TSPDT

Key Production Country: USA
Key Genres: Drama, Comedy, Psychological Drama, Romance, Western, Feminist Film
Key Collaborators: Eleanor Perry (Screenwriter), Sidney Katz (Editor), Gerald Hirschfeld (Cinematographer), Peter Dohanos (Production Designer), Faye Dunaway (Leading Actress), Howard da Silva (Leading Actor), Leonard Hirschfield (Cinematographer), Clifton James (Leading Character Actor)

"Having studied directing with Lee Strasberg, he made an auspicious debut as a film director in 1962 with David and Lisa, a sensitively observed, independently made study of two mentally disturbed teenagers, for which he was nominated for an Oscar. Perry's subsequent films have varied in quality but despite flaws were all marked by his sincerity and serious exploration of human relationships. Working mainly out of New York, Perry is among a few American directors who have shunned the glamour of Hollywood and its commercial rewards in the name of personal and professional integrity. His late wife, Eleanor Perry (1916-81), wrote the scripts for his films until their professional and legal separation in 1970." - The Film Encyclopedia, 2012

"Nowhere near as exalted as he should be (perhaps because the quality of his earlier work practically dwarfs that of his later films), Frank Perry was a great filmmaker when truly on his game (and working from the fine scripts of Eleanor Perry), and a gifted documenter of the fragility and madness of the human condition." - Erin Free (Filmink, 2021)

"His wife Eleanor Perry wrote the screenplays for all his films up to 1970 before their divorce. David and Lisa (1962) and Last Summer (1969), both about teenagers under stress, are potentially sensitive character studies squeezed into Freudian or allegorical formulae… The movies Perry made without his wife are self-consciously clever and fail on all counts." - Ronald Bergan (A-Z of Movie Directors, 1983)

"For about a decade, Frank and Eleanor Perry made some of the most powerful American films of their era, but only recently has much serious attention been paid to their work. The Quad Cinema’s retrospective of some of their key titles, including several movies Frank directed on his own after the couple’s divorce in the early 1970s, should go some way toward restoring their reputation. It’s about damn time." - Bilge Ebiri (The Village Voice, 2017)

"Pretension is the crippling element in his work. When he shakes off theme in favour of plot, character, and smooth pace, he emerges with the excellent David and Lisa (62) and The Last Summer (69)." - William R. Meyer (The Film Buff's Catalog, 1978)

"Frank Perry has battered away with strenuous seriousness and left a trail of broken, confused, but intriguing films. His background is theatre, where he worked as a director. His first wife, Eleanor, was scriptwriter on most of his films. His approach is to probe a human relationship until realism gives way to Freudian melodrama. This results in good character studies, humor, and a way with actors that degenerates into symbolism, allegory, and actors subdued by the portentousness of what they are doing." - David Thomson (The New Biographical Dictionary of Film, 2010)

"After a couple of unremarkable projects, the Perrys finally found their footing in the late ’60s with a tart trilogy of pictures about the Northeastern gentry that remains the most incisive and caustic take on the privileged, over-indulged classes this side of Buñuel’s The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie. Like David and Lisa, The Swimmer (1968), Last Summer (1969), and Diary of a Mad Housewife (1970) are each in their own way about madness: the kind that results from rigid social conventions, catered whims, and keeping up with the Joneses – or rather, the Rockefellers." - Bruce LaBruce (Talkhouse, 2017)