The 1967 Mini-List

[swo17]

VOTE HERE UNTIL NOV 20

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 October 31. On November 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 November 20 (first Sunday on or after the 14th) to submit a ballot that way.

ELIGIBLE TITLES FOR 1967

[Rayon Vert]

Please add:
The Mummy's Shroud (John Gilling)

I won't vote for it, but some might: Hurry Sundown (Otto Preminger)

[domino harvey]

Please add Zmluva s diablom / A Pact with the Devil (1967 on IMDB and Letterboxd)

My writeup

Zmluva s diablom (A Pact With the Devil) (Jozef Zachar 1966) is a terrifically funny, charming, and observant sex comedy about a gaggle of teenage girls who are accused by school administrators of forming a pact to lose their virginity before graduation. Since their parents and school officials refuse to believe in the girls' innocence, they decide to earn the stigma they already face by actually losing their virginities. The film soon settles into a series of very amusing vignettes as each girl tries and fails miserably to secure a defloration. While Ivana Karbanová from Daisies is the most recognizable face here, non-professional Viera Simekova steals the show as Emka, the bookish girl who progresses from looking at boys from safe distances to, in what is handily the best scene in the film, performing an awkward striptease for a couple of college creeps that is equal parts hilarious, erotic, and depressing before it takes a right turn into Hell. It's a virtuoso sequence and the fact that Simekova, a student who never acted before or since, didn't have a full career in film is puzzling beyond comprehension. A film like this is fascinating to me for several reasons, but particularly in that it shows a shared commonality of teenaged experience across very different cultures-- watch the clip I posted on mute and it could surely be depicting some girl in the suburbs of Indiana rather than Czechoslovakia!

[swo17]

Added

[domino harvey]

Also Godard's Anticipation, ou l’Amour en l’an 2000 and Deadlier Than the Male

[swo17]

Done

[therewillbeblus]

Please add Playing Soldiers (Bahrudin ‘Bato’ Cengic)

[swo17]

Done

[therewillbeblus]

Instead of posting a shortlist of recs, I implore anyone who has not yet seen La cotta to remedy that. It strikes all the eclectic, rich tones that the best youthful sex comedies and dramas do in about half the runtime, and dares to challenge Les Demoiselles de Rochefort for the top spot on my list

[knives]

Conner’s Breakaway is in the running for my number one and should be added to the master list. It’s probably the most perfect of his found footage films.

The same could be said for Marco Ferrari’s The Harem to his preoccupations which I’d like to see listed as well.

[therewillbeblus]

Conner’s Breakaway is in the running for my number one and should be added to the master list. It’s probably the most perfect of his found footage films.

Pretty sure that’s on the 66 list and was mentioned in its thread. I know it’s on my list for that year

[swo17]

Yes, you can vote for it as a 1966 film right now (until the 16th). I've added the Ferreri though

[the preacher]

Please add:
Ying xiong ben se / The Story of a Discharged Prisoner (Kong Lung) Hong Kong
Cruces sobre el yermo / Crosses Over the Wasteland (Alberto Mariscal) Mexico
Gunn (Blake Edwards) USA
L'immorale / The Climax (Pietro Germi) Italy
Shôwa zankyô-den: Chizome no karajishi / Blood Stained Tattoo (Masahiro Makino) Japan
La piel quemada / Burnt Skin (Josep Maria Forn) Spain
En la selva no hay estrellas / No Stars in the Jungle (Armando Robles Godoy) Peru
and
Night of the Big Heat (Terence Fisher) UK even if I end up supporting Frankenstein Created Woman

[swo17]

Added, thanks

[therewillbeblus]

Please add Zmluva s diablom / A Pact with the Devil (1967 on IMDB and Letterboxd)

My writeup

Zmluva s diablom (A Pact With the Devil) (Jozef Zachar 1966) is a terrifically funny, charming, and observant sex comedy about a gaggle of teenage girls who are accused by school administrators of forming a pact to lose their virginity before graduation. Since their parents and school officials refuse to believe in the girls' innocence, they decide to earn the stigma they already face by actually losing their virginities. The film soon settles into a series of very amusing vignettes as each girl tries and fails miserably to secure a defloration. While Ivana Karbanová from Daisies is the most recognizable face here, non-professional Viera Simekova steals the show as Emka, the bookish girl who progresses from looking at boys from safe distances to, in what is handily the best scene in the film, performing an awkward striptease for a couple of college creeps that is equal parts hilarious, erotic, and depressing before it takes a right turn into Hell. It's a virtuoso sequence and the fact that Simekova, a student who never acted before or since, didn't have a full career in film is puzzling beyond comprehension. A film like this is fascinating to me for several reasons, but particularly in that it shows a shared commonality of teenaged experience across very different cultures-- watch the clip I posted on mute and it could surely be depicting some girl in the suburbs of Indiana rather than Czechoslovakia!

I really enjoyed this- though aside from the satirical skewering of puritanical groupthink patterns in the first act, and a few cute moments with the girls naively venturing from their comfort zones with sloppy flirtations, this played as more a tonally eclectic, raw examination of youth than a sex comedy. On more than a few occasions (including the aforementioned striptease and its consequences) this reminded me of the similarly sprawling attentions and moods shifts in Les bonnes femmes, not to mention all the mirroring themes and precise details of multiple scenes. Even in the end, the film pump-fakes into solidifying itself as a sex comedy by bringing the narrative back to tying loose ends with wry humor from the same inept school personnel at the opening bookend, before pivoting to a final shot of stirring paralysis, literally and allegorically, lingering in acute terror through the POV of someone newly sober to Smooth Talk-levels of coerced awakening.

[swo17]

My understanding is that The Producers initially debuted in 1967, and if it hadn't been for studio meddling it would have had its wider release then as well. This would normally prompt me to classify it as a 1967 film, as both IMDb and Letterboxd have it. But then when it did open wide in 1968, it ended up winning an Oscar as a 1968 film, which perhaps gives that some weight as the release year. (The Kino Blu-ray for instance puts it there.) I currently have the film as 1967. Does anyone care one way or the other?

[domino harvey]

I’m not voting for it but I’d always go with Oscars eligibility for American films

[TMDaines]

I'd always just go with IMDb rules of the year of a film's premiere, with the odd exception for suppressed films. I don't get what is gained by this distinction between premiere and opening wide. It just makes compiling your list more diffcult.

[swo17]

I mean, it would be weird if a film were famously known as Best Picture of ____ and wasn't eligible in that year. (See, for example, Patton, which this detailed article indicates had a premiere on Dec 4, 1969.) So year of awards eligibility is something I consider, along with various other things. I don't see how me deviating from IMDb year should make compiling a list more difficult, if you're working from my list of eligible titles that I lock in following everyone's input at the end of each month

[swo17]

As a reminder, I'll be creating a poll for voting on Tuesday, so please try to mention here in the thread before then if there are any titles you would like to be eligible that currently aren't. We're going to try a different interface that will enable me to add titles after voting opens, but even then, no one can vote for a film until it has been added, so don't delay any longer than necessary!

[domino harvey]

Not sure if I’m voting for it yet, but I do intend to watch Entre La mer et l’eau douce, if I can get an eligibility confirmation

[swo17]

Yes, that's eligible

[bottlesofsmoke]

Swo, assuming it’s eligible, could you add Yasuzo Masumura’s Two Wives to the list? While not as wild as Manji, it’s another melodrama, specifically one that harkens back to 1950s Hollywood, with intense interpersonal, interlocking character relationships in the vein of Some Came Running and the office / big business milieu of The Best of Everything and Woman’s World. Not a classic, but enjoyable for all the reasons a good melodrama usually is.

[swo17]

It's eligible, thanks

[swo17]

We're going to try a new way of voting this time, working from the same database that I've been cleaning up for SNAPSЖOT. I may have kind of rushed skilar into having it ready in time, so there are enhancements still in the works, but it should still work pretty well in the meantime.

Here is where you can vote for the top 10-25 films of 1967, typing entries from a prefill list of eligible titles.

Some enhancements that are already active:

1. While the list of eligible titles is still rather long, you don't have to scroll through them all to find the titles you're voting for. Now you can simply search for them by either title or director.
2. It's now more straightforward to show multiple titles for each film. (If any of you think I should be showing more titles than I already am for a particular film to make it easier to search for, just let me know.)
3. Once you've selected films for your list, you can drag and drop them into a different order if desired.
4. You can submit your ballot at any time during the voting window, and then come back and edit it later. If revisiting the "vote" link doesn't bring up your previously submitted list, skilar can supposedly retrieve a unique link for you.

There may be some hiccups since this is all new, so please bring up any issues you might encounter, as well as suggestions for further enhancements, in this thread. And while I don't envision this being a problem, I might suggest saving a copy of your list somewhere in the unlikely event that I screw up and delete it or something.