The 1960s List: Discussion and Suggestions

An ongoing project to survey the best films of individual decades, genres, and filmmakers.
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domino harvey
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Re: The 1960s List: Discussion and Suggestions

#151 Post by domino harvey » Mon Jan 17, 2022 9:47 pm

Yes, Dutchman is a great film (and by watching it you'll now get one of Godard's quotations of the play in Masculin feminin). I of course would never point out that it's available on YouTube

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Re: The 1960s List: Discussion and Suggestions

#152 Post by swo17 » Mon Jan 17, 2022 9:57 pm

Put your money where your mouth is TWBB and buy RV a copy off eBay or you aren't really a fan

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Re: The 1960s List: Discussion and Suggestions

#153 Post by therewillbeblus » Mon Jan 17, 2022 10:05 pm

I only buy 4K UHD now sorry

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domino harvey
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Re: The 1960s List: Discussion and Suggestions

#154 Post by domino harvey » Mon Jan 17, 2022 10:12 pm

Ultra Hot Dutchman will win the format war

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Re: The 1960s List: Discussion and Suggestions

#155 Post by Rayon Vert » Mon Jan 17, 2022 10:29 pm

Looking forward to the 8K twbb just sent me.

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Re: The 1960s List: Discussion and Suggestions

#156 Post by Rayon Vert » Wed Jan 19, 2022 10:31 pm

therewillbeblus wrote:
Mon Jan 17, 2022 8:46 pm
If you're able to find it, Dutchman is my favorite subway thriller from the decade, though it's far less conventionally-assaultive than The Incident's clear hoodlums-taunting-passengers albeit with a similar cumulative effect. There's something so terrifying about the threat of unpredictable social violations, i.e. that anybody can enter our bubbles and relentlessly pummel us on physical and psychological levels until we break, and Dutchman's sexual component, that triggered me in ways I was unwilling let alone prepared to face, adds an extra layer of horror (this even made my horror list, though we can already agree to disagree on that genre-signifier in advance!) Anyways, PM me if you can't locate it anywhere, it's under an hour long and a lock for the upper-half of my list
Dutchman. The Incident felt ahead of its time in terms of the violence, this is more so on several levels! I can definitely see the horror tag, especially with the ending. This was certainly memorable. Shirley Knight’s performance is awe-inspiring, and the film really succeeds in making you empathize with Clay’s bewildered, equal disturbance and attraction to Lula’s explosive, at once seductive and repelling intrusiveness. It’s quite effective in its eroticism, despite the ambivalent feelings that are generated. If I had any minor qualms with the film (which means also the underlying play I gather), it’s how Clay’s eventual outburst is so rooted in the social/political as opposed to a purely personal reaction – which isn’t completely out of left field given what their dialogued touched on, but still feels a little less-than-realistic as scripted and a bit imposed rather than organically evolving from the narrative at that point. But you certainly don’t see coming what happens next.

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Re: The 1960s List: Discussion and Suggestions

#157 Post by Rayon Vert » Wed Jan 19, 2022 10:43 pm

domino harvey wrote:
Mon Jan 17, 2022 9:47 pm
(and by watching it you'll now get one of Godard's quotations of the play in Masculin feminin).
I somehow missed that.

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Re: The 1960s List: Discussion and Suggestions

#158 Post by domino harvey » Wed Jan 19, 2022 10:52 pm

Freeman Jr’s Charlie Parker line is repeated by one of the black passengers on the metro in Godard’s film

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Re: The 1960s List: Discussion and Suggestions

#159 Post by Rayon Vert » Wed Jan 19, 2022 10:58 pm

Thanks! I'll be revisiting the MF upgrade soon, so I'll be watching for that.

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Re: The 1960s List: Discussion and Suggestions

#160 Post by therewillbeblus » Thu Jan 20, 2022 10:39 am

Rayon Vert wrote:
Wed Jan 19, 2022 10:31 pm
I can definitely see the horror tag
Image

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Re: The 1960s List: Discussion and Suggestions

#161 Post by Red Screamer » Thu Jan 20, 2022 4:45 pm

Law & Order: An Examination of Police Practices and Behavior (Frederick Wiseman, 1969) This is a potent lesser Wiseman, close to Titicut Follies in subject and style. Neither film has a strong structure so they play more as a fragmented collection of scenes than a cohesive portrait of an institution like High School, and both films share an interesting interplay of perspectives: the police’s perspective colors this film, as the doctors’ does Follies, but the constancy of attention given to the experiences of the citizens/patients has an immediacy and intensity that almost overpowers that outsider point of view. On the other hand, Wiseman’s contextless approach has an increased potential to be misleading in Law & Order, not least because the cameras enter and leave a situation the same time the police do. While in High School Wiseman’s neutral long-take style makes mundane things feel alien and new, here even the more extreme scenes seem familiar, in part because that style, along with the concept of following police around as they respond to calls, now feels closer to bodycam footage/TV news/an episode of Cops than anyone could have predicted at the time.

I can’t say the film tells us much about law enforcement that we don’t already know, but seeing all of it in vivid detail has its own value: the car-to-car conversations of policemen talking about job benefits and all the things they wished they’d been able to do during arrests; officers who, after roughing up and humiliating a young Black man, admit that he’s probably a minor with the timing of a Billy Wilder punchline; the passivity and casual cruelty of bystanders toward their own neighbors; when one officer viciously chokes a young Black woman as he arrests her, and soon after another officer tells her it didn’t happen. Wiseman tends to alternate horrifying scenes with quotidian ones, which is effective, though I find some of his other editing choices mystifying. For instance, why does the film start with two different depositions about men sexually abusing children? Other than recalling the similar scene at the beginning of Titicut Follies it seemed out of place, apart from the film’s running themes and mostly public settings.

Paris — When it Sizzles (Richard Quine, 1964) This Quine-Axelrod metacomedy annoyed me at first. It felt like it was going for something light and missed the mark, weighed down by Hepburn sedately making faces and a garish visual style with 60s Hollywood overlighting, awkward zooms and sped up shots, and those awful flip transitions. Where did the elegance of Pushover go? I wondered. The verbal and visual wit of its screenwriting-directing team almost gets lost in the mix. But as the script builds on itself, the To Catch a Thief-esque parody gets goofier, and Quine quietly cycles through the visual tropes of different genres, the movie finds its tone in a droll sarcasm that’s half bored even by itself. Or maybe it just took me too long to get the joke, but either way its second half consistently cracked me up. By the one-two punch of its feel bad ending—in which Holden’s alcoholic self-loathing cuts through the sarcasm—and the following feel good one—in which the sarcasm is taken to a sneering new extreme—I wanted to see it again. Quine also gets one over on his buddy Blake Edwards by actually succeeding in making Tony Curtis funny. Has anyone seen La fête à Henriette, the Duvivier film this is based on?

Trans-Europ-Express (Alain Robbe-Grillet, 1966) This Robbe-Grillet metacomedy excited me at first. It’s on the amateurish end of the nouvelle vague despite the talents of Willy Kurant behind the camera, but if anything the roughness is a plus, making Robbe-Grillet’s compulsive repetitions feel spontaneous and pleasurably disorienting. In contrast with Paris — When it Sizzles, the arguments the screenplay writers have here aren’t about tone, genre, characters’ intentions, or gender politics, but instead almost entirely revolve around questions of believability and plot holes. Which might be a joke in itself for a writer as non-realist as Robbe-Grillet. Neither does the frame narrative develop over the course of the film. It’s almost as if Robbe-Grillet wanted to actively avoid a philosophical or social bent to his depiction of the writing process. I can’t figure out why he chose such a formulaic story for these meta games though, unless he was shooting for maximum emptiness. I kind of had to admire the film’s unblinking indulgence in its BDSM/exploitation elements even though their depiction is rather banal. On second thought, that banality might actually be the most novel thing about the film. I enjoyed it, but ultimately it’s just as much fluff as the Quine film above, and not as funny.

Thérèse Desqueyroux (Georges Franju, 1962) I don’t have much to say other than, as promised, this is a would-be classic, an alienation melodrama whose icy intensity crystallizes in the movements of its active, probing camera. It reminded me strongly of Preminger—a narrative driven by the protagonist’s self-investigation in flashbacks, trying to understand her own contradictions—but with a quiet lyricism and horror all its own. I like Tom Milne’s contemporary Sight and Sound review.

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domino harvey
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Re: The 1960s List: Discussion and Suggestions

#162 Post by domino harvey » Thu Jan 20, 2022 5:41 pm

Though it is obviously nowhere near the level of Franju’s film, which will be making my list, I quite liked the remake with Audrey Tautou, which incorporates enough new details from the source material that it feels like it is it’s own thing apart from the original. Claude Miller’s film is something closer to a noir or Alfred Hitchcock Presents episode than a meditation on isolation and depression, but it works

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Re: The 1960s List: Discussion and Suggestions

#163 Post by knives » Thu Jan 20, 2022 8:42 pm

I’m quite sorry for shirking my list duties, but I hope this little write up on Corman’s The Intruder makes up a little bit for it and maybe even encourages a few viewings.

Corman takes his familiarity with monster movies and transcribes it to the most human of monsters for a film that even sixty years later took me off guard and left me scared. It really shows that when push comes to shove Corman could have made a serious horror film and simply chose to occupy camp.

There’s many fascinating things the film does to ensure we take Shatner’s point of view in the same way you do some kaiju. We’re fascinated by him because we always know the potential of his destruction and wonder how he will be defeated. There’s even this big subplot to setup how the film will break him which also serves to ensure that no one in the audience will nod along and think the film serves as an endorsement.

The almost alien humanity of Shatner is emphasized directly and indirectly. The original title pushes him away. He’s not someone who should be involved. He’s an intruder. This framing makes him unpredictable in his danger, but what makes him a great villain is that he didn’t even need to show up. This town was prepared to lynch somebody in any case.

How the town is portrayed is what disturbed me the most because of how real the motives felt especially from the default heroes whose motivation is unpleasant. Every white in town agrees that integration is wrong. Our eventual hero is a newspaper man the film makes clear has been rallying against integration for years. What they can’t agree on is if the law saying they need to integrate actually settles this business. Shatner’s repeated, “whose law,” is a potent question for the townsfolk who wonder if they are being dictated to. For most it seems they affirm the question. There’s this incredible scene where the newsman has just helped walk some African American students to school and his wife says she doesn’t understand him, but will try because she loves him.

Love, in a harsh light, seems to be the center of Corman’s message. The problem he’s addressing is one we’re still feeling as the film argues that the only way to have the millions of casual racists in the country accept changes in law and custom which benefit minorities is to have them trust the law. Trust can be born out of respect, love, or experience but it is a hard earned thing especially when the politics of Shatner’s small minded grievance allow one to lazily affirm pre-existing points of view. Change is hard and even though our nasty little kaiju is defeated what he was stirring is still on the fire.

It’s a bit sad that this failed commercially as it highlights all the right lessons Corman had learned in his first decade of filmmaking and it’s success could have re-enforced the potential to make serious or personal cinema without a gimmick. Of course as even my discomfort shows this message of integration being necessary, but probably only those with the worst motivations being able to make it a success was always guaranteed to fail. A monster that is mindlessly evil or represents a abstract fear is fine, but one that forces you to confront your feelings on all sides of the aisle when successful hurts.

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Re: The 1960s List: Discussion and Suggestions

#164 Post by Shrew » Fri Jan 21, 2022 1:27 pm

I've also been remiss in list duties (having a kid and having the other two coworkers who covered by job duties quit right before busy season is my excuse). I've been trying to clear my Second Run kevyip of Czechoslovakian new wave, which maybe I'll write up.

I also just realized that Eros + Massacre is a 69 film per IMDb, no 70. I have the Arrow Yoshida set, but how essential is the directors cut? Can I spare an hour of my life with the theatrical?


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Re: The 1960s List: Discussion and Suggestions

#165 Post by therewillbeblus » Fri Jan 21, 2022 1:50 pm

I’ve only watched the DC, twice, but I wouldn’t skimp on it if you’re already going to devote time to the monster. I can’t comment on the theatrical but the DC is a masterpiece

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Re: The 1960s List: Discussion and Suggestions

#166 Post by swo17 » Fri Jan 21, 2022 2:43 pm

Shrew wrote:
Fri Jan 21, 2022 1:27 pm
I also just realized that Eros + Massacre is a 69 film per IMDb, no 70. I have the Arrow Yoshida set, but how essential is the directors cut? Can I spare an hour of my life with the theatrical?
Perhaps it's worth reiterating this reminder from the first post:
ELIGIBILITY – REMINDERS / SPECIAL CASES

Larks on a String and Born in '45 are eligible as 1960s films, even though IMDb lists them as '90s films.

Skolimowski's 1967 version of Hands Up/Rece do góry is eligible as a 1960s film. IMDb presently only lists the 1981 version with the same title, but these are two different films.

The Plot Against Harry is eligible as a 1960s film, even though IMDb lists it as an '80s film (it was shelved for 20 years).

The Savage Eye was classified as a 1960s film when we did the 1950s list, so it is eligible now, regardless of what IMDb says.

The Human Condition, pt. 3 is not eligible, as the entirety of that multi-part film was eligible for our '50s project.

The following multi-part films count as one film for purposes of this project (this is just a reminder, not an exhaustive list): Dog Star Man, Scenes from Under Childhood, I Am Curious, Civilisation: A Personal View by Kenneth Clark

In some of these cases, you may feel strongly that you only want to vote for one part of the whole. You can do this, but again, just remember that all votes will be competing against each other (e.g. for all intents and purposes, I Am Curious: Yellow, I Am Curious: Blue, and both parts combined are three completely separate films).

The following films are not eligible as 1960s films for purposes of this list, regardless of what anyone else might say: Anticipation of the Night, Jazz on a Summer's Day, The Great War, The Law, The Wayward Girl, The Conformist, A Touch of Zen, The Wild Child, Days and Nights in the Forest, Le Vent d'est, Shadows, The Ear, La Rupture, Whity, Case for a Rookie Hangman, Du côté d'Orouët, Apotheosis, Bronco Bullfrog, Hi Mom!, Adelheid, Inauguration of the Pleasure Dome, Sonnensucher, Window Water Baby Moving, Together, The Nightingale's Prayer, A la Mode, The Overcoat

The following are eligible as 1960s films for purposes of this list, regardless of what anyone else might say: Une histoire d'eau, The Brain That Wouldn't Die, Cruel Story of Youth, Le Trou, The Savage Eye, Letter Never Sent, Eyes Without a Face, Breathless, The Virgin Spring, The Sorrow and the Pity, Kapò, The Testament of Orpheus, The End of Summer, Eros + Massacre, Walden, The Gladiators, Medea, Smoking, Diary of a Shinjuku Thief, The Night of Counting the Years, Kes, Burn!, My Night at Maud's, Le Signe du lion, Kustom Kar Kommandos
, The Honeymoon Killers

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Re: The 1960s List: Discussion and Suggestions

#167 Post by swo17 » Sun Jan 23, 2022 4:56 pm

Gulp, one more week until the deadline (it's next Sunday, not the end of the month)

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domino harvey
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Re: The 1960s List: Discussion and Suggestions

#168 Post by domino harvey » Sun Jan 23, 2022 5:13 pm

Weird way to celebrate my birthday but I’ll take it

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Re: The 1960s List: Discussion and Suggestions

#169 Post by Rayon Vert » Sun Jan 23, 2022 5:18 pm

The dawning of the age of Aquarius?

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Re: The 1960s List: Discussion and Suggestions

#170 Post by knives » Sun Jan 23, 2022 5:21 pm

Should probably submit tonight because I will be very busy on Sunday.

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Re: The 1960s List: Discussion and Suggestions

#171 Post by swo17 » Sun Jan 23, 2022 5:47 pm

Someone voted for the experimental short OffOn, which I'd never seen but was surprised to discover I actually own! It's on the first disc of the very first Treasures from American Film Archives set, which I primarily went through during one of the Early Cinema lists and must have skipped all the films that didn't qualify. Anyway, pretty cool, trippy stuff, somewhat in the vein of something like Pat O'Neill's 7362

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Re: The 1960s List: Discussion and Suggestions

#172 Post by dustybooks » Sun Jan 23, 2022 10:31 pm

That’s exactly how I first saw it, I really get a lot of joy out of those sets and am currently going through the third one for the first time (though it contains nothing eligible here of course…) Because of its use of video effects I actually misremembered OffOn as a much later film until I found it going through a list of ‘60s shorts before submitting.

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domino harvey
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Re: The 1960s List: Discussion and Suggestions

#173 Post by domino harvey » Sun Jan 23, 2022 11:57 pm

Just submitted my list

Breakdowns of multiple directors
7 Godard
4 Bergman
2 Antonioni, Bunuel, Cottafavi, Fellini, Resnais

Canada 1
Czechoslovakia 1
France 19
Italy 7
Japan 1
Mexico 1
Russia 1
Sweden 6
UK 1
USA 12

My top ten is 6 parts French, 2 American, 1 Italian, and 1 Swedish (not necessarily in that order)

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Re: The 1960s List: Discussion and Suggestions

#174 Post by knives » Mon Jan 24, 2022 12:27 am

I spread the love a little move. Only Oshima, Pasolini, Gutiérrez Alea, Losey, and Imamura are doing double duty on my list. Though one lead actor takes up three slots.

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Re: The 1960s List: Discussion and Suggestions

#175 Post by Rayon Vert » Mon Jan 24, 2022 12:50 am

My leaders are similar to domino's: Godard (4), Antonioni, Bergman & Fisher (!) 3 each. France at 13 narrowly edging out three other countries.

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