The 1963 Mini-List

[swo17]

RESULTS

Below is a list of films you can vote for from this year. If you want to be able to vote for something that isn't listed here, you need to ask me to add it to the list. The only reason I won't do so is if I deem that it belongs in another year. I have my own curious system for assigning films to years, but rest assured that I will never let a film miss its chance to qualify in one year or another. I am the ultimate arbiter of year assignments.

Discussion for this mini-list and requests for additions to the list of films below will run until June 30. On July 1 I will create a form for voting that will allow you to populate anything between a top 10 and a top 25 from among the films listed below. You will have until the end of the day July 14 to submit a ballot that way. If you don't see a certain film listed below, you won't be able to vote for it, so please speak up before June 30 to avoid disappointment.

Sorted alphabetically by title, using the native title for German and all Romance languages other than Romanian, and the English-language title in all other cases

À cause, à cause d'une femme (Michel Deville)
À tout prendre (Claude Jutra)
An Actor's Revenge (Kon Ichikawa)
Alone Across the Pacific (Kon Ichikawa)
America America (Elia Kazan)
L'ape regina (Marco Ferreri)
L'Appartement des filles (Michel Deville)
Au coeur de la vie (Robert Enrico)
Audition/Talent Competition (Miloš Forman)
La Baie des anges (Jacques Demy)
I basilischi (Lina Wertmüller)
The Big City (Satyajit Ray)
Billy Liar (John Schlesinger)
The Birds (Alfred Hitchcock)
Black Peter (Miloš Forman)
The Black Report (Yasuzō Masumura)
Blonde Cobra (Ken Jacobs)
Blood Feast (Herschell Gordon Lewis)
La Boulangère de Monceau (Éric Rohmer)
The Boxer and Death (Peter Solan)
Les Carabiniers (Jean-Luc Godard)
Carambolages (Marcel Bluwal)
The Cardinal (Otto Preminger)
The Caretaker (Clive Donner)
La Carrière de Suzanne (Éric Rohmer)
Changes in the Village (Lester James Peries)
Charade (Stanley Donen)
A Child Is Waiting (John Cassavetes)
Cleopatra (Joseph L. Mankiewicz)
The Comedy of Terrors (Jacques Tourneur)
I compagni (Mario Monicelli)
The Cool World (Shirley Clarke)
Crisis (Robert Drew)
Current (István Gaál)
Il demonio (Brunello Rondi)
Detective Bureau 2-3: Go to Hell Bastards! (Seijun Suzuki)
Diary of a Madman (Reginald Le Borg)
Donovan's Reef (John Ford)
The Elegant Life of Mr. Everyman (Kihachi Okamoto)
Encyclopédie de grand'maman (Walerian Borowczyk)
Es muß ein Stück von Hitler sein (Walter Krüttner)
Le Feu follet (Louis Malle)
I fidanzati (Ermanno Olmi)
55 Days at Peking (Nicholas Ray)
Film Magazine of the Arts (Jonas Mekas)
Flaming Creatures (Jack Smith)
From Russia with Love (Terence Young)
La frusta e il corpo (Mario Bava)
Il gattopardo (Luchino Visconti)
The Great Escape (John Sturges)
Haircut No. 1 (Andy Warhol)
The Haunted Palace (Roger Corman)
The Haunting (Robert Wise)
Herzog Blaubarts Burg (Michael Powell)
High and Low (Akira Kurosawa)
The House Is Black (Forough Farrokhzād)
How the West Was Won (Henry Hathaway et al.)
Hud (Martin Ritt)
I Could Go on Singing (Ronald Neame)
Ikarie XB 1 (Jindřich Polák)
L'Immortelle (Alain Robbe-Grillet)
The Incorrigible (Seijun Suzuki)
The Informers (Ken Annakin)
The Insect Woman (Shōhei Imamura)
Irma la Douce (Billy Wilder)
It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World (Stanley Kramer)
Jason and the Argonauts (Don Chaffey)
La Jetée (Chris Marker)
Johnny Cool (William Asher)
Le Joli Mai (Chris Marker & Pierre Lhomme)
Josef Kilián (Pavel Juráček & Jan Schmidt)
Judex (Georges Franju)
Karbid und Sauerampfer (Frank Beyer)
Katarsis (Giuseppe Veggezzi)
King Kong vs. Godzilla (Ishirō Honda)
Kiss (Andy Warhol)
Landru (Claude Chabrol)
Legend of a Duel to the Death (Keisuke Kinoshita)
Lord of the Flies (Peter Brook)
The Love Eterne (Li Han-hsiang)
Love with the Proper Stranger (Robert Mulligan)
Machorka-Muff (Jean-Marie Straub & Danièle Huillet)
The Man from the Diners' Club (Frank Tashlin)
Le mani sulla città (Francesco Rosi)
Maniac (Michael Carreras)
Méditerranée (Jean-Daniel Pollet)
Le Mépris (Jean-Luc Godard)
The Most Ordinary of Occupations (Josef Kořán)
Mothlight (Stan Brakhage)
Mourir à Madrid (Frédéric Rossif)
La muerte silba un blues (Jess Franco)
Muriel ou le temps d'un retour (Alain Resnais)
New Tale of Zatoichi (Tokuzō Tanaka)
Normal Love (Jack Smith)
The Nutty Professor (Jerry Lewis)
The Old Dark House (William Castle)
8½ (Federico Fellini)
Paranoiac (Freddie Francis)
The Party's Over (Guy Hamilton)
Passenger (Andrzej Munk & Witold Lesiewicz)
Le Petit Soldat (Jean-Luc Godard)
Pour la suite du monde (Michel Brault & Pierre Perrault)
The Pram (Bo Widerberg)
The Prize (Mark Robson)
La rabbia (Pier Paolo Pasolini)
La ragazza che sapeva troppo (Mario Bava)
The Raven (Roger Corman)
The Red Lanterns (Vasilis Georgiadis)
Renaissance (Walerian Borowczyk)
La ricotta (Pier Paolo Pasolini)
Ro.Go.Pa.G. (Roberto Rossellini et al.)
The Running Man (Carol Reed)
The Scarlet Blade (John Gilling)
Scorpio Rising (Kenneth Anger)
Scum of the Earth (Herschell Gordon Lewis)
The Servant (Joseph Losey)
Shock Corridor (Samuel Fuller)
The Silence (Ingmar Bergman)
The Sky Socialist (Ken Jacobs)
Sleep (Andy Warhol)
The Small World of Sammy Lee (Ken Hughes)
Snow (Geoffrey Jones)
Soldier in the Rain (Ralph Nelson)
Something Different (Věra Chytilová)
Le Soupirant (Pierre Étaix)
Il successo (Mauro Morassi)
Sun in Your Head (Wolf Vostell)
Sunday in New York (Peter Tewskbury)
The Sword in the Stone (Wolfgang Reitherman)
The Third Shadow Warrior (Umetsugu Inoue)
13 Frightened Girls (William Castle)
This Sporting Life (Lindsay Anderson)
Tiburoneros (Luis Alcoriza)
Tom Jones (Tony Richardson)
Les Tontons Flingueurs (Georges Lautner)
I tre volti della paura (Mario Bava)
Un drôle de paroissien (Jean-Pierre Mocky)
Unearthly Stranger (John Krish)
Os Verdes Anos (Paulo Rocha)
El verdugo (Luis García Berlanga)
Vidas Secas (Nelson Pereira Dos Santos)
La visita (Antonio Pietrangeli)
Visitors on the Icy Mountain (Zhao Xinshui)
What's a Nice Girl Like You Doing in a Place Like This? (Martin Scorsese)
When the Cat Comes (Vojtěch Jasný)
Who's Minding the Store? (Frank Tashlin)
Whistle Stop (Boris Barnet)
Winter Light (Ingmar Bergman)
A Woman's Life (Mikio Naruse)
X: The Man with the X-Ray Eyes (Roger Corman)
Youth of the Beast (Seijun Suzuki)
Zatoichi on the Road (Kimiyoshi Yasuda)
Zatoichi the Fugitive (Tokuzō Tanaka)

[therewillbeblus]

My left-field rec is for this year is Castle's 13 Frightened Girls, which was much better than I expected and the highlight of the second set. My writeup:

A lighthearted female teenage sleuth fantasy, where Kathy Dunn slips into the role of a spy along serious threats of murder but with a playfulness that undercuts all realism. This predates Veronica Mars in finding a balance between comedy and thriller tones, though obviously a lot more campy and without the complex, confident lead... or at least not in the way you think.

There is a lot of risqué material here, with an immediately alarming transformation from Candy's childlike voiceover marveling at independence to an overly aggressive sexual pass at Murray Hamilton! Her state of sexual development becomes a strange variable in this narrative, as she continuously transitions between pre-pubescent attitudes, like those of infantile dreams and sheltered experience, and dreams that become actualized as sexual flirtation - even going to far as to labeling it as such when proactively organizing her predatory conquests. It’s difficult to tell when this is an act she’s taking on with imagination (she observes female agents using sexual attraction as a tool, and thus takes on this role) or when it’s coming from age-appropriate adolescent sexuality emerging, which makes sense for a 16-year-old girl (Dunn was actually only 14 years old, at least at the time of casting, which makes this film even harder to watch at times). Characters talk about her being “almost a woman” in 'reality,' but her own adoption of a role is more fitting with a childlike fantasy, yet one that allows her access to an adult world on her terms.

The movement through narrative and setpieces are inspired and the structure embodies noir plotting and adventure-spy vibes. It’s hard to dislike this film, and while it’s no dense masterpiece, there are a lot of subtly complex meditations on identity and the experience of youth emerging between several social contexts at once. Mostly, this is just a very fun time, though I couldn’t help but be consistently conflicted in states of disturbance and amusement by Dunn’s malleable shifts between child and sexualized adult, the implications of which are apt yet demand self-reflection on the part of the audience. In a sense, the source of her behavior is always enigmatic: her sexual prowess especially seems to be in step with her actual desires, but are also utilized specifically to trick the enemy. Is this merely a costume of how she wants to be seen, as an actual little girl in spirit? Or a part of her actually emerging, with her learning how to use new foreign traits for personal gain and manipulation? Or is her sexual satisfaction blended, even fetishistically elicited, by the thrills of moving into adult-roles? Perhaps it's a bit of all of these, and yet when she is becoming drugged and assaulted by an adult male spy, I cannot help but see a little girl being abused because that is what is happening. What a strange experience, to be a viewer engaging passively in a deceptively-lighthearted child-adventure film, being put through the wringer of imaginative surrogate coupling and solemn analytical patterns of binding/unbinding engagement.

The final battle is pretty lame, but it's another interesting change in how Dunn regresses back into her shell as a little girl after besting adults for much of the film. I thought maybe I was overthinking things, but then I looked through the booklet (which is where I found the age info, it doesn't seem to be on the 'net) and was validated to see the first essay touches on this troubling, dark subtext. Anyways, I loved this film - partly because it's like a cheesy To Catch A Thief in tone, partly for its dissection of raw youthful transitions, and partly because it dares to go to lengths to force its audience to sit with the blurry space of identity, holding multiple truths at once about Dunn's stage of life, which has unnerving implications for both the child and adult in all of us.

Also, a preliminary list of 25, for anyone looking for recs:

SpoilerShow

À cause, à cause d'une femme (Michel Deville)
An Actor's Revenge (Kon Ichikawa)
L'Appartement des filles (Michel Deville)
Billy Liar (John Schlesinger)
The Birds (Alfred Hitchcock)
Black Peter (Miloš Forman)
Les Carabiniers (Jean-Luc Godard)
Carambolages (Marcel Bluwal)
Charade (Stanley Donen)
The Haunting (Robert Wise)
High and Low (Akira Kurosawa)
Hud (Martin Ritt)
Irma la Douce (Billy Wilder)
Judex (Georges Franju)
The Man from the Diners' Club (Frank Tashlin)
Le Mépris (Jean-Luc Godard)
Muriel ou le temps d'un retour (Alain Resnais)
8½ (Federico Fellini)
Le Petit Soldat (Jean-Luc Godard)
The Servant (Joseph Losey)
Shock Corridor (Samuel Fuller)
Sunday in New York (Peter Tewskbury)
13 Frightened Girls (William Castle)
Winter Light (Ingmar Bergman)
X: The Man with the X-Ray Eyes (Roger Corman)

[yoshimori]

In addition to several items on the list above, mine would include Robbe-Grillet's L'immortelle, Anger's "Scorpio Rising", and Kinoshita's Death-Duel Legend.

I think Arthur Lipsett's "21-87" is a 1963 show, but IMDB lists it as 1964; I defer, of course, to the master list maker's judgment re such things.

[swo17]

I've added the Robbe-Grillet and Kinoshita. I had Scorpio Rising as 1964 per the BFI, but I see conflicting info out there. On Anger's official website (now defunct) it's listed as 1963, same as IMDb and Letterboxd, so I'll put it here. 21-87 is 1964 per the NFB's website. Do you have more conclusive evidence that it came out this year?

[therewillbeblus]

It’s worth mentioning that several Criterion titles eligible for this year are hovering around 50% off at Amazon right now. Special mention goes to my top two of the year, Muriel, or The Time of Return - the most effective weaponization of technique to reflexively obfuscate tangible means to comprehend memory or connect with our fellow humans or physical environment - and Judex- a playfully joyous condensed remake, that economically bridges together the best parts of the serial into relentlessly entertaining forward momentum to become a sublime James Bond giallo (*if imaginatively concocted by children on Halloween interested in using the medium to play dress up and assume roles, beyond just super cool costumes*)

[yoshimori]

Thanks swo. Re Lipsett: looks like it first aired in '64, but I recall the copyright on the film itself being '63 - I won't be near my copy of it for another week or so, so can't confirm until then. Wikipedia calls it a "1963 Canadian film" but notes the 1964 air date. So, if release rather than copyright is the criterion ...

[swo17]

I've come to find that copyright dates are often a year earlier than the year widely associated with a film

[the preacher]

To be added:
Daisan no kagemusha (Umetsugu Inoue)
55 Days at Peking (Nicholas Ray)
Gamperaliya (Lester James Peries)
Onna no rekishi (Mikio Naruse)
Polustanok (Boris Barnet)
The Prize (Mark Robson)
Il successo (Mauro Morassi)
Tiburoneros (Luis Alcoriza)

Dry Summer is now listed as 1963 by IMDb. Not sure about the right place.

There is no Eng subs for Bardem's Nunca pasa nada, so leave it out.

[swo17]

1. I'm going to stick with Criterion's date and leave Dry Summer in 1964.

2. Boy, there sure are a lot of Godard and Bava films this year. I wonder how people here rate them all.

3. Boy, there sure are a lot of films in the first post that I don't know anything about. I wonder if anyone has something to say about any of them that might compel me to give some of them a chance

[DarkImbecile]

I can personally vouch for The Birds and 8½ as worth a watch

[dustybooks]

I’ve had slightly poorer luck of the draw with ‘63 so far, with This Sporting Life being the worst yet of the kitchen sink dramas I’ve encountered in the course of these mini-lists… not even so much that it’s a badly made film but that I cared not one whit about its protagonist and his vile behavior, and found the atmosphere desperately unpleasant and the thematic fixations boring. It’s here you encounter the issues with “rating” films as it’s not as though I could defend this in a court of law as saying more about the film than about me, but at the same time, I really did hate this and doubt I could sit through it again.

I’d been avoiding It’s a Mad Mad Mad Mad World for virtually my whole life but all the back-and-forth about it over the years (and the scattered defenders on my Letterboxd feed) plus just general curiosity about this era of pop culture led me to decide this mini-list was the occasion. (Randomly getting a donated copy at work rushed this along.) I was right to avoid it all that time. It took all day and three sittings to get through it. What a dreadful film. I’d go on about the reasons but they’re well covered in the dedicated thread which is vastly more entertaining and humorous than the movie.

One good thing about that debacle was it helped me appreciate a revisit to The Nutty Professor more than I would have otherwise as a much smarter piece of craftsmanship, and a film that does have actual laughs in it even if it’s still not really my personal humor. And whereas Stanley Kramer makes coastal California somehow look drab and uninviting, this has its mundane sets and locations looking like a Technicolor dream.

I returned to The Birds and 8 1/2 during the main ‘60s project last year so a little too soon for me. Good films! (One makes my list and one doesn’t, though.)

I’m posting this now so that I don’t keep procrastinating on write ups like I did for ‘62, and also so that the long thing I’m about to add to that thread doesn’t look like I’m neglecting the communal elements of this entire project!

[Toland's Mitchell]

2. Boy, there sure are a lot of Godard and Bava films this year. I wonder how people here rate them all.

Speaking of JLG, does anyone know of an English-subtitled link to Les Carabiniers? I've found numerous links, none in English however. And it isn't on CC, Kanopy, or any VOD service in my area. I've seen the other two JLG films of '63, Contempt is easily the stronger of the two.

[swo17]

2. Boy, there sure are a lot of Godard and Bava films this year. I wonder how people here rate them all.

Speaking of JLG, does anyone know of an English-subtitled link to Les Carabiniers?

Well, here is someone selling the Fox Lorber DVD for a reasonable price

[Matt]

Boy, there sure are a lot of Godard and Bava films this year. I wonder how people here rate them all.

Can’t speak on the Godards, but the Bavas will probably be splitting votes. I don’t think any of the three are among his very best, but each one has its ardent defenders. I’d personally rank La ragazza che sapeva troppo highest among the three for its gorgeous b/w cinematography, for its tight and witty screenplay, and for being a key early giallo. Probably the only one that might make my list for this year.

I tre volti della paura, an anthology film, is a mixed bag. One great part, one pretty good part, and one merely okay part. And there is little agreement among fans about which is which.

La frusta e il corpo has fans here, but I think it’s one of Bava’s most boring films. Lovely gothic atmosphere and a couple of truly stunning shots, but a total waste of Christopher Lee.

[therewillbeblus]

I meant to post this earlier and got caught up in work, but I was going to throw my hat in the ring for La ragazza che sapeva troppo as well (which I omitted from my shortlist because I forgot the other translation of its English title). It's definitely front-heavy in that nothing surpasses the perfect opening ten minutes, but it's still a thoroughly engaging and fun movie. Here's me enthusiastically responding to knives' rec in the Horror thread:

Have you seen The Girl Who Knew Too Much yet? It's really great and probably the clearest predecessor to Argento for how it translates genre knowledge into magical fantasy.

Well I’ll eat my own words since this was one of the more purely engaging movies I’ve seen in a while. I agree in its encapsulation of the materials of Argento and beyond in a framework structured like the yellow paged mystery novels come to life, but to me this owes just as many of its strengths to the expansive adventure suspense films of the 50s and the noirs of the 40s. The Big Sleep’s layered construction and North By Northwest’s spiraling narrative of escapades both came to mind, and when the action does halt to meditate in place there are some strong nouvelle vague riffs on that playfulness especially involving private moments of feminine empowerment, as well as in its editing techniques.

This film is so visually arresting that I had to rewind the first ten minutes several times to marvel at Bava’s skills and then bought the Arrow blu ray from a third party seller before continuing, as even if the rest didn't live up to the beginning it would’ve been worth the money to just watch those ten minutes of craft over and over. Thankfully the whole movie is mostly great, gorgeous, and exactly the kind of murder mystery I want to see, filled to the brim with other creative choices that I never expected to witness in a genre entry. I wasn’t crazy about the finale but the suffocatingly close camera placement coupled with some uncomfortable direct eye contact made for an unsettling mood to save any apathy in the narrative reveal.

[Matt]

Oh, hey, while I’m here, could you please add Andy Warhol’s Haircut (No. 1) to the list? I will be voting for it, though I doubt many others have been able to view it. Anyone considering voting for Scorpio Rising would like this as well. I think it’s one of Warhol’s best films and is similarly erotic and death-haunted.

Please also consider Kiss and Sleep, which are 1963 (according to the official Warhol catalogue raisonné) and both monumental works.

The catalogue also states Blow Job was shot February 1964 and screened July 1964, so that ought to be bumped until the next list. Anyone considering voting for it for 1963 should vote for Haircut (No. 1) instead!

Also, Jack Smith’s Flaming Creatures and Normal Love appear to be 1963.

[swo17]

Please also consider Kiss and Sleep, which are 1963 (according to the official Warhol catalogue raisonné) and both monumental works.

The catalogue also states Blow Job was shot February 1964 and screened July 1964, so that ought to be bumped until the next list.

Do you have a link to this or do I just need to take your word for it? If the latter, could you please summarize the year assignments for any works you consider significant? Here's everything I initially listed for the decade:

1963: Blow Job
1964: Empire, Screen Test: Ann Buchanan
1965: My Hustler, Vinyl
1966: The Chelsea Girls, The Velvet Underground & Nico
1967: I a Man, The Nude Restaurant

Also, for anyone watching Kiss on the Raro DVD, is there a recommended way to play it so that you're watching it at the correct speed?

[domino harvey]

This is another weak year for me, so here's my prospective 20 rather than 25. Swo, please add anything in need of adding

SpoilerShow

À cause, à cause d'une femme
Billy Liar
the Birds
Carambolages
the Damned
Hud
Irma la douce
Johnny Cool
La jette
Les carabiniers
Le mepris
Love with the Proper Stranger
the Man from the Diner’s Club
Muriel
Passenger
the Servant
Shock Corridor
Sunday in New York
Winter Light
X the Man with X-Ray Eyes

[Matt]

I’ll PM you pics of the catalogues’ lists by year. The two catalogues published so far cover the screen tests and the films 1963-1965.

[swo17]

Thanks, Matt.

domino, we already voted on The Damned as a 1962 film, where it made the top 50. (FWIW, both IMDb and the Indicator release call it 1962.) Also, I would think that these would be up your alley (or some I think I remember you posting positively about):

the Formans
the Rohmers
L'Appartement des filles (or does Cahiers put this in another year?)
The Nutty Professor
Le Soupirant
I tre volti della paura

[domino harvey]

Okay I see IMDB has it as 1962, I'll have to blame Letterboxd for this one.

I guess I'll throw my 20th spot to Jean-Pierre Mocky's Un drôle de paroissien I'm kind of surprised Mocky hasn't had more of a resurgence, as the more I see of him the more I think his closest popular modern equivalent is the Coens. Given how much I love the Coens, you might gather that this is not quite an endorsement, but I think there's a similar overall oddball quality, with a variety of styles and approaches all tethered to a smugness of superiority that doesn't always (or even often) feel merited. I've seen Mocky titles across a few decades now and I've yet to be completely won over, but Un drôle de paroissien was a recent pleasant surprise: here Mocky is so focused on pulling off the tasteless central conceit (a sincerely godly man asks the Lord for guidance on how to make money and he interprets God's will as permission to steal from the donation boxes at churches) without offending that he doesn't devolve the action into his usual lowest common denominator jokiness. Indeed, I was not surprised to learn this film received a dubbed wide distribution in the states, as it has the solid structure of a Hollywood comedy (though without the moral comeuppance of the studio system). I was also impressed that the film found every last funny idea in this premise and somehow never ran out of steam despite relying on constant variations of a screwball comedy's Idiot Plot

[swo17]

OK, I've added the Mocky, but did you see the last-minute edit to my post, particularly the Deville question?

[domino harvey]

Deville's year is accurate, but I like the film on a three star level, ie I won't be voting for it (or, rather, I like it as much as I like the Mocky and forty other three star movies from this year but I'm going to go with the Mocky because I will likely never have another opportunity to want to do so). CC liking but not loving to the other titles you mention that I've seen

[domino harvey]

Also, if anyone's grabbing the Mocky from back channels, make sure you get the 1080p Blu-ray rip, as the SD rip doesn't have a key sequence in color

[Matt]

The Whitney has a page that lists the major films of 1962-1965; it’s the same as what’s in the catalogue.

As for the screen tests, it gets complicated since Warhol was quite literally shooting one right after another. Some got screened and some didn’t, and there were over 400 made. But he started shooting in January 1964 and apparently stopped in December 1966, so they all fit neatly into a 3-year span. The most concise listing I can find comes from Appendix C of Andy Warhol Screen Tests: The Films of Andy Warhol Catalogue Raisonne, Volume One, “The Preserved Screen Tests,” which includes 279 out of a total of 472.

The Ann Buchanan screen test (also known as “Girl Who Cries a Tear” and as part of the collection The Thirteen Most Beautiful Women) is dated 1964.

If there are any questions about other Warhol screen tests or films, I’m happy to dig into the catalogues.