Before he became a director, Donald Siegel was a montage specialist at Warner's, and before he became an auteur, he was already one of those directors consistently applauded for his editing, with words like “economic,” “taut,” and “classic,” in reviews that otherwise casually dismissed his films, all made on a low budget, and with little reward. (“I would like to point out...that films like Riot In Cell Block 11 and Baby Face Nelson never got me a job. I never even got a favorable comment on them at the time they were made.”)
Later, phrases such as “a strong sense of form, characterized by a disciplined economic style,” would be used about Siegel, when his films began to be taken seriously, first by the French magazine Cahiers du cinema, and then in London by a National Film Theatre retrospective. It was then that a thematic approach began to be taken toward the director whom Americans knew - and probably still do know - best for his original Invasion Of The Body Snatchers. Siegel's statements about that film lend some insight into his others, which feature characters who “choose” a life of violence when they reject society and are therefore rejected in turn - later police films such as Madigan or The Line Up, as well as the earlier, more sociological films like Riot In Cell Block 11 or Crime In The Streets:
“I feel...that most of the populace are pods.... They have no cultural aspirations. They have no dreams. They don't really have love. They feel nothing.... I feel that the pods are here to stay. And gradually they are taking over the world.... how dreadful it is that we just sit back, apathetically, and let it happen....”
But Siegel never did sit back. Of his cult following, he states, “I'm naturally very pleased...(but) I like the idea that I am a commercial director. I don't want to make pictures that nobody sees.” (in Films and Filming, November 1973)
