The 1960 Mini-List

[domino harvey]

Wow, my own chronological masterlist is severely impaired

In that spirit here's what I'd put in that realm of not quite good enough to make my Top 25 for the year, but still worth seeing

Spoiler

Bells Are Ringing
Can-Can
Den blodiga tiden AKA Mein Kampf
the Devil’s Eye
the Entertainer
5 Branded Women
From the Terrace
the Fugitive Kind
the Grass is Greener
House of Usher
Kirmes
Le cœur battant
Le dialogue des Carmélites
Les yeux sans visage
Peeping Tom
Romeo, Juliet and the Darkness
the Savage Innocents
Sink the Bismarck!
Sons and Lovers
Spartacus
the Time Machine
Tirez sur le pianiste
Visit to a Small Planet
When a Woman Ascends the Stairs
Wild River

[Pavel]

The Criterion Channel currently has 52 movies from 1960 available for streaming, a good starting point. Leaving the Channel tonight Jan 31 is Home From the Hill, The Sundowners, Wild River and The Grass is Greener. They are usually available until 9 AM EST tomorrow. As far as I could tell nothing is being added in February.

The only one of those I haven't seen is The Sundowners. Wild River will make my list and I def advise those who haven't seen it to catch it before it leaves.

[yoshimori]

I've seen Otôto but sadly didn't care for it much-- I found it to be a typical family melodrama with the only differentiation point being the Moby Dick-style color treatment

For those interested, DH is referring to the common-in-the-late-80s-through-00s "bleach bypass" technique which cinematographer Miyagawa Kazuo devised in 1960 then first used on this film, a technique inspired by Oswald Morris' superimposition of a black-and-white print over a color print in Moby Dick. Miyagawa's technique's results in Otôto are pretty stunning, iyam. And Ichikawa's compositions and subtle direction of the performers elevate the 'typical family drama' for me, the way Sirk's does his. The Ichikawa film is considerably tonally darker though, in both literal and literary senses.

[therewillbeblus]

L'amour existe is pretty great, though I'm not sure I interpreted this essay film as it was intended, as the film's greatest strength seemed to be the curiously erratic yet drawled rhythm of tonal pivots. There's a strange ominous vibe going on here, reflexively exemplified by Pialat's phantomed relationship to the material. At times he's narrating as a character out of sight, other times making omniscient declarations about macro-issues; there are darkly comic deadpan monotonous deliveries in observations of.. monotony, but also poetic vibrancy for the acute freedoms being sought; the narrator’s voice can be both austerely absent and forge exhilarating intimacy with the imagery. The film is at once a wry and self-serious, fatalistic examination of suburban and urban sewn-consequences in philosophical and sociological realms, but it's the Sisyphean objective banality juxtaposed with the subjective in fantasy, memory, and evasions of routine in the dreams of night, that make for a peculiar, unpredictable journey.

[Rayon Vert]

Well this was an expensive day! The criterionforum gods were with me, though, because for some reason all of the Criterion blu-rays I wanted at amazon.ca were quite cheaper than they usually are and/or compared to third-party sellers. I got 13 discs coming my way (not just Criterion of course - thanks to those who posted recs - and, no, no Jigoku). The Messalina TT disc was a bit out of my price range, though. I think I also have a few already (Sink the Bismarck!, Wild River) from when that fun forum experience occurred a while back of Fox-DVDs-are-going-to-disappear-hurry-and-buy-them-all-now!.

[Toland's Mitchell]

Are they best-of-the-year good though?

Depends how big of a fan you are of Ray and Ozu. I like (but do not love) both directors, and find comfort in their realism and straightforward methods of filmmaking. However, Devi and Late Autumn are neither directors' best work by any means, but I found them engaging nonetheless. 1960 was a deep year. I've currently seen 45 films from 1960 and they rank somewhere in the 13-20 range for me personally (which may be lower by the end of this poll). But mileage varies, plus you've seen over 115 1960 films therefore have a larger sample to work with.

As for The Naked Island, I liked this one too for similar reasons as swo17 and Matt. It's down-to-earth, invites the viewer into the world of its characters where not too much exciting happens, but succeeds in its nuances.

[Matt]

May I request the eligibility of Muzykanci[Musicians], a Polish documentary short by Kazimierz Karabasz?

[swo17]

Added

[knives]

Spoiler

Devi
Integration Report 1
Late Autumn
Night and Fog in Japan

From your list these are the ones certain to make mine with the last probably my number one.

[swo17]

Integration Report 1

I've added this to the list in the first post

[senseabove]

Commanche Station (Boetticher) I've been vaguely, but only vaguely positive on the other Boetticher westerns I've seen, but this feels like just about the best a B Western can get without getting too big for its britches. Script-wise, or really anything-wise, there's nothing exceptional here—some slight nuance to the relationships of a typical "save the white woman" plot—except for Boetticher's camera, which is, in a way, exceptional for not trying to be. He reliably lingers wide to let suspense unfold at a bedeviling distance, lingers close to let drama build, and gives an occasional, arresting pivot between the two: there's a great moment when everyone's huddled together to figure out what to do about the smoke signal on the horizon (shot and reverse between the horizon and the huddle) when a character just sent off to prepare their escape shouts from the background that

Spoiler

a man's coming from the other direction, and the camera glides horizontally as everyone turns and runs in that direction, and then it just stops, without cutting closer, as everyone else runs baffled and fearful far "upstage," and we watch at that distance as they catch the horse, huddle round the obviously dying, possibly dead rider, and cradle him down to the ground before cutting to the new huddle around him.

It's just an elegant and economical use of space and editing, neither flashy nor excessive.

[Rayon Vert]

I'm already sold in general on the Ranown films but I always thought the cycle ended on one of the high points. It surely is the most beautiful of these pictures, the exquisite, extremely naturalistic and studio artifice-free photography making use of the often lush scenery the characters find themselves in, the contrasts between the rocky desert and the forests a very satisfying experience. There’s also marvelous use of the horses here. The pace is deliberately slow and extremely confident and it’s surprising how long Boetticher holds his shots of the characters traveling, for example. It's lodged pretty securely on my list.

[Red Screamer]

Wild River (Elia Kazan, 1960) Montgomery Clift brings electricity and liberal ideals to the Tennessee Valley in hopes of convincing one final holdout to leave her land before the new dam sends it underwater. It surprised me that some people call this Kazan’s best film but, hey, everyone was wrong about On the Waterfront too. Maybe I just have a soft spot for his overblown mode (which would explain why I seem to like East of Eden more than everyone else) but it was a big disappointment. Kazan’s movies live and die with their actors and Clift’s lead simply didn’t do it for me. The neurotic-romantic half of his performance plays like a souring James Dean impression while the nebbishy outsider half resembles Eugene Levy, all delayed reactions and bewildered wide eyes. The role is poorly defined so it might not have worked with any actor but Clift’s self-conscious choices make the character pretty offputting when it seems like he’s supposed to be a comforting Gregory Peck type.

More fundamentally though, I think there’s a mismatch in Kazan’s approach to the material. Most of the movie plays out in this gentle, pensive key: a meditation on American history, a standoff between past and future, a contemplation of how love can freeze you in place and how it can shove you into action. But the script buckles under that weight, its obvious contrasts and foregone conclusions spread too thin. If A Face in the Crowd is any indication, I wouldn’t have minded the easy answers of the script so much if Kazan had given them some verve instead of trying to convince us that he worked hard to reach them. Many of Kazan’s previous films have impressed me, but watching Wild River I finally understood some of the standard complaints about his work. For the first time I found myself rolling my eyes at the actorly flourishes, the brandished realism, the sugar pill social commentary (here marred by an ugly paternalism). There’s nice touches here and there but I was left longing for the delirium of Baby Doll or the hard-fought romance of Bridges of Madison County.

[domino harvey]

Swo, please confirm eligibility for Il rossetto, I will very likely be voting for it

[swo17]

Confirmed

[domino harvey]

Il rossetto (Damiano Damiani)
A prostitute is brutally murdered and a fourteen year old girl confides in her crush, an adult neighbor, that she saw him exit the victim's apartment the week before, but she would nevvvver tell the police. He reacts by insisting she's mistaken and then does what he can to make sure she stays quiet… Thus starts a cruel variation of Shadow of a Doubt, wherein suspense and anxiety line every moment of the narrative as this plays out not at all like one might expect at the outset. By the time we learn the meaning of the title of the film (“Lipstick”), we’re firmly in a deeply unsettling moral morass where every last person involved is losing. This is a film that made me squirm in my seat more than once, but it also has such sure direction and focus that it’s never as prurient or exploitative as it could be, and everyone in this film, even when they do stupid things, behaves in a way that feels true to their characters and the situation, which is always a treat in a movie like this (I am reminded, perhaps for the last time before it fades from my memory, of the inferior by every metric La mort de Belle and how bad a film like this can be). Highly recommended. [P]

the Rise and Fall of Legs Diamond (Budd Boetticher)
A street thug with a lot of bravado but not much brains rises in the underworld in the 20s in this glacially paced gangster throwback, filmed like a TV episode by the eternally overrated Boetticher. This is the kind of movie where not one but two of the most important characters are killed offscreen and these events are revealed almost as an afterthought. What’s at the forefront? Lame crime movie tricks too anemic to sustain the nth iteration here.

Swiss Family Robinson (Ken Annakin)
A pirate attack shipwrecks the titular Swiss family en route to New Guinea in this well-known Disney “classic” that has so little curiosity of the extraordinary circumstances of being abandoned on a deserted island and forced to fend for yourself that by the halfway point, the film invents moronic melodramatic stakes involving the return of the pirates and an escaped teenage girl hostage because it can’t be bothered to imagine for even one minute about what anyone stuck in this scenario might think, feel, or do. Instead we get set designers developing proto-Rainforest Cafes in the trees and a menagerie of animals that could not possibly coexist but are on hand for the various family members to exert remarkable colonialist energies onto. Quite likely the worst film of 1960, so I’m really glad this is what I started this list's viewings out on!

[therewillbeblus]

The White Dove: Vláčil's adaptation of this short story is an expectedly visually-accomplished film, that fell frustratingly short for me in terms of the intended meditations on empathy around an innocent creature connecting characters to a higher power and to the sensitivity within themselves. If the entire film was comprised of the evocative imagery in Susanne's sections (that revolving shot as she's in bed, or the one as she exits the house toward the sea, brand the celluloid with unflinching sublime sensations) this would be a sure-fire list-contender for mise-en-scene alone. A good film that threatens to be great- well worth watching though, as your mileage will vary on how affecting the entire composite hits you when strung together.

[Rayon Vert]

Wild River (Kazan). Watching this in the present context of the pandemic and the global (especially salient in America) collective vs. individual rights conflict, it’s hard not to be struck with the parallel here: Ella Garth’s individualistic concerns doesn’t allow for thought towards the victims of the floods the dams are built to protect, and she doesn’t agree with dams in the first place because they don’t allow for “nature to take its course”. I didn’t dislike this as much as Screamer seems to have but my reaction was at least mixed, especially in terms of the script. Even before considering some of the clichés in the material, the problem I had was that it felt like the absorbing drive of the main storyline quickly and easily got diluted by the branching off into the two-people-of-different-worlds romance angle, and the racism/Yankee (?) vs. good ol’ boys sideline. It kind of turned the whole thing into a bit of a mush after a strong start. Having said that, there are compelling scenes throughout, with Remick especially putting it across. The film is also quite pretty in the natural settings, especially in the early part of the film. (Unfortunately the predictable Fox transfer turns Lee Remick’s beautiful blue eyes teal.)


I did a few revisits before watching this for ranking-placement purposes: the Powell, Godard and Truffaut entries. There’s something especially interesting about watching films sequentially that were made in a shared, condensed time frame. It was fun to watch the last two sequentially – both struck me as still incredibly alive, and they share Coutard, a crime narrative that’s just an excuse to make films about cinema, and Daniel Boulanger playing the chief antagonist. They were pretty neck and neck but I’m giving the slight edge to Pianiste because of Marie Dubois.

[Red Screamer]

David Bordwell's blog post about a class he taught on the cinema of 1960. Not all the films mentioned are eligible for our purposes, but there's some helpful recommendations along with a good overview of general trends.

[the preacher]

Two more for the pool of nominees:
Deveti krug / The Ninth Circle (France Stiglic)
Vyssí princip / Higher Principle (Jirí Krejcík)

[swo17]

Added, thanks

[Rayon Vert]

Devi (Ray). It’s difficult for the Western viewer to assess whether Doyamoyee could be the goddess since we don’t know if such an incarnation allows for co-existent humanness and divinity – but then again these characters don’t seem to know either! Slight kidding aside, it’s a beautiful film and brings home movingly the suffering involved in the clash of irreconcilable worldviews. I think the Criterion essayist hits the nail on the head in terms of some of this film’s magic resulting from simultaneously creating weight and sympathy for Umaprasad’s rationalism while at the same time the narrative and images manifest the meaning-imbuing power of myth.

It’s the Durga manifestation of Devi that’s highlighted in the beginning of the film and checking with a Hinduism textbook that relates her central myth (she kills a buffalo demon that could be not be killed by any male) it’s interesting how the author explains that the myth challenges older brahminical models of womanhood where woman was strictly defined in terms of the male authority over her. I wonder if Ray is using this in that awareness since Doya’s identity and destiny is defined and struggled over respectively by her father-in-law and husband, and in the end you could argue the Goddess projection is ironically what brings about the destruction of their mutual, still-patriarchically-governed personal worlds.


Les Yeux sans visage (Franju). Never got around to this for some reason until now. I’m a little underwhelmed after a first viewing given the film’s reputation (somewhat like I feel about the Boileau-Narcejac-sourced Les Diaboliques actually). It’s fine and definitely surprising and novel for the level of body horror at this stage of the game but a pretty straightforward crime horror overall thriller with a slight dark Cocteau feeling on top. There’s a cool detachment that seems part of the style but it didn’t leave me feeling caring too deeply about any of the characters. Still glad enough to watch and own it.


Where the Boys Are (Levin). One of some of Domino’s recs I planned to watch. This is also pretty daring in its own way - a teen beach comedy dealing with sexuality is such a frank and in the end pretty adult way. And the frothiness gives way to some fairly shocking drama at the end. A piece of enjoyable MGM fluff on the surface that’s got some hidden depth. As an aside, when I saw the character called TV, I said to myself, Man, that guy is a ringer for Timothy Hutton. Of course it turns out it’s his father Jim! Looking at this film credits, I’ve run into him before but never put the two together.

[domino harvey]

Glad you enjoyed it! Speaking of Hutton, this film’s success began a run of MGM pairing Hutton and Paula Prentiss together as an on-screen couple (they weren’t romantically involved IRL, as Prentiss was already dating her future husband Richard Benjamin)

[therewillbeblus]

Where the Boys Are will probably be a top ten film for me, definitely one of my most-watched 60s movies. It's just so fun and breezy, a total 'hang out' movie that bests most of the classics often cited with that term.

I'm not the biggest fan of Les Yeux sans visage but the flaws you found in it are reformed entirely into gold by Almodóvar in arguably his best film- tho' even mentioning it or this is a half-spoiler..

[DarkImbecile]

Quick hits on first viewings for this list:

Private Property (Leslie Stevens) — Easily the sleaziest, horniest American movie I've seen from this period. This drive-in B-movie criminal drifter thriller has just enough in the way of competent compositions and solid performances from Corey Allen and Warren Oates — the bad dudes squatting and plotting in an empty house next door to the bored, neglected LA housewife Kate Manx (Stevens' wife, giving a classic hot-wife-of-the-director-level performance) — to keep it from being too trashy to be worth the 80 minutes it takes to get to the outburst of sexualized violence promised from the opening pre-credits scene. Not particularly good, but interesting enough as an artifact of a particular type of movie that hasn't been seen in theaters in a long time.

Take Aim at the Police Van (Seijun Suzuki) — I enjoyed this fairly straightforward Tokyo noir more than the pronounced abstraction and surrealism of Branded to Kill, partially because Michitarō Mizushima's humanist prison officer is an infinitely more pleasant protagonist to spend time with than anyone in Branded, and partially because the overcooked plot mechanics are both rooted in the specifics of post-war Japan and warmly reminiscent of classic unnecessarily complicated mystery noirs like The Big Sleep. The fuel truck action sequence is pretty fun as well, and might be enough to help it make the bottom half of my list.

The Bad Sleep Well (Akira Kurosawa) — I really loved the first hour-plus of this, but just as I was starting to suspect it was possible that it could uproot Psycho or The Apartment at the top of this mini-list and surpass High and Low as my favorite contemporary-set Kurosawa, the narrative propulsion slows to a drag. I don't dislike the anticlimax of the ending as much as some apparently do — it feels far more aligned with the film's pitch-black view of the world than the ending we're hoping for would have been — but it is unfortunate in that it foregrounds far less interesting characters and actors than Mifune's Nishi. Definitely list-worthy, but falls short of posing any danger to Hitchcock or Wilder.

Rocco and His Brothers (Luchino Visconti) — This, on the other hand, is the best thing I've watched for the entire 1960s project thus far — rich, absorbing, infuriating, emotional, messy, gorgeous. Delon, Salvatore, and especially Girardot are all entrancing in their beauty, ugliness, and angst, and Visconti's ability to inhabit the warmer domestic moments just as effectively as the brutal and horrific gives the film the kind of epic-feeling breadth for which I'm a total sap. I just watched Rocco last night, so haven't yet read up on the forum's response to this — and it won't surprise me if I'm on the more positive end of the spectrum — but I'm curious if there's been much discussion of

Spoiler

the scene where Simone seems to be trying to convince himself to prostitute himself with Duilio, then fights him, and then either gives in or is raped. His brothers don't seem to be aware of the full dynamic when they're in Duilio's apartment after he reports being robbed by Simone, but the insistence with which Rocco yet again climbs on his cross to protect his brother makes me wonder if he suspects more than the other siblings. Either way, that scene for me was so important to generating any scraps of empathy for one of the great shitheads of 20th century cinema, and making Simone's eventual murder of Nadia more than just jealousy or possessiveness, but an externalizing of his own self-loathing.

Anyway, if I see anything over the next six weeks that pushes this out of my top three for 1960, I'll be very pleasantly surprised.