, \ has become probably the most important director at work in the American cinema today." This comment was based on a formidable body of television drama and films, including All Fall Down (1962), Birdman Of Alcatraz (1962), and the political thrillers The Manchurian Candidate (1962) and Seven Days In May (1964).
Yet John Frankenheimer's reputation soon tumbled, and, although his prolific career included successes like French Connection II (1975) and the commercial hit Black Sunday (1977), these were outnumbered by such flops as Story Of A Love Story (1973), poor horror films such as Prophecy (1979) and thrillers, including the violent 52 Pick-Up (1986) and the risible The Island Of Dr Moreau (1996), which he took over and failed to salvage.
Between mega-success, which had him compared with Orson Welles, and eventual rehabilitation, John Frankenheimer lived on the Île St Louis in Paris. He endured years of critical neglect and battled with alcoholism before returning to the US.
John Frankenheimer's mother was Irish, and his stockbroker father German Jewish. Born on February 19th, 1930, and brought up a New York Catholic, he was educated at a military academy and at Williams College, Massachusetts. Formidably intelligent, darkly handsome, he had a fitness and determination that allowed him to contemplate a tennis career.
Following graduation, however, and having flirted with acting, he abandoned both tennis and his religion, and joined the US air force in the early 1950s. Put in charge of a film unit, he immersed himself in amateur films, training documentaries and local television work.
After discharge and a divorce from his wife Joanne after 18 months, he landed a job in New York as an assistant director with CBS, becoming one of the noted group of film-makers who learned their craft in the heyday of US television on documentaries, entertainment programmes and live drama. When Sidney Lumet left the series You Are Here, he took over. It initiated a brilliant period of more than 100 productions, notably Playhouse 90 dramas such as Days Of Wine And Roses (1958), The Turn Of The Screw (1959) with Ingrid Bergman, and The Browning Version (1959) with John Gielgud.
In 1957, John Frankenheimer directed The Young Stranger, starring James McArthur as a youngster alienated from his parents. The experience was unhappy and it was years before his next film, The Young Savages (1961). This starred Burt Lancaster, who collaborated on four subsequent, crucially important, John Frankenheimer films within eight years.
It launched a film career that allowed the director, a liberal, who wrote and directed all of Robert F. Kennedy's television appearances, to buck the system, and make several landmark social and political works. But later in the same decade, it was that Kennedy assassination - John Frankenheimer had driven Kennedy to the Los Angeles hotel where he was shot - which began his deep depression.
After The Young Savages, a topical story dealing with urban deprivation, race and juvenile crime, he and Lancaster worked on the mammoth Birdman Of Alcatraz. Lancaster's performance, and the documentary style, produced an intense story of injustice and endurance.
It was delayed when the first section had to be shortened and reshot, and, in the interim, John Frankenheimer made the hothouse All Fall Down, with Warren Beatty as an archetypal, John Frankenheimer anti-hero drifter.
Now confident enough to dictate his own terms, John Frankenheimer's ebullient ego and chutzpah proved invaluable in dealing with volatile stars, including Laurence Harvey and Frank Sinatra. He and George Axelrod concocted The Manchurian Candidate's clever screenplay - sparky satire blended on to a tense thriller. Box office receipts, however, were modest, and Axelrod later remarked that the film went from "failure to cult classic without even being a success".
Seven Days In May starred Kirk Douglas as a liberal army officer discovering a planned coup against the president (Fredric March), being organised by a right-wing general, played by Burt Lancaster. Here, the visual style was more complex than its predecessor, and the tone, in the era after America's red witch-hunt days, was even more critical of the right.
These were difficult films to follow, but fate - in the shape of Lancaster's star power - intervened when Arthur Penn was fired as director of The Train (1964), and John Frankenheimer took over a long, but exciting, adventure film dominated by Lancaster's athleticism and Paul Scofield's steely performance as his German adversary.
After the shoot in France, John Frankenheimer toured Europe, and the year off heightened his disenchantment with the US. He went back there to direct Seconds (1966), before returning to France to make his commercially successful, biggest budget and first colour picture, Grand Prix (1966). But Seconds was so badly received at the Cannes Film Festival that he boycotted the press conference.
European influences were evident in The Fixer, a sombre film about a Russian Jew (Alan Bates) imprisoned for a child murder he did not commit, and refusing to give in to the Czarist regime. The film was patchily received. John Frankenheimer, who thought it his best work, was further disappointed by the response to his whimsical comedy The Extraordinary Seaman (1970).
His final film with Burt Lancaster, The Gypsy Moths (1969), was a study of disillusionment. Like All Fall Down, its small-town setting was echoed by I Walk The Line (1970), in which sheriff Gregory Peck harboured an impossible love for a local girl.
John Frankenheimer responded to those inferior films with an adventure, the little seen The Horseman (1971). Then came The Iceman Cometh (1973). Despite Fredric March, Robert Ryan and others, it remains a filmed record of a classic play. It was, however, a prestige success, unlike the ludicrously titled 99 And 44/100 Per Cent Dead (1974).
John Frankenheimer's skill with actors earned him a request from Gene Hackman to direct French Connection II, a more thoughtful, character-led thriller than its predecessor. This, and the violent Black Sunday, however, did not revive his career.
His subsequent wilderness years yielded little of note. There was the horror film, The Holcroft Covenant (1985), a reworking of The Rainmaker (1982), the pseudonymously directed Riviera (1987), the brash but little seen Dead Bang (1989), an episode in Home Box Office's Tales From The Crypt (1989), a poorly scripted The Fourth War (1990) and the opaque Year Of The Gun (1991) - and years of inactivity.
The first of his four Emmy-winning television dramas, Against The Wall (1994), based on the 1971 Attica Prison uprising, brought John Frankenheimer to the fore again; After George Wallace (1997), another Emmy-award winning documentary-style drama, he made the film Ronin (1998), with Robert De Niro. Although not a smash hit, it showed John Frankenheimer's flair for gritty, location-dominated work and for handling actors. Reindeer Games (2000) was a routine thriller, with Ben Affleck.
But these were journeyman films, lacking the resonance and excitement that had once made John Frankenheimer pictures essential viewing. His last drama, was Path To War, about the escalation of the Vietnam conflict, featuring Michael Gambon as Lyndon Johnson.
He is survived by his wife, the actress Evan Evans and two daughters.
John Frankenheimer: born 1930; died, July 2002