The 1960s List: Discussion and Suggestions

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

#26 Post by therewillbeblus » Sat May 29, 2021 6:36 pm

A few from Ford

7 Women: In a change of pace for Ford this decade, here is an economically-paced, fervently sober war pic, toned down into the confines of a brief runtime and intimate setting with the immediacy and thematic scope of an epic. This film begins as a twist on The Beguiled, with Bancroft's foreign doctor infiltrating the hiveminded and sheltered puritanical Christian community of women. The idea of a female from a different cultural context, rather than a male embodying universal threats, is a necessary variable to initiate the film’s ethos into being, by assuming that there are not fatalist divides between groups, but a hopeful possibility of learning and conditioning ourselves to shift beliefs and actions under the same broad connective spiritual values.

Bancroft may reject the superficial rituals and attitudes of this Christian community, and verbally express her doubts about God, but what Ford gradually encourages is a flexible reading of skepticism as natural and human, and not mutually exclusive from faith but rather a painful yet necessary part of it. The film’s anthropological friction provides a modernist reworking of Christian principles outside of the rigid exteriors to demonstrate dynamic shifts in how one can express God’s will. Bancroft and Leighton’s opposing influences on Lyon reflect both a Christian love and a corporeal selfish projection of their own choices onto her, using the woman as a symbol of youth to validate the life path each woman has chosen for themselves.

We can empathize with both polarized forces in the matriarch and brazen outsider, as we witness the oppressive violence that indiscriminately debilitates their confidence in the expected ‘reliable’ powers of justice. The idea of placing the value of power on or away from a higher entity or the self appears subjective enough in argumentation here not to endorse one over the other, so while Ford is certainly more concerned with ushering us into expanding our scopes of definition to be inclusive of Bancroft's rebellious nature as fitting Christian ideals, the compassion for these characters to find any concept of hope to latch onto is concurrently affirmed without conditional discernment. Bancroft’s willingness to sacrifice her purity for higher utilitarian needs is gesturing towards being interpreted as a messianic sacrifice, but her martyrdom isn’t intrinsically valued as greater than the other group.

Her choice may even merit a diagnosis of self-destructiveness to controllably fulfill her cynical views that distrust general (religious to nationalist) systems-reliant moral security. The alienation of Bancroft v. the rest of the women elicits a new understanding of optimism in systems: that we need counterparts to challenge us to fight complacency, to become elastic and teachable, and that each perspective can help inform another lost soul with objective warmth. If this concept isn’t fully realised in this film, that’s not an indication that the philosophy doesn’t exist; it’s an elision of hope suppressed by the very milieu that thwarts and compels these women’s conceptions of faith. The denouement directs us towards a more dichotomously didactic hierarchy with Leighton devolving back into her dogmatic pathology of acting erroneously as God’s judge, and Bancroft emerging as the Virgin Mary figure of paradoxical purity in soiling herself. This movement into choosing sides unfortunately lessens the impact of complexity laid down before us over the previous hour and change, and keeps the film at bay from qualifying for the status of a novel biopsychosociospiritual-elaborate masterpiece.

Sergeant Rutledge (Revisit): Well, I totally forgot that I had seen this before until about halfway through, which probably tells enough about where I stand on this unfortunate misfire. It seems like almost everyone adores this late Ford, but it's an incredibly sloppy narrative journey to its haughty destination of self-consciously melodramatic social justice commentary. The methodology by which events unfold can't even abide by their own internal logic (gotta love Cantrell's witness-testimony flashback continuing on after he's left the room so we get some preachy dynamics with the four black soldiers, as if Cantrell would be able to comprehend the marginalized group processing the macro-sacrifices of banded collectivism even if he was told about it afterwards!) and its general rhythm falls on a messy stream-of-consciousness trajectory that dulls instead of inspires.

There is a lot of potential in these flashbacks, spilling from relentlessly mobile information reveals of mystery into action and horror posturing, but any momentum gained is obstructed by pauses to switch gears against credibility of both courtroom procedures and thoughtful narrative form in a segregated Rashomon style. It's rather obnoxious, and blatantly violating its own aims, to remove Mary from the chair when they do, only to aggressively try to provoke our interest through a rule of "more;" and the tacked-on efforts to add merit badges to the titular convicted's heroism in its final act only dilutes the moral of the film: It's not enough that this black man didn't commit the crime, or that he saved the life of the primary witness, or that he went willingly in accordance with law and stressed his position on racism in America, but he needs to demonstrate twice the valor by coincidentally finding an opportunity to do so in front of his peers/captors, not in order to sell the story to the prosecution, but to sell the filmmakers and liberal audience, who are nervously unable to stand by their principles without stacking additional evidence to smooth it over! It's an ignorant and subtly racist position for the film to take, fabricating fantastical occurrences to arrive at the same value that should exist (and that the film stresses does exist, before it says otherwise!) divorced from those supplemental actions, while holding onto a humanist philosophy that would be better practiced with restraint and focus to the crime itself.

Sergeant Rutledge functions a lot like Ford’s similarly-preachy and hollow Cheyenne Autumn from the decade, though while that film was more unbearably tedious (fresh off a first-watch, it was so understimulating I don’t have a thing to write about), at least it wasn’t as unconsciously damaging to its cause. Ford didn't make a ‘bad’ movie, but an unfair and mismanaged one, foregoing any care to the actual glimpses at humanity it claims to be supporting in favor of its superior extravagance. Instead of ceaselessly beating us over the head with its bombastic agenda, the same ethics would have been much more effectively translated with some deliberate moderation, attention to characterization and empathy via longer stretches of perspective and recognition of details. The film opts for an erratic strobe light of dynamic viewpoints and problematic magical-negro intrusions to enhance the drama when it's only deflating any utility of its equalizing judicial intentions in the process.

These criticisms are just the beginning, and I don't have the energy to go through them all, but I can't ignore how the final theatrical conflict in the closing arguments ventures so far removed from the purpose of the film that it threatens to make white shame the primary subject of pity; or how deus ex machina plagues the film like a disease after Rutledge’s second wave of heroism into the neat and tidy courtroom closing moments, again making the powers of deduction so damn easy for whites- as the culprit literally inserts himself into the hot seat smoothly winking at the lawyer to deliver a winning formulation. I don’t know, I’m not saying that the film needed to be Super Progressive in 1960, but god damn is it confused in who it even wants to empathize with or empower- and it’s problematic because it truly tries to gift its compassion to Rutledge for a while before jumping the shark against the grain of its stated liberalism. If the film always stayed objectively aloof a la Preminger, it would’ve been just fine as it is, but everyone involved seems to believe they care about Sgt Rutledge and addressing racism, then anxiously break eye contact and go the other way. The film is a failure because it's cowardly and doesn't even know it, a textbook example of implicit racism propagating by outwardly progressive collectives posing as social justice pioneers.

The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance (Revisit): A fascinating western that exists somewhere in the barren desert between the communities of the classic western and the revisionist westerns to come, bearing its soul through twisting and rendering naked the faux-securities from value in characterization.

Stewart and Wayne begin with their own traditional personas and Ford gradually unveils the soft human cores beyond the ostensible shells, which means genuine fear and fallibility posing as valor for Stewart’s righteous man, and empathetic yet self-destructive sacrifice for Wayne that extends beyond stoicism and into an unfamiliar place of low self-regard in terms of leaving what he feels he does not deserve. The manipulations on each’s presence may seem slight, but Ford decidedly shows how folly and morality can coexist without discounting the humanity that runs as an intimate thread through both different men’s actions.

Perhaps Wayne is too afraid to depart from his humble familiarity in an everyman to step into the shoes of Stewart’s ambitions, that would surely come from the publicity of the shooting. Does Wayne bow out because he’s generous or because he surrenders to a fatalist attitude about the intrinsic destiny of personality, with Stewart the ‘right’ option for the accolades. Also, that look on Vera Miles’ face, left ambiguous to wonder if she’s thinking about whether or not she married the right man… it stings with its moral realism that plagues these characters in a moral wasteland, left half-wandering in the dark.

This is not only Ford’s best this decade, but one of his very best, period, for both cynically dissecting the nature of western myth-making and producing multiple definitions of humility that cause us to recontextualize the moral philosophy behind those actions. The final scene confronts both optimistic and pessimistic views of realist existentialism, holding two ideas together: that our lives lose meaning when we recognize our lack of responsibility in our successes, but also that they are meaningful because we succeed based on the compassionate support of others. This optimistic compromise is arguably refuted a few years later in Hombre- but more on that later.

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Maltic
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Re: The 1960s List: Discussion and Suggestions

#27 Post by Maltic » Sat May 29, 2021 8:00 pm

therewillbeblus wrote:
Sat May 29, 2021 5:16 pm
Maltic wrote:
Sat May 29, 2021 2:21 pm
Pavel wrote:
Sat May 29, 2021 2:04 pm
Great! Also, the list has now been updated to include all 597 films that received votes (except one which I couldn't find on Letterboxd)
... and still no Jerry Lewis! And no Dragon Inn!
I fear I won't have room for any Jerry Lewis this round (as wrong as that feels, too many masterpieces will wind up on the cutting room floor), though Dragon Inn stands a chance. It's my favorite King Hu film and one of the best-paced accumulations of suspense that dually functions as narrative unraveling across an initial setpiece that takes up like half the film. It's so much fun, and seems to have inspired a few of Tarantino's more amusing setpieces/narrative strategies as much as the influences he's candid about.
If nothing else, it influenced a whole of lot of his acknowledged favourites. The inn is as much a staple of the genre as the saloon is in the Western, but obviously Dragon Inn is crucial. I heard QT say he finds Lau Kar-Leung's comedies "tedious," and I wouldn't be surprised if he was a bit cool on King Hu as well, even on the early ones, preferring the more macho/schlocky Chang Cheh or Jimmy Wang Yu films or whatever.

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Maltic
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Re: The 1960s List: Discussion and Suggestions

#28 Post by Maltic » Sat May 29, 2021 8:07 pm

swo17 wrote:
Sat May 29, 2021 11:36 am
Maltic wrote:
Sat May 29, 2021 4:31 am
3) Any feature film, documentary, experimental film, short film, TV miniseries, TV movie, or TV special released in the 1960s (1960-1969) is eligible.
As you said, this isn't 'nam, there are rules, but I was thinking about Kenneth Clark's Civilization...
Yes, you can vote for that


Inexcusable for me to misspell that with an American 'z', btw :lol:

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Rayon Vert
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Re: The 1960s List: Discussion and Suggestions

#29 Post by Rayon Vert » Sat May 29, 2021 9:14 pm

Divorce Italian Style (Germi 1961). I was seduced more strongly by its charms than in previous viewings. The humor really comes from the characterizations and the acting rather than the plot - Mastroianni really putting in a strong turn, and it's just delicious as a satire of social mores and attitudes. I just find it directed with such assurance more than anything, with the setting full of authentic detail so that you're really soaked in a world that feels real even if the lampooning is so heavy.

---

I'm sticking to revisits for the foreseeable future. I wasn't inspired to do write-ups for most of my pre-gaming viewings, and several of these films I've already commented on in other threads. The Gospel According to Matthew is still a thing of tremendous beauty, and Spartacus, Plein Soleil and A Man for All Seasons, and Une femme mariée to a lesser extent, all continued to be solid generators of cinematic pleasure. Viridiana, Ivan's Childhood, Le Signe du lion and Too Late Blues didn't fare as well this time. I still find the Cassavetes quite interesting and original as one of his commercial films; it's surprising that Paramount released something that stylistically odd. I'm not an expert on the director's themes so I'd be interested in readings anyone else's thoughts on this one if they appreciate it.

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Re: The 1960s List: Discussion and Suggestions

#30 Post by therewillbeblus » Sat May 29, 2021 9:42 pm

I’ll check out Too Late Blues (and A Child is Waiting as my other Cassavetes blind spot) and try to do a writeup unless I come up empty (which, believe it or not, happens quite a bit!)- Viridiana will likely join The Milky Way for my Bunuels this decade. I don’t get the love for Spartacus at all, easily Kubrick’s worst for me.

I’m also not too keen on Lolita, though it’s a competently made film. The project is a futile adaptation to begin with, since it’s impossible to capture the strengths of the book’s juxtaposition of beautiful prose and mental preoccupations. However, Kubrick makes an additional shameful error by starting his film with the book’s ending of the ping pong game. The narrative could have still been quasi-successful by channeling Mason’s obsessive-compulsive behavior towards the mystery of the lover, an easily communicable and important aspect of the novel, but spoils the identity from the first frame. I’ll be curious to hear any defense of how this creative tinkering helps the film focus on other strengths, but it comes across as self-sabotage to me. Sellers, as always, is excellent and perfectly cast, and his other Kubrick film from this decade will definitely place for me.

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Re: The 1960s List: Discussion and Suggestions

#31 Post by Rayon Vert » Sat May 29, 2021 9:53 pm

Spartacus' first 40 minutes is stunning. I'll grant it's a mixture of highs and lows - great score and cast though.

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Re: The 1960s List: Discussion and Suggestions

#32 Post by swo17 » Sat May 29, 2021 10:01 pm

I appreciated it a lot more after watching the Criterion commentary with Douglas and Ustinov

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Re: The 1960s List: Discussion and Suggestions

#33 Post by therewillbeblus » Sat May 29, 2021 10:57 pm

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Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb

I know this film's comedic style isn't for everyone, and I don't necessarily find every joke hilarious, but I also recognize it as one of the smartest satires ever made (though this is hardly a novel opinion). What seems to be the selling/alienating line is whether or not one is attracted to non-jokes, straight-laced deliveries of actual perspectives and interpersonal exchanges with/in systems, thereby exposing the absurdities of our decision-making, reasoning, expressiveness, and anti-collaboration methods posing as attempts at harmonizing. The puritanical codes of conduct are rendered as solipsistically insane, and outside of the specifics to the Cold War era, there is a universality to be appreciated by anyone who functions within relentlessly divisive social systems, vies for a voice in overwhelming institutions, and has experience working powerlessly with senior leadership teams who are not only subjectively violating the mores of the organizational culture, but objectively blind in their positions to significant elements at play.

The President's early exchange with George C. Scott and his subsequent phone call with "Dmitri" are the best indicators of this commentary on the imprudence of western civilization by gutting those with the highest prestige and most power over our fates. Additionally that first phone call with the Russian commander is one of the funniest moments in any movie ever. The gags about feelings being hurt and childlike conflict are funny (i.e. "Of course I like to speak to you!" and "Don't say that you're more sorry than I am because I am capable of being just as sorry as you are. So we're both sorry, all right? All right.") but it's the way in which he speaks to Dmitri like a child to explain the situation in the first place that gets me ("Well now, what happened is, uh, one of our base commanders, he had a sort of - Well, he went a little funny in the head. You know. Just a little funny. And uh, he went and did a silly thing.") Not only is the language wildly humorous because they're corresponding about a life/death situation, but because this is how we are shown the experts in foreign relations communicate with one another- the American belittling the foreign man who is equal to him in status, but not reflected in the manner Sellers is talking down to him. It's too relevant to how Americans communicate with foreigners, so having these two top dogs engage with dual immaturity and the American side condescending in speech to his peer is a sidesplitting, ingenious indictment of American nationalist supremacy.

Kubrick never made another overt "comedy," but his tendency to be curious about (and often cheekily laugh at) evidence of nihilism, human folly, and the futility to contest a cold, random higher power with morality is present throughout his work. Barry Lyndon is a cruel comedy about a pathetic, narcissistic protagonist who cannot see beyond the scope of his ideas of fairness in a world that's unfair, thus harming himself and others, and yet the film won't single him out for pity amongst the tragedy of the entire milieu- hence the impact of that final scene of sisyphean, meaningless routine. Eyes Wide Shut is an existential horror film ceaselessly earning dark laughs through its exposure of Cruise's ignorance and final lines that sting by invalidating his misperception of superior narrative worth in the scheme of all else.

Dr. Strangelove may be Kubrick’s most savage film though, one that offers a plausible ending to our world, inane yet conceivable plan for repopulation that caters to the patriarchal elite so strongly that it's easy to forget we're talking about eugenics, and a finale where the most despicable moral character magically recovers from the loss of his physical limitations as the rest of the world of 'innocent' people burns. Kubrick literally reverses the Moral Model beliefs on the disabled, as divinely-implemented and deserved ailments due to God's wrath, between the edit of said “miracle” in the penultimate frame and the ironically jolly images of total annihilation in the final montage -thus decrying the existence of any interventionist God. Death to fairness, morality, and affection for mankind.

During a decade of emerging counterculture groups seeking to liberate their voices against the country’s entrenched ideologies through poetic art, Kubrick led the revolution further than most others could take it. Unlike these causes, he was willing to shed his austerity and laugh relentlessly whilst indiscriminately destroying everything we have ever known or loved, including his fellow mutineers’ dreams for the future. So basically, Kubrick was the OG anarchist of postwar American fringe culture.

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Re: The 1960s List: Discussion and Suggestions

#34 Post by BenoitRouilly » Sun May 30, 2021 3:28 am

Thanks Pavel & swo17 for the link (Imust have missed it the first time I've read the 1st post)
Maltic wrote:
Sat May 29, 2021 4:00 pm
Now you have to name 40 films that should be lower
Well I found only about 30 films from the top100 I could do without... (but that's not accounting for the orphans I will want to add to the 40 spots)
All in all, it'll be difficult to name only 50 masterpieces for the final ballot...

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Re: The 1960s List: Discussion and Suggestions

#35 Post by Maltic » Sun May 30, 2021 7:52 am

I'll be curious to see whether films that have had very significant upgrades since 2013, especially from Criterion, this being the Criterionforum, will fare better this time. The Color of Pomegranates (63th in 2013) and Dragon Inn (no votes)(although both upgrades were ritrovata'd), and Chimes at Midnight (116th) and Muriel (no votes), for example. On the other hand, a film like 7 Women (128th) might've been helped with a Criterion release in the interim. Granted, the sample size isn't great with 35 lists submitted in 2013.

Edit: The Shooting (272nd) and Ride the Whirlwind (no votes) should also have benefited, going from being hard to even see, to having a 4k remaster and a Criterion package. At least one of them is likely be on my list, along with The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance, Once upon a time in the West, and Comanche Station
Last edited by Maltic on Sun May 30, 2021 4:04 pm, edited 3 times in total.

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Re: The 1960s List: Discussion and Suggestions

#36 Post by BenoitRouilly » Sun May 30, 2021 11:21 am

More Top100 candidates (who deserve more love) dug up from the Orphans list :
The Valley of the Bees; A Gentle Woman; The Trial of Joan of Arc; The Sorrow and the Pity; Santa Claus Has Blue Eyes; The Rite; Muriel, or The Time of Return; The Milky Way; The Joke; The Housemaid; Fantastic Voyage; Easy Rider

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Maltic
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Re: The 1960s List: Discussion and Suggestions

#37 Post by Maltic » Sun May 30, 2021 12:07 pm

I overlooked Muriel too being in the orphans list? Damn, my credibility is taking a beating.

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Re: The 1960s List: Discussion and Suggestions

#38 Post by therewillbeblus » Sun May 30, 2021 12:43 pm

I doubt Muriel will be an orphan this round. If it is, it’ll be mine.

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Re: The 1960s List: Discussion and Suggestions

#39 Post by knives » Sun May 30, 2021 12:45 pm

A real potential orphan is The Arch which I just discovered. Sitting somewhere between Mizoguchi and Cocteau this blew my socks off and then some. This was an incredibly provoking presentation of the emotional realities that complex persons must develop to navigate social systems.

This does a great job by being very exact and concrete with characterization while being more impressionistic with interactions particularly as relate to social symbology, such as a great montage of religious mourning.

This can be found in a great transfer on Kanopy which is free for members of participating libraries. It’s also owned by the Les Blank estate so if we all pressure Criterion now they might release this essential masterpiece.

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Re: The 1960s List: Discussion and Suggestions

#40 Post by therewillbeblus » Sun May 30, 2021 2:55 pm

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Petulia

Where has this film been all my life? Lester and Roeg’s exhibition of fatal human disconnect amidst a sea of overwhelming stimuli, in both mental imagery and physical manifestations of information as mirages of tangible hope, paints a portrait of existential malaise all too familiar but never better portrayed in all its chaos as it is here. As culture separates from strict dominant ideologies into the liberated counterculture philosophies, the unbearable assault of phantasmagoria ironically produces the opposite effect from the ethos of these freeing attitudes of obstruction. What this film shows (and I must credit Roeg as a shared auteur here, since his fragmented camerawork reflexively emulates the broken and confused psychosocial experiences of our characters in form) is how, in the presence of so many new symbols and milieus of salvation from obstructions, we’ve become lost and incapable of actualizing the forging of intimacy we’ve been promised by the ostensible destructions of social prisons. This film could not be more confining, and the population of ‘stuff’, natural agriculture or consumer products or clothing or music crowding and suffocating the frames, gives us a horrific alternative: a prison that’s even more devastating because there’s no ideological rationale to delude oneself into harmonizing around its false assurances. This is a very smart film about the abstract swamp of our existence, the futility to find the emotions we yearn for in sterile, vacuous places.

Scenes like Scott coming across Christie with the tuba, trying to help her and taking the tuba in a messy handoff without a clearly communicated blueprint of what is happening, how he can help, and why he can’t help in the way he wants to (let alone a lack of awareness of how he even wants to help) is so tragic and surreal and yet profoundly affecting in the realism of its disorientation. The entire film plays like this; the reunion with Knight, the flashbacks and intercuttings with superficial images of counterculture intrigue, the random nonsensical encounters that convey a desire to connect without any strategies for 'how'… they all scream a pathos of searing pain and dysregulation born from a complete disintegration of the stable constructs we rely on to realise our needs in a concrete manner. The central couple can’t even sleep in bed together without one party wrestling with isolated discomfort. They are segregated when unconscious, segregated when sharing the same bed, segregated when all the external noise has stopped, segregated into the prisons of their respective souls without signification from communal morals to conjoin what cannot be willed independently.

This film plays like the opposite of an Antonioni film, expressing alienation by flooding us with incitements of arousal and drowning us in the meaninglessness of what we’re consuming, through showing that what is Not There is the very thing we need. And like Antonioni, nobody has any idea what that ‘thing’ is, an aggressively crippling depletion of optimism that we feel across modalities of processing information, from sensory to philosophical. I feel like I need to sleep for a year, or at least take a long shower- but as this film shows, those safe spaces of seclusion are not actually what they seem, selling false promises of security when the problem stems from inside our minds and hearts, and is only exacerbated by the abundance or absence of empty signifiers (in things, places, or even people) provocatively posing as solutions to latch onto. We’re doomed no matter what. This film holds up a mirror without laying blame; there isn’t even a momentary reprieve in that tactile simplification of justice. What we see in the mirror is repulsion at our callous souls, and our powerlessness for escaping this state of being, in spite of our unheard desperation. Lester hears us, but knows that doesn’t make a difference. What starts out as an absurdist encounter between Christie and Scott, darkly humorous in its bizarre meditation on adrift communication patterns, gradually peels back its skin to reveal something more sinister underneath: Nothing. Love has been prescribed a lost language.

The late-act conversation on the boat between Christie and her husband, when memories defining perfection are shared and “beautiful” is used to describe everything from a partner’s surface-level qualities to imaginary unicorns, we can comprehend the meaninglessness of not only words, but of connotations for how we feel. In a loving embrace, Christie looks to see a reflection of herself that is distorted and refracted across the fancy crystal booze containers, destroying even the clarity of her literal vision of herself and her life by splintering this entitled perception, thus trapping Christine in a philosophical penitentiary of loss. There’s so much symbolism to read into there, and yet the endpoint of all that dissection is the same anthropological desert as anywhere else she could look around the room. The final line of the film is destroying, calling out for what- or who- isn’t there. There’s no better way to stress what this film is about.

This may squeak onto my already exclusive list because, aside from being a masterpiece, the film is the rug-pulled answer to the tainted perspective of a sensationalized era.. This film is the real 60s, the intersection of subjectively psychological externalizations and the unforgiving environments' objectively barren baseline state, Godard’s Weekend de-satirized in the nude.

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Pavel
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Re: The 1960s List: Discussion and Suggestions

#41 Post by Pavel » Mon May 31, 2021 5:44 am

Maltic wrote:
Sat May 29, 2021 2:21 pm
And no Dragon Inn!
Just now noticed that King Hu placed in the previous list with Come Drink with Me

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Re: The 1960s List: Discussion and Suggestions

#42 Post by Maltic » Mon May 31, 2021 9:25 am

Pavel wrote:
Mon May 31, 2021 5:44 am
Maltic wrote:
Sat May 29, 2021 2:21 pm
And no Dragon Inn!
Just now noticed that King Hu placed in the previous list with Come Drink with Me
Yes, I guess that and Chang Cheh's The One-Armed Swordsman were the token Wuxia / Kung Fu films on the list (along with two obscure orphans that were unknown to me, The Invicible Fist and Joseph Kuo's King of Kings)

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Re: The 1960s List: Discussion and Suggestions

#43 Post by Pavel » Mon May 31, 2021 9:39 am

Maltic wrote:
Mon May 31, 2021 9:25 am
[...] (along with two obscure orphans that were unknown to me, The Invicible Fist and Joseph Kuo's King of Kings)
When making the Letterboxd list I initially put in Nicholas Ray's King of Kings before I took a closer look. The Kuo film currently has 7 views on the site which makes it the least popular film on the list. (The most popular one is 2001 with over 500K)

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Maltic
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Re: The 1960s List: Discussion and Suggestions

#44 Post by Maltic » Mon May 31, 2021 9:43 am

Pavel wrote:
Mon May 31, 2021 9:39 am
Maltic wrote:
Mon May 31, 2021 9:25 am
[...] (along with two obscure orphans that were unknown to me, The Invicible Fist and Joseph Kuo's King of Kings)
When making the Letterboxd list I initially put in Nicholas Ray's King of Kings before I took a closer look. The Kuo film currently has 7 views on the site which makes it the least popular film on the list. (The most popular one is 2001 with over 500K)

:lol: That makes sense.

I actually considered finally watching Ray's King of Kings and The Savage Innocents for this list.

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Re: The 1960s List: Discussion and Suggestions

#45 Post by knives » Mon May 31, 2021 10:05 am

Both are good movies with the Eskimo remake in particular being a great forward looking piece of psychosexual intrigue posing as a cross cultural examination.

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Re: The 1960s List: Discussion and Suggestions

#46 Post by therewillbeblus » Tue Jun 01, 2021 1:35 am

I doubt any westerns will make my list this decade, save for maybe One-Eyed Jacks and The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly, but here is a string of western revisits from the last few months, broken up into sections for length:

Westerns Part 1

Cimarron: This superior 1960 Mann adaptation of the Edna Ferber source is an adventitiously lean epic, engaging in relentless forward momentum from the outset, barely resting to introduce us to characters along the way, let alone the setup for the mission! What could have been a 3+ hour expedition is a greasy wheel that flows on without interference, but Mann drives his narrative in a manner that doesn’t cut back on the significant points for meditation. Part of what works so well about this film is that its methodology mimics Ford’s own slippery sidestepping of his history, attempting to outrun his shadowy past that his new wife continuously vies to gain knowledge of and is distracted away from such opportunity.

A lesser film would ruminate on the gravitas of Ford’s transformation, or the seriousness of his prior life with shame and consequences, but instead Mann spends half of his runtime placing Ford in a position of an ostensibly (yet deceptively) self-actualized man who is older and wiser and able to contemplate without sacrificing his own security around his established identity, or assist in placing doubt in his wife’s mind. Rehabilitation, a hot topic for many westerns, is executed with novelty. We are aligned with Ford’s wife in our suspicions (ie. lasting affections for Baxter, a sinister former life with lingering deviant qualities), and these are repeatedly not confirmed and often proven false, an unpredictable fizzle that opens our minds to the familiar challenge of trust reflected in the initial stages of a relationship that the central couple is going through.

Ford’s relationship with Tamblyn gives context to the present, without clearcut morals weighed against others. Ford’s recounting of Tamblyn’s trauma draws a more complex character conditioned by his environment, and Ford’s external musings about his own ‘what if’ responsibility in Tamblyn’s rehabilitation is less a cry of guilt and more of a helpless revelation of our limitations in reversing time and retroactively using hindsight to alter our efforts. It’s a tragedy, but one that isn’t oversaturated in melodrama. We are able to just sit there in the room with Ford, taking in the information just like his wife in her seat, and recollecting on the past that is fixed in space and time, affecting the present and reinforced against interventions for salvation.

The brutality also feels earned because of Ford’s enigmatic presence, particularly when he stops the lynching and not only defends himself but takes a second shot in straight murder. Again, I don’t think his eyes are the ones we’re looking through- it’s those of his wife, and when she’s not present an ignorant third party trying to comprehend the layers guarded under an exterior facade of moral principles. The camera angles, far off and objective (especially in this showdown scene- and its aftermath), sell this reading and insulate the coldness of the actions juxtaposed with the warm atmospheric color palette and sociopolitical harmonizing of conservative law.

This is a very Lockean western, where property means everything but the good characters respect the right to it and exhibit moral behavior around these rules. Baxter beating Ford to his spot is treated without heightened drama and more of a shrug and a handshake in its place. Conversely, the story of Tamblyn’s loss (that triggered his descent into crime) is rooted in immoral seizure of property, a threat to conservative structures that breed peace, and its expression without visualization is an excerption of action that is temporally elusive caught in time; a diagnosis that can be affirmed only tangentially via Ford's isolated monologue, while the sufferers perpetuate suffering in contemporary observation.

In this sense, Ford’s own iteration of his story is one of a lucky man, not a man who earns narrative attention to a difficult reform. The information we get is a reversal of these expectations, as the blind spots of his past aren’t ridden with risk factors and blockades that hindered self-betterment like Tamblyn’s risk factors have; so it’s to Mann’s credit that he directs the attention of the drama to where it rightly belongs. The film is operating on a level completely sideways to audience expectations- a bit part gets the brunt of the empathy and we don’t even get a flashback or emphasized narrative to help us funnel our care his way!

At least that’s the first half. As tensions come to a boil, Ford struggles with the fusion of his past and present, the kind he’s been thinking on but treating with avoidance from becoming palpable drama to be identified and treated. We wonder if his self-actualization was a defensive state, and one without a place for other women, or people, in it. So his transformation does begin to center our narrative but becomes far more interesting in its elisions than directly processing a dichotomous personality; he’s a man who has built walls around himself to survive, disappearing into a shell of a non-personality (no wonder Mann wasn’t interested in him for half of his film!) and as confused about himself as his wife is about him.

Does he even want a family, or is this part of his superficial ideological costume he dons to avoid attention, or from asking himself these tough questions? After posturing towards vulnerability, Ford rebounds with more surface-level theatrics as if this encounter never occurred, and tries to sell his wife a new life like a salesman who refuses to answer her retorts that prompt deeper intimacy. It’s a fascinating film to watch, because Ford is hiding as the main character in a lavish western epic, within a body of charm and tactics of diversion. I understand why people don’t like this movie- first we are snuck past introductory characterization in narrative form, then the central character conflict is aimed at a supporting player, and finally our protagonist breaks down briefly before slipping away again into conniving peripheries and escaping the expectation to dissect himself. We’re chasing our presumptions of a hero and Mann refuses to interfere with said hero's evasion of our projected requirements, but instead moves his film along to reflexively support the sly maneuvering, hiding and the seeking via elisions and refocusing the drama on those who actually face what they desire. Schell, as Ford’s wife Sabra, is the real hero, because she’s the one who confronts, demands what she needs, and earns our sympathies.

The second half leaves us with Ford prioritizing integrity in two actions of rejecting utility for his family in favor of personal morality, sandwiched between other selfish trips of avoidance. Here is a man who deeply cares about their wellbeing but cannot make the sacrifices necessary to provide, a man who is truly not secure posing as one who is. Pride isn’t a valuable quality in this film, because Ford hasn’t proved himself to be a worthy hero to worship. Sabra demonstrates that survival can incorporate compromise and confrontation, divorced from pride as a weakness and a poisonous sin, not to God but to corporeal loved ones as the hostages taken indirectly from a man's impotence to practice humility with sober pause.

Ford apologizes for loving because he has not been able to confront or compromise towards the collectivist family unit. His fear has destroyed his value, his claims of valuing patience have been hypocritically circumvented by himself, while his wife has abided by the request in practicing said patience in action, and the statue of him that the film ends on is placed with supreme irony. Such a relic is upholding an image of the rehabilitated, the motivated, the Lockean moralist, none of which truly accesses Ford’s essence that he and Mann (who refuses to be this character's enabler and settles for a reticent exploiter) have engaged in dodging for two and a half hours. The statue's material is as dense as Ford's self-imposed barriers, and its inaccessible substance reminds us that this is close as we or anyone has gotten, or will ever get, to knowing Ford. The final image may be intended as an honor, but it is immensely tragic.

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Black God, White Devil: Of course this is a ripe and raw political allegory for its specific milieu, but Rocha's film is also a more globally concerned composite of the intersection between the existential, psychological, social, and physiological needs of human beings. The young director transmits a series of contradictions in form and attitude, which emulate the disorder of his environmental target and madness of his heroes. He utilizes youthful expressions of a wise worldview, communicated with a sense of immediacy and concession to chaos that both transcends culture and is infinitely bound to its familiar trappings. As opposed to Cimarron, this is a Hobbesian space- where any chance at adopting Locke's optimism in the innate, or hope in the constructs of order, is shattered over a nihilistic revelation on property that leaves one man dead and another cyclically running between prophets and devils. These seemingly divergent figures operate similar horrors while spouting opposing principles or wearing the clothes of dissonant identities.

The ruse of everyone embodying the same cold blood isn't a punchline here, as it might be in a satire or dramatized film that has interest in building up hope only to reveal a devastating loss of morals. Rocha has no such ambitions, and instead pits his characters as survivors against a cruel world populated with homogenous delusional and harmful men, who are themselves survivors looking for futile hope in their own fabricated solipsism, the only safe place to find it when the external fields are already burning in hell. Our heroes may flock towards these characters with a sliver of hope themselves, but we can see- just as we know they can, even if part of them won't admit it- that these saints and revolutionaries are fruitless vessels that will lead them back on the path of searching. The conclusive rationale of this self-preserving sisyphean behavior is that part of survival involves hope, even if that hope is ineffectual, so this couple is doomed to cluster, kill, disband, flee (rinse, cycle, repeat) but at least they stay alive. I guess. For now.

The foundation of Christianity evoked at the start in symbols is a prescient theme of measurement that dissolves in its security as the narrative subsists. Faith is returned to and exhaustively thwarted, morality encouraged in a less convincing fashion each outing, and any aspirations to find a connection or be cared about by God, or the Devil, are scoffed at by rendering our heroes and the arid wastelands of their purgatory unworthy of lasting extreme attention. Rocha handles his material with such intensity, care, haste, and perspicacious meditation, that he can singlehandedly apply the fundamentals of Christian compassion via the kind of fearless exploitation of problems that a messiah might disclose.

Is Rocha a false prophet, subjected to the same impotence as his characters, and thus reflectively demonstrating a cynical camaraderie between his artistic pronouncement and these dogmatic narcissists in terms of ultimate utility? I don't think so, but I think he sees himself like Manuel and Rosa, doing what he can with all the hope and passion he can will himself to issue- and what matters is that he's trying. Rocha is a survivalist, determined to survive by producing a vision to share. His humility in equalizing himself with his subjects, never condescending to their dignity in choices through deliberately failing to offer a better alternative (since, I believe, he would have granted them one if he could devise a pragmatic solution outside of fantasy), is what transforms this film's thematic resonance from cognitive-emotional provocation into a masterpiece of self-reflexive inverted spirituality.

Rocha intimately validates Manuel, Rose, and us all in collective unison with his cinematic grammar (the visuals and sound are extraordinary, the score erratic and powerful, the camerawork eclectically dizzying, brutally grounding, and ethereally mystical), evolving a formulation of reframed spiritual harmony from the barren spiritual soil of our physical tokens. Whether any of this contests with the concrete barricades to accessing healing is another story. Like The Passion with Anna, Rocha seems able to hold these two conflicting ideas together, which directly enhance the sharpness of pathos and stimulus for regulation as we see them as two sides of the same coined outlook.

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therewillbeblus
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Re: The 1960s List: Discussion and Suggestions

#47 Post by therewillbeblus » Tue Jun 01, 2021 6:46 pm

Westerns Part 2

The Last Sunset: Every time I see this film I become more impressed with its audacity at throwing the psychological weight behind the unexpected antihero. Aldrich, always more interested in the darker, emotionally and mentally complex characters, pairs a layered Douglas with a unidimensional Hudson, demonstrating where the audience should place their interest, if not their allegiance, from the word go. Douglas is a man who spouts lies of having changed that we don’t believe, but we see that he really, truly does, and that’s what makes this such a tragic story.

The final speech, full of sage advice about moving on granted to another, coming from a character who cannot take his own advice, is gratingly realistic and one of the most psychologically apt portraits of the fatalism from expectations yielding under the limits of will power I've seen on film. Our attention lies on the worthy man, and yet the man whose own delusions of what that worth will grant him ultimately deliver an outcome allegorical for those of us who have engaged in the same thought patterns.

Hombre (or “Man” as my library calls it, misjudging the American western as a foreign film in need of translation): Revisiting this film a few times in adulthood fleshed out its strengths in supporting players, notably Diane Cilento as a multidimensional self-actualized version of the oppressed sex, who in an early scene fearlessly faces a series of rejections and stays present to bleed the stone dry of any opportunities left, instead of saving face as a shamed lady or male cowboy would against their own tangible interests. Boone’s villain is electric, though even the bit players like the kid and his new bride are given breathing room to become interesting characters with many shades acknowledged behind the tip of the iceberg we get to see.

Newman’s enigma is the least interesting element of the film, but his foreign behavior is reflected off the ‘normal’ characters, which is enough of an informative contrast to make the dynamics work in a looped transaction of entertainment between Newman, his allies who are confounded by his mannerisms, and their mutual enemies who are a bit too cocky in believing morals to be binary. The film establishes a strong hint early on that social context informs morality via Newman’s flatly-delivered rationales inherited through 'alternate'-institutional teachings, but the narrative eventually arrives at a far more unsettling and unexpected lesson: that moral value cannot be transferred between social groups in any meaningful way to that individual.
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Newman may act heroically in the end, subscribing to our (presiding, non-'savage') ethical principles, but he still lacks the emotion that drives these behaviors, and so he cannot reap the philosophical rewards of a personality transformation that merits cathartic sensitivity. It’s pretty tragic to assimilate and remain divorced from the psychological payoff, and so a utilitarian or humanist rationale shift feels meaningless without any knowledge of the heart beneath the clothes that took a stand with strangers. Was empathy or moral philosophy behind the reasons to suicidally face-off, and, even if so, was this reasonable according to Newman’s own worldview?

I’m not so sure, and if he forced it without a real reason, what does that say about the strength of his own identity? Perhaps the film isn’t saying that morality is fluid, or even cynically providing a subliminal message that it isn’t fluid, but rather that a strong exterior doesn’t indicate a strong interior, and Ritt may be positing for us: which is the more valuable asset? In westerns, superficial behaviors and skills hold more weight than the internal emotional ones: Newman can be cold and ruthless with practical choices (my dad’s favorite movie moment, that he still mentions constantly to this day, is “Hey I got a question for you. How are you gonna get down that hill?”) and the villains carry similar traits, while the helpless citizens are caught in the middle, mostly impotent.

Yet in the end it all amounts to what? Quick death without pragmatic gains. One of the killers asks with a dying breath what Newman’s name is, a trivial and stupid last request, to obtain non-knowledge according to some skill-respect principle. It’s people like the boy or Cilento whose principles will grant them meaning and prosperity. They might need folks like Newman for protection in such a brutal Hobbesian world, but that doesn’t mean that characters like Newman's have intrinsic value, and Ritt seems to suggest that he may be the most pitiable character of all without even knowing it; one who has no secure individuality outside of his surface function. That, or his identity is rooted in an alien culture and he’s been so easily swayed away from familiar ideology, that said fundamental virtues are rudderless in their replicability. Either way, he’s a man without a home, and not a self-actualized one, at least not as securely as Newman’s exterior appears to be.

I choose to believe that rather than deliver a subliminal commentary on the fatalism of foreign ideology’s dry-well sustenance, Ritt is forcing a revelation that Newman’s representation of foreign ideologies shows an emptiness- not because the dominant ideology has inherent worth, but because morals are relative and constitutionally meaningless in objective terms. The rest of the civilians will go on to prosper, maybe, but because of luck. Going by that logic, is Newman a fool, or is he just meeting the world where it's at by creating his own meaning, serving as another brick in the wall to let these folks take a few more breaths.. because he has no reason to stay alive to supersede that cause?
Alvarez Kelly: After a series of heady viewings, this was a nice palette cleanser, and the only film new to me of the batch. Holden plays an apolitical lone ranger emulating a western James Bond in nearly every way; unpersuadable and cool-headed, a ladies-man and calm conniver, and barely sweats under his supremely confident demeanor - even when getting kidnapped or losing limbs! Holden also exhibits gravitas in the exact conditions where Bond would become serious in a close-quarters social conflict, and his one-off condescending lines are explicitly written for a Bond scenario. It’s such a self-conscious imitation that it’s a testament to Dmytryk’s temper control that the film holds together as a sincere work. Widmark adds some glue, portraying an ultra-serious and impassioned complementary figure (a bit like his role in the dynamic of Two Rode Together, though with both parts emphasized to their absurd limits) and the film admirably but noticeably refrains from taking a stand on whether it’s better to be an individualist or a collectivist in a political landscape.

We’re certainly attracted to Holden’s titular nonconformist, who is too magnetically suave to alienate himself from his milieu, but he’s also an impassive anti-Bond playing around in a spy’s sandbox. His acclimation to the racket assists in a blending of worlds and the narrative is less interested in making us question the morality around being political or not, and far more passionate about the trajectory of development the characters accrue as they engage with their social context, as well as the comic possibilities that emerge when Dmytryk fiddles with tone. This is all-around a competently constructed, immensely entertaining, and intelligently choreographed picture in its novel setpieces and adoptions of swinging 60s pop culture and counterculture ideas translated into cold war western iconography. Anyone looking for a fun and funny late-genre entry that maintains an internal logic without descending into parody, check this out and have a great time.
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A Brief Guide to Spaghetti Westerns

This is also the decade that (re)birthed the spaghetti western, an inconsistent branch that scrapes the surface of noirish characterization and infuses western protagonists with these traits while dirtying up the mise en scene to emulate the harsh nature of the wild west on the cheap. I’m not convinced of Django’s greatness, though it’s a fun little hardnosed programmer with some rancid twists of dismemberment making for an adaptable strategy of self-preservation in the finale, that’s unexpectedly exciting because of the stress of disability rather than the unspectacular violent catharsis. Navajo Joe’s theme song is worth seeing the movie for alone, but it’s a solid entry that blends in a bit with other serviceable works like A Bullet for the General, Requiescant, the van Cleef duo Day of Anger and The Big Gundown, and The Mercenary, which is the best of that lot for the well-orchestrated political subtext adding to its caustic atmosphere. The Great Silence is the dark horse to win the race though- a western so bleak, even by the spaghetti/winter western combo’s scale, that abrasively ends by spitting on our expectation for honor amongst outlaws. This had already been a predictable subversion within the spaghetti western, but is emphasized here during the precise crescendo where no one dared to break the rules in such a perverse demonstration before, nor have they since. Not like this. It's the best and most cruelly stirring anticlimax I can think of in the genre, or movies in general.

Leone’s Dollars trilogy just gets better with each entry, and The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly, a longtime favorite, will probably place for me. Not only is it pure adventurous entertainment, but the pitstops into small sectors of the desert evoke somber meditations on the universality of history’s effects on us. Even the most despicable, one-note-greed characters are granted opportunities to hint at their humanity under the dirty, armed clothing. This is the first- and arguably only- Leone to thoroughly breathe the depths of his worldview, meditating on complex trauma to reveal worlds of depth in the same banal landscapes of so many westerns from before. The attention to detail and minute observations in the characters’ reactions earn their diagnosed weary, cold personalities in the elisions of their suppression in the face of these triggers. I don’t love Once Upon a Time in the West as much as most, but it’s fun and Fonda’s atypical performance adds color to an otherwise unexceptional movie following what he had done just before.

nitin
Joined: Sat Nov 08, 2014 6:49 am

Re: The 1960s List: Discussion and Suggestions

#48 Post by nitin » Tue Jun 01, 2021 8:31 pm

twbb, if you have not seen A Cemetery Without Crosses, I would recommend that.

(Also, I assume you are not a fan of any of the Peckinpahs from this decade?)

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therewillbeblus
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Re: The 1960s List: Discussion and Suggestions

#49 Post by therewillbeblus » Tue Jun 01, 2021 9:12 pm

Oh I own the Arrow and do like it to some degree, I just thought it was early 70s for some reason

I love Ride the High Country and The Wild Bunch for 60s Peckinpah, and plan to rewatch both, though I wanted to do that separate from these other westerns. Not sure how much I'll have to say about them though (it probably goes without saying, but I'm definitely not writing up every film I love this decade, nor even necessarily the best in each genre- just ones that I happened to revisit and prompted my thoughts to transfer out)

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Ghersh
Joined: Thu Feb 04, 2016 7:05 pm

Re: The 1960s List: Discussion and Suggestions

#50 Post by Ghersh » Wed Jun 02, 2021 5:53 am

If I somehow manage to participate, The Wild Bunch will clearly be a top 10 film for me.

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