The 1968 Mini-List

[knives]

Thank you for the fantastic tabulation.

[ryannichols7]

05. Petulia (Richard Lester) 205/9(8)/1

this is insane to me, if Warner had treated this film better (or Criterion released it, as its incredibly likely they have the rights) and it had more exposure I could only imagine it doing even better. 88% of votes deemed it top 5 worthy, as we absolutely should!

I also didn't hype up The Confrontation or Silence and Cry enough, sorry fellow Jancso heads. otherwise genuinely pleased with these, please watch Dragon's Return and let's see how quickly USPS/Royal Mail can get me my copy of Big Time Gambling Boss to watch late!

new for 1968 project, new for 1960s project, *-revisited for 1968 project

20 Surface Tension
19 The Blues Accordin' to Lightnin' Hopkins
18 Uncle Yanco
17 Madigan
16 Hell in the Pacific
15 Death by Hanging
14 The Immortal Story
13 Rosemary's Baby
12 Valley of the Bees
11 Head*
10 The Confrontation
09 Monterey Pop
08 Silence and Cry
07 Targets
06 Hour of the Wolf
05 Shame
04 Dragon's Return
03 Petulia
02 Once Upon a Time in the West
01 2001: A Space Odyssey*

thank you Swo as always for compiling. I'm also glad I kept Surface Tension from being an orphan!

[domino harvey]

I’m the one who ranked Petulia number one

[yoshimori]

Am delighted to see five people have even seen, much less voted for, the Teshigahara - third on my list after Kubrick and Lester. But even more surprised my fifth, Hani's Inferno of First Love, was orphanaged. Not a particularly adorable child, I guess, but was in past years considerably more loved.

And, as always, I kowtow to the List Master.

[DarkImbecile]

All hail the Bloody Butcher!

Curious who else voted for the Saura

[therewillbeblus]

Les biches was absent from my master list too, would've placed it around the top ten (same deal, no request to change). This is a pretty common issue for me, which really highlights a few things, a) I should probably take more time to comb over every title carefully at the start of these probjects, b) I really benefited from members posting shortlists at the start of these threads, which often allowed me to remember blind spots not on my own master list - for some reason I stopped doing this too, so it's not a complaint or anything, c) I'm glad we're not using these lists as definitive top tens for eligibility; not that Les biches will crack my decade top fifty, but if one other person messed up here who would've ranked it highly, that could've determined eligibility for those who do want to include it, d) I didn't realize that I can use LB to tell me the years, so maybe that'll help reduce this issue of human error- but given that swo's year-issuing doesn't always align with LB, it's been helpful to adjust what I already have in a word doc to those years

Thanks swo!

[Maltic]

1 C'era una volta il West [Once Upon a Time in the West]
2 Monterey Pop
3 Hell in the Pacific
4 金燕子 [Jin yan zi] [Golden Swallow]
5 Petulia
6 Chronik der Anna Magdalena Bach [The Chronicle of Anna Magdalena Bach]
7 The Movie Orgy
8 The Devil Rides Out
9 Coogan's Bluff
10 The Immortal Story

[therewillbeblus]

1. 2001: A Space Odyssey
2. Isabel
3. Shame
4. One Plus One
5. Pretty Poison
6. Death By Hanging
7. Petulia
8. The Girls
9. Lucia
10. Night of the Living Dead
11. Rosemary’s Baby
12. The Flat
13. Faces
14. Once Upon a Time in the West
15. The Wind is Driving Him Toward the Open Sea
16. The Great Silence
17. Danger Diabolik
18. Doktor Glas
19. La révolution n'est qu'un début. Continuons le combat
20. Where Eagles Dare
21. The Immortal Story
22. Bullitt
23. Stolen Kisses
24. N.O.T.H.I.N.G
25. The Man Without a Map

[swo17]

I should probably take more time to comb over every title carefully at the start of these projects

I can't stress this enough. No one database is definitive, and the only way this system works is if we're all working from the same year definitions. Otherwise you'd get the LB people voting for one film in one year, the IMDb people voting for it in another year, etc.

That said, I feel bad now for not highlighting Toby Dammit along with the other shorts I recommended earlier--I assumed no one would need a reminder! (Letterboxd does have it as a 1968 film though, domino, so maybe you've just neglected to rate it?)

[domino harvey]

Yep, that's what happened. Usually I sort by year then by my rating, but I forgot to look at page two where the films I saw before I started rating movies are. I would have seen it, Les biches, I Am Curious (Blue), Rosemary's Baby, and Funny Girl. Turns out this was a rare year where I could have submitted a Top 25 instead of a Top 20 with no compromises! As I said, whoops

[Matt]

I can be sanguine about all of my also-rans and orphans with Petulia ranking as highly as it did. But I am surprised no one else voted for Hand Catching Lead.

Thank you swo for your corralling of another fine list

[therewillbeblus]

05. Petulia (Richard Lester) 205/9(8)/1

this is insane to me, if Warner had treated this film better (or Criterion released it, as its incredibly likely they have the rights) and it had more exposure I could only imagine it doing even better. 88% of votes deemed it top 5 worthy, as we absolutely should!

Now I feel bad for bumping it down from a no. 2 slot to 7. I saw the raves here and figured it didn't need my help, but when compiling an order based on my top fifty from 1960 it was much higher, and likely will stay that way ahead of the others when it comes down to the final voting. I don't know why I'm playing around with ordering on these decades list, but they almost never reflect the order of my actual top fifty looked at as a whole. Oh well. A number one placement seems the most reasonable when it is essentially the 60s in a nutshell

[bottlesofsmoke]

Well, I guess I need to move Petulia to the top of my to-watch list before the final vote!

[dustybooks]

Well, I guess I need to move Petulia to the top of my to-watch list before the final vote!

I first saw Petulia -- #2 on my list -- after its DVD release about 15 years ago prompted by the raves on this forum (I'd always been meaning to see it as a big fan of several of Lester's films but had no idea it had finally gotten an accessible home video release until I read about it here). I was enchanted by it and considered it one of my favorites of the '60s almost as soon as I saw it, but even given that, nothing prepared me for the wallop it would still pack revisiting it this month. Somehow as we move further away from the era it depicts (somewhat incidentally to its actual story), it seems like it captures a certain out-of-time feeling that resonates more and more with me the older I get. It's that sensation of being "in" something but never a part of it that I feel it delves so beautifully into: so many of the great works of American and British film in the '60s depict, either intentionally or accidentally, the cultural divide between the generations, the old world and the new -- this seems to me one of the few that actually investigates the mechanics of that divide in a way that's humane and palpable as a real happening and not as a mere symbol. And I really do think it's a film that demands (and delivers) more from its two stars than any number of their more famous works.

And as much as I love Uncle Yanco (and Monterey Pop, which I should have voted for but I really need to see it again) as the ultimate sort of Print the Legend presentation of the flower-child era, growing up with the Boomer-received wisdom of San Francisco circa '67 as a haven of peace and love, it's really enormously fascinating to see Lester depict it as a much more paranoid, Exploding Plastic Inevitable-like cornucopia of dread.

[Red Screamer]

Top 10 + orphans

01 High School
02 Pas de deux
03 Death by Hanging
04 The Immortal Story
05 Je t’aime je t’aime
06 Yellow Submarine
07 T,O,U,C,H,I,N,G
08 2001: A Space Odyssey
09 Le Révélateur
10 The Alphabet

18 Uptight
19 Saute ma ville

All praise to the new voting system, which is indeed perfect. I wrote a little about my #1 back in the days of the 60s decade thread. I don’t think I’ve mentioned it before but I think The Immortal Story is a first-rate Welles film, both Borgesian and New Wave-y. I liked it even more on revisit and I’m glad to see others here have some love for it as well.