The 1960s List: Discussion and Suggestions

[therewillbeblus]

A quick plug for Žebriūnas's The Beauty

Sounds great- does anyone know which version is preferable? I see a regular and "alternate" cut both listed as the same runtime..

[dekadetia]

A quick plug for Žebriūnas's The Beauty

Sounds great- does anyone know which version is preferable? I see a regular and "alternate" cut both listed as the same runtime..

They're identical but for the framing, actually -- one has a little more information of the left and the other opens up the other three sides. Not sure why both exist, even, but the edit itself is the same.

[bottled spider]

The Swimmer (1968) on the other hand, goes thematically much deeper.

SpoilerShow

It begins with middle-aged happy-go-lucky Ned (wonderfully played by Burt Lancaster) visiting some neighbors/friends, enjoying small talk, and swimming in their pool. Then he decides to visit all of his neighbors on his way home and take a swim in each of their pools, so he can "swim home." However, Ned fails to make a real connection with anyone he encounters, who all seem somewhat dismissive of him. As his journey home unfolds, we learn he is hiding some painfully dark truths about his past that he's clearly denying. It seemed at the beginning, The Swimmer was going to be a fluffy 60s dramedy, but by the end it turned out to be a slow-burning critique of the American upper-middle class. Furthermore, we learn Ned's "swim across the county" was not some fun-filled sunny Saturday afternoon with friends and neighbors, but an illusive desperate act of escape from his harsh reality by means of reaching out to his neighbors in hope of reassurance only to mostly find deaf ears or cold disapproval. I liked this film much more than I expected. It might make my list but I don't know, the 60s are a tough decade to contend with.

The Cheever story is excellent, and very short. I liked the film, but remember finding it too long for the material. Perry, however, is doing something different from Cheever, so I can understand why he didn't make a short. The story has been adapted to a ballet, a brilliant idea and it looks gorgeous: excerpt, brief intro by the director. There don't appear to be any recordings of it though.

[domino harvey]

Trying to go through old Cahiers for viewing suggestions and I gotta tell you, the more I look at what the Cahiers crew liked and disliked, the less it makes sense and the more I think they just got very lucky that some of their more idiosyncratic favorites have become canon. Today's nonsense: every Cahiers critic trashed the Virgin Spring, but gave top marks to the Chapman Report

More on this insanity, in the review of L'Avventura by JDV, translation by whoever runs the Cahiers Letterboxd account

The nice thing is that there is no longer any need to introduce Antonioni. He is the man of the hour, the queues of spectators stretch out in front of the Publicis, and everyone is now classifying Bergman as an old flame. After the saga, the avventura. We can predict that The Virgin Spring will disappoint these audiences.

(Are we going to be unfair to Bergman? The monotony of The Virgin Spring is disconcerting. A beautiful idea for a short story: a young girl is raped in a forest and, when her bruised body is lifted, a spring springs up. A beautiful document on everyday objects made of carved wood: cups, bowls, jars... But the spell remains foreign to us. Perhaps we are mistaken).

Yes, you all are ffs

[knives]

To be sort of fair the specific sort of Christian magic that Bergman started to transition to around this time seems rather antithetical to their overall vibe so while they’re wrong it’s not surprising that they would be.

[swo17]

Note that I have added a January 29 deadline for the 1960s overall to the first post, two weeks following the 1969 deadline. If you submitted a list earlier in the year it's currently being counted. If you want to leave it as is, do nothing. If you want to tweak it or replace it with an entirely new list, go ahead and do so. If you have not already submitted a list and wish to do so now, go right ahead and do that.

I'll open the 1970 thread on January 1, but that deadline won't be until the end of February

[ryannichols7]

thank you for updating us on the timeline, I was wondering how it would all fall into place and if we'd be able to "catch up" so all of the 1970s could be captured in 2023, 1980s 2024, and so on

that said, I'll be throwing out my old list entirely and doing a completely new one (and almost half of it will be from 1960/1968!)

[swo17]

Note that I have added a January 29 deadline for the 1960s overall to the first post, two weeks following the 1969 deadline. If you submitted a list earlier in the year it's currently being counted. If you want to leave it as is, do nothing. If you want to tweak it or replace it with an entirely new list, go ahead and do so. If you have not already submitted a list and wish to do so now, go right ahead and do that.

As a reminder, feel free to PM me a new or revised list any time between now and the deadline. Please also make note of the eligibility section in the first post of this thread. We've gone back and forth on some of these titles, but if I've accounted for everything properly, the reminders I've listed should ensure that every title is eligible exactly once for either the '50s, '60s, or '70s

[swo17]

Note that I have added a January 29 deadline for the 1960s overall to the first post, two weeks following the 1969 deadline. If you submitted a list earlier in the year it's currently being counted. If you want to leave it as is, do nothing. If you want to tweak it or replace it with an entirely new list, go ahead and do so. If you have not already submitted a list and wish to do so now, go right ahead and do that.

As a reminder, feel free to PM me a new or revised list any time between now and the deadline. Please also make note of the eligibility section in the first post of this thread. We've gone back and forth on some of these titles, but if I've accounted for everything properly, the reminders I've listed should ensure that every title is eligible exactly once for either the '50s, '60s, or '70s

As a reminder, there are 3 weeks left until the deadline

[swo17]

So this idea wasn't too popular in a poll, but if you'll all humor me, I'm interested in collecting some additional data beyond what's submitted in the 1960s lists. This survey will not affect the results of the list.

I have summarized as follows the films that placed on at least two top 5s during each annual poll, i.e. the ones most likely to make the final list. As it happened, there were exactly 200 of them:

SpoilerShow

À bout de souffle (Jean-Luc Godard)
Accident (Joseph Losey)
Adorable menteuse (Michel Deville)
Adua e le compagne (Antonio Pietrangeli)
Alphaville, une étrange aventure de Lemmy Caution (Jean-Luc Godard)
...And the Fifth Horseman Is Fear (Zbyněk Brynych)
Andrei Rublyov (Andrei Tarkovsky)
El ángel exterminador (Luis Buñuel)
L'Année dernière à Marienbad (Alain Resnais)
Antoine et Colette (François Truffaut)
The Apartment (Billy Wilder)
L'Armée des ombres (Jean-Pierre Melville)
Au hasard Balthazar (Robert Bresson)
L'avventura (Michelangelo Antonioni)
The Bad Sleep Well (Akira Kurosawa)
Bande à part (Jean-Luc Godard)
Bariera (Jerzy Skolimowski)
La battaglia di Algeri (Gillo Pontecorvo)
Before Tonight Is Over (Peter Solan)
Belle de jour (Luis Buñuel)
Les Biches (Claude Chabrol)
The Big City (Satyajit Ray)
The Birds (Alfred Hitchcock)
Blow-Up (Michelangelo Antonioni)
Les Bonnes Femmes (Claude Chabrol)
Bonnie and Clyde (Arthur Penn)
Breakaway (Bruce Conner)
Bunny Lake Is Missing (Otto Preminger)
Il buono, il brutto, il cattivo (Sergio Leone)
Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid (George Roy Hill)
Carnival of Souls (Herk Harvey)
Ce soir ou jamais (Michel Deville)
C'era una volta il West (Sergio Leone)
Charade (Stanley Donen)
A Charlie Brown Christmas (Bill Melendez)
Charulata (Satyajit Ray)
Chimes at Midnight (Orson Welles)
La Chinoise (Jean-Luc Godard)
La Cina è vicina (Marco Bellocchio)
Cléo de 5 à 7 (Agnès Varda)
Closely Watched Trains (Jiří Menzel)
La Collectionneuse (Éric Rohmer)
The Color of Pomegranates (Sergei Parajanov)
A Colt Is My Passport (Takashi Nomura)
The Cremator (Juraj Herz)
Culloden (Peter Watkins)
Daisies (Věra Chytilová)
David Holzman's Diary (Jim McBride)
The Day the Earth Caught Fire (Val Guest)
Death by Hanging (Nagisa Ōshima)
Les Demoiselles de Rochefort (Jacques Demy)
Il deserto rosso (Michelangelo Antonioni)
Deus e o Diabo na Terra do Sol (Glauber Rocha)
2 ou 3 choses que je sais d'elle (Jean-Luc Godard)
Le Deuxième Souffle (Jean-Pierre Melville)
Diamonds of the Night (Jan Němec)
Diaries, Notes and Sketches (Jonas Mekas)
Dillinger è morto (Marco Ferreri)
Divorzio all'italiana (Pietro Germi)
Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb (Stanley Kubrick)
Dog Star Man (Stan Brakhage)
La dolce vita (Federico Fellini)
Dutchman (Anthony Harvey)
Easy Rider (Dennis Hopper)
L'eclisse (Michelangelo Antonioni)
L'Enfance nue (Maurice Pialat)
The Fabulous Baron Munchausen (Karel Zeman)
La Femme infidèle (Claude Chabrol)
The Firemen's Ball (Miloš Forman)
The Flicker (Tony Conrad)
Fuego en Castilla (José Val del Omar)
Gare du Nord (Jean Rouch)
Giulietta degli spiriti (Federico Fellini)
The Graduate (Mike Nichols)
Il grande silenzio (Sergio Corbucci)
Harakiri (Masaki Kobayashi)
A Hard Day's Night (Richard Lester)
Hatari! (Howard Hawks)
The Haunting (Robert Wise)
Help! (Richard Lester)
High and Low (Akira Kurosawa)
High School (Frederick Wiseman)
A High Wind in Jamaica (Alexander Mackendrick)
Hour of the Wolf (Ingmar Bergman)
The House Is Black (Forough Farrokhzād)
Hud (Martin Ritt)
The Hustler (Robert Rossen)
I fidanzati (Ermanno Olmi)
If.... (Lindsay Anderson)
The Immortal Story (Orson Welles)
In Harm's Way (Otto Preminger)
Innocent Sorcerers (Andrzej Wajda)
The Innocents (Jack Clayton)
The Insect Woman (Shōhei Imamura)
Ivan's Childhood (Andrei Tarkovsky)
Je t'aime, je t'aime (Alain Resnais)
La Jetée (Chris Marker)
Judex (Georges Franju)
Jules et Jim (François Truffaut)
The Knack...and How to Get It (Richard Lester)
Kwaidan (Masaki Kobayashi)
The Ladies Man (Jerry Lewis)
Late Autumn (Yasujirō Ozu)
Léon Morin, prêtre (Jean-Pierre Melville)
Letter Never Sent (Mikhail Kalatozov)
Lilith (Robert Rossen)
Lolita (Stanley Kubrick)
Loves of a Blonde (Miloš Forman)
Ma nuit chez Maud (Éric Rohmer)
Il magnifico cornuto (Antonio Pietrangeli)
The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance (John Ford)
The Manchurian Candidate (John Frankenheimer)
Marketa Lazarová (František Vláčil)
Marnie (Alfred Hitchcock)
La maschera del demonio (Mario Bava)
Masculin féminin (Jean-Luc Godard)
The Masque of the Red Death (Roger Corman)
Medea (Pier Paolo Pasolini)
Le Mépris (Jean-Luc Godard)
Midnight Cowboy (John Schlesinger)
Il momento della verità (Francesco Rosi)
Mothlight (Stan Brakhage)
Mouchette (Robert Bresson)
La muerte de un burócrata (Tomás Gutiérrez Alea)
Muriel ou le temps d'un retour (Alain Resnais)
The Naked Kiss (Samuel Fuller)
Night of the Living Dead (George A. Romero)
La notte (Michelangelo Antonioni)
One Plus One (Jean-Luc Godard)
One-Eyed Jacks (Marlon Brando)
8½ (Federico Fellini)
Pale Flower (Masahiro Shinoda)
Les Parapluies de Cherbourg (Jacques Demy)
Paris nous appartient (Jacques Rivette)
Pas de deux (Norman McLaren)
Passenger (Andrzej Munk & Witold Lesiewicz)
The Passion of Anna (Ingmar Bergman)
Peeping Tom (Michael Powell)
Per qualche dollaro in più (Sergio Leone)
Persona (Ingmar Bergman)
Petulia (Richard Lester)
Pierrot le fou (Jean-Luc Godard)
Plácido (Luis García Berlanga)
PlayTime (Jacques Tati)
Porcile (Pier Paolo Pasolini)
Il posto (Ermanno Olmi)
Pretty Poison (Noel Black)
La Prise de pouvoir par Louis XIV (Roberto Rossellini)
Profound Desires of the Gods (Shōhei Imamura)
Psycho (Alfred Hitchcock)
Que la bête meure (Claude Chabrol)
The Red and the White (Miklós Jancsó)
Red Beard (Akira Kurosawa)
Repulsion (Roman Polański)
Rocco e i suoi fratelli (Luchino Visconti)
Rosemary's Baby (Roman Polanski)
The Round-Up (Miklós Jancsó)
Le Samouraï (Jean-Pierre Melville)
The Saragossa Manuscript (Wojciech Has)
Seconds (John Frankenheimer)
Shadows of Forgotten Ancestors (Sergei Parajanov)
Shame (Ingmar Bergman)
The Shooting (Monte Hellman)
The Shop on Main Street (Ján Kadár & Elmar Klos)
The Silence (Ingmar Bergman)
Simón del desierto (Luis Buñuel)
Il sorpasso (Dino Risi)
Soy Cuba (Mikhail Kalatozov)
The Spy Who Came in from the Cold (Martin Ritt)
Sweet Charity (Bob Fosse)
Taste of Fear (Seth Holt)
The Taste of Mackerel Pike (Yasujirō Ozu)
Teorema (Pier Paolo Pasolini)
Thérèse Desqueyroux (Georges Franju)
They Shoot Horses, Don't They? (Sydney Pollack)
Through a Glass Darkly (Ingmar Bergman)
Tokyo Olympiad (Kon Ichikawa)
The Trial (Orson Welles)
Le Trou (Jacques Becker)
2001: A Space Odyssey (Stanley Kubrick)
Une femme est une femme (Jean-Luc Godard)
Il vangelo secondo Matteo (Pier Paolo Pasolini)
El verdugo (Luis García Berlanga)
Victim (Basil Dearden)
The Virgin Spring (Ingmar Bergman)
Viridiana (Luis Buñuel)
Vivre sa vie (Jean-Luc Godard)
La Voie lactée (Luis Buñuel)
War and Peace (Sergei Bondarchuk)
Week-End (Jean-Luc Godard)
What Ever Happened to Baby Jane? (Robert Aldrich)
Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? (Mike Nichols)
The Wild Bunch (Sam Peckinpah)
Winter Light (Ingmar Bergman)
The Witchfinder General (Michael Reeves)
Woman in the Dunes (Hiroshi Teshigahara)
Yearning (Mikio Naruse)
Les Yeux sans visage (Georges Franju)
Yōjimbō (Akira Kurosawa)
Z (Costa-Gavras)

For anyone who is game, I have created the poll linked below to allow you to rank as many of these films as you like, in order of preference, beyond the ones that you like enough to already make your top 50. If you hate one of these films, I guess the best way to reflect that is to rank as many other films as possible above it. Again, this poll is optional and will have no bearing on the official results of the 1960s list.

1960s CONTENDERS POLL

[Rayon Vert]

To make sure I understand: I should only include the ones beyond my top 50?

[swo17]

Yes, although if anyone includes films from their own top 50 at the top, I'll have both their top 50 and this list and can figure out the "beyond" by myself. Basically, I can work with it either way

[therewillbeblus]

Whoops, I had filled out my top fifty omitting the ten titles not available on that list and entering in ten random ones for spots 41-50. So… that fudged the results.

[DarkImbecile]

Can I ask what you’re looking for in this data?

[therewillbeblus]

Yeah I just assumed it was a way to also create a list based on the aforementioned proposed system to compare if final tallies looked similar. I should’ve read it through more carefully

[swo17]

Can I ask what you’re looking for in this data?

Curious to play around with different points systems to see if there is a way to make a final tally more representative of all contributors, or if that would even make a material difference.

TWBB, I can't tell if you're joking because I haven't received a list from you, but what would be most meaningful to me is if everyone submitted what they truly think are the decade's 50 best films (without restrictions) and then supplemented that by filling out the contenders poll

[therewillbeblus]

I only filled out the contenders poll, I haven’t submitted an official list to you yet. Did I do something else wrong?

[swo17]

Ah, okay, I get you now. If 40 of these films are already going to be on your top 50, then they don't really give me any additional information--only the 10 you added do. I can roll with that, or you are also welcome to fill out the poll again if you like. There's no cap at 50--you can rank all 200 in order if you're up for it!

[Rayon Vert]

Wow, that was a lot of work. But I guess that's small potatoes compared to what you do, swo. Hope this is helpful!

[therewillbeblus]

Ah, okay, I get you now. If 40 of these films are already going to be on your top 50, then they don't really give me any additional information--only the 10 you added do. I can roll with that, or you are also welcome to fill out the poll again if you like. There's no cap at 50--you can rank all 200 in order if you're up for it!

Yeah that’s what I realized - that only the 10 are helpful. Is it possible for you to delete my ballot so that it doesn’t mess with your results? Knowing now that it’s for a post-50, it probably makes sense to finalize and submit my actual list to you before completing this, since it’s always possible I’ll change my mind between days and cause overlap

[swo17]

Wow, that was a lot of work. But I guess that's small potatoes compared to what you do, swo. Hope this is helpful!

Thank you! Or if it would be easier for anyone to just PM me a list of the additional "contenders" that they wish to rank, that would also work. (For instance, you could do it at the same time that you're PMing me your top 50.)

Is it possible for you to delete my ballot so that it doesn’t mess with your results?

Yep, I can disregard your first one

[swo17]

As a reminder, you all have one more week to PM a new or revised 1960s list to me. And while you're at it, I'd welcome your vote in the 1960s CONTENDERS POLL, where you can indicate your preference for certain films that didn't make your top 50

[swo17]

As a reminder, you all have one more week to PM a new or revised 1960s list to me. And while you're at it, I'd welcome your vote in the 1960s CONTENDERS POLL, where you can indicate your preference for certain films that didn't make your top 50

Final reminder that lists are due today!

[zedz]

List submitted!

I’ve been sitting out most of the latest round of decades lists because I’ve been through so many iterations of them there didn’t seem to be much new to say, and the more regimented form of pre-listing, year-by-year-ing and first- and second-guessing really isn’t for me: I’m not a list person in the first place, so the prospect of turning one list into a dozen or more gives me the screaming abdabs..

I took a look at the previous 1960s list and thought it was boring. It’s the old problem that the larger the sample, the more the voting favours the films that everybody’s seen.

Then I looked at my previous 60s list, and I thought that was boring too, so I decided to give it a complete overhaul. The test of the previous list became: “when I see that title, do I want to see that film again?” And in many cases, the answer was “no, not really.” So I started scouting around for films that still enticed or excited me. This ruled out just about every film that featured in the last 1960s aggregate list, with the exception of a couple of titles (one of which has never even had an English subtitled release, which I reckon means it’s not canonical, even if a few people here like them a lot.)

So instead of a bunch of familiar films that have meant a lot to me in the past, I’ve ended up with 50 films I love right now and feel enthusiastic about recommending.

[therewillbeblus]

So instead of a bunch of familiar films that have meant a lot to me in the past, I’ve ended up with 50 films I love right now and feel enthusiastic about recommending.

In that case, I do hope you feel generous enough to post your whole list after the results. I've experienced many rewarding indirect recommendations from scouting your past lists during my lurking days, and would eagerly seek out more if you feel inclined to share those recommendations here