1960s List Discussion and Suggestions (Lists Project Vol. 3)

[Michael Kerpan]

As to Buneul, I'm biased, I admit -- I am a fan of even The Young One and Diary of a Chambermaid. Other than Viridiana (which I think is easily be Bunuel's most morally complex film), I can't imagine how I will winnow B's 1960s output.

[knives]

Oddly enough, I actually think Viridiana is much harder for a non-Catholic to fully appreciate than The Milky Way. You need to already have some cultural veneration for nuns and charity inculcated into you for the former one to fully work, while the latter just needs a bit of historical context.

I can't speak for the nunnery of course, but I find charity to be a pretty universal concept and the way that Bunuel tackles it much like how Renoir did thirty years earlier seems to be aiming squarely at the parts of charity that the left holds 'holy' allowing for that Christian element not to be necessary in the viewer.

[Michael Kerpan]

Actually one key point made in Viridiana is _against_ the right-ish notion that social problems (such as poverty) can be solved by isolated acts of individual charity. ;~}

[knives]

Like you said earlier it is morally complex, but in how those receive charity react to it I think that is a very specific attack to the left especially the sort of half-assed limo left. Human nature (in and out of the film) is very chaotic and just because she does a good act of charity (and I would definitely say her actions are good) doesn't mean she'll get acknowledgement for it. That sort of, 'I've given you charity so now I should be paid back with respect because that's all a humble person like me needs,' doesn't seem a right specific attack to me.

[Michael Kerpan]

While Bunuel takes on misguided leftist notions/behavior in some films, I don't think he is doing this in Viridiana.

From Bunuel's perspective, Viridiana's actions are not "good" but rather "good but...". She is (mostly) well-intentioned, but has an element of both stubbornness and selfishness in her actions as well -- and she has little understanding of "human nature".

[knives]

That's exactly what i was getting at which makes me suspect we are seeing the same thing and just expressing it differently.

[Mr Sausage]

Oddly enough, I actually think Viridiana is much harder for a non-Catholic to fully appreciate than The Milky Way. You need to already have some cultural veneration for nuns and charity inculcated into you for the former one to fully work, while the latter just needs a bit of historical context.

I can't speak for the nunnery of course, but I find charity to be a pretty universal concept and the way that Bunuel tackles it much like how Renoir did thirty years earlier seems to be aiming squarely at the parts of charity that the left holds 'holy' allowing for that Christian element not to be necessary in the viewer.

Sorry, I meant charity in the old sense of caritas and not the modern sense of helping people, which was dumb of me considering the movie has so much of the latter.

I've always appreciated Bunuel more for the savage force of his satire than for his moral complexity, which may also be why Viridiana didn't do as much for me as some of his others. Indeed, my favourite of his films, That Obscure Object of Desire, is extremely simple: it's two people throwing water in each other's faces for 100 minutes. And despite that simplicity it's his grandest satire as he travesties the entirety of human romantic relationships. Great fun.

[knives]

I wasn't even aware of that older sense which makes a lot of sense to certain layers of the film.

[Mr Sausage]

I wasn't even aware of that older sense which makes a lot of sense to certain layers of the film.

Caritas is often in a binary with its opposite, cupiditas, in Christian theology, with the latter being a more selfish material/bodily desire for possession. I would bet that both ideas are present in various satirical forms in Viridiana as well as his other religious satires.

[zedz]

Another must-see experimental film:

Pas de Deux (Norman McLaren, 1968) – Norman McLaren: The Master’s Edition (Image) – A sublime film, both a virtuoso optical printer performance and a consummate dance film. Like Deren’sRitual in Transfigured Time, Pas de Deux uses experimental techniques to enrich our understanding of the human body in movement, while also creating a film of great abstract beauty. One of the keys is McLaren’s absolute mastery of all the tools he’s employing in the film. On the NFB set, you can see some of the extensive tests (animation, lighting, choreography etc.) he undertook before embarking on the finished film, and it’s a film where every detail of production counts in order to preserve the otherworldly illusion. Absolutely central to the overall effect(s) is the mise-en-scene, which is as utterly minimal as you can imagine in a live-action film: no sets, not even any surroundings; no colour, not even shades of gray – just a figure in a frame, and even in this sense, McLaren’s stark graphic treatment does all it can to erase the frame. For most of the film, all you’re watching is a moving figure suspended in space. But, having stripped cinema down to absolute basics – movement – McLaren then uses his artist’s tool – the optical printer – to gradually build up the most spectacular effects by taking the choreography into an extra dimension (or, rather, by messing around with its existing, fourth, dimension). Thus a single dancer multiplies and coalesces; two dancers merge and split; human figures become abstract patterns then revert momentarily back into semblances of humanity. McLaren’s great talent is that all of these layered effects aren’t imposed on the film’s content, but emerge organically from it. The tricks of the camera actually take us deeper into the choreography and reveal things about the dancers’ bodies and performance that unenhanced vision would miss.

[knives]

That's a great one, though I think he bettered himself on that idea with Ballet Adagio. Horizontal and Mosaic are going to be the big McLaren's for me. Evelyn Lambert was easily his best collaborator and a great artist in her own right. Spheres is another one I'll seriously be considering.

[knives]

I'm really taken aback at Hang 'em High as it is one of the most morally intelligent westerns I have ever seen. It's not particularly well written or directed, merely okay on those fronts, but the way it outlines against the typical western hero and really makes well an argument for proper law and justice is perfect. If it was made later I'd say it was the best possible response to the unsavory elements of Dirty Harry. This one might just make my list for the surprise factor of its theme.

[brendanjc]

Hang 'Em High is coincidentally playing on TCM tomorrow afternoon if anyone else, like myself, is curious after knives' recommendation.

[zedz]

Another great experimental film for your consideration (plus I've added a few more discoveries to the big list upthread):

Screen Test: Ann Buchanan (Andy Warhol, 1964) – 13 Most Beautiful. . . (Plexifilm) – There’s a lot of wonderful Warhol available, thank goodness, and it was so hard to pick just one to recommend that I might yet break that rule. Warhol’s early work is pretty transparently an extension of his painting, wherein he adds a time element to classical compositions. In the screen tests, they’re portraits + time, and a number of them, including this one, are great portraits and ones in which the time element adds a hell of a lot of depth. In something like Empire, another kind of portrait, but also a landscape, the time element is foregrounded to such an outrageous extent that it almost swallows the subject matter whole, while Warhol sits back and enjoys the tangle he’s created between the ways we categorize and appreciate art and film. Nobody ever complains that a painting remains on an art gallery wall for weeks or years on end, after all.

The Ann Buchanan Screen Test is about as far from Empire in terms of scale as you can get – shatteringly intimate and individual rather than monumental and iconic – and her tears suggest the first flickering of a narrative. And Warhol would become increasingly interested in exploring narrative and diving into (and wallowing around in) the personalities of his friends and accomplices. This film sees him shuffling to the edge of that particular diving board.

[knives]

Directors Guide 5


Fred Zinnemann
A Man for All Seasons (1966)---Sony R1
Behold a Pale Horse (1964)-----Sony R1
The Sundowners (1960)--------Warners R1

Now here's a mixed up absurd situation. Squeezed between two high profile failures Zinnemann manages to create possibly his best movie, a true masterpiece that makes whatever reputation he has earned more than deserved. First though there's The Sundowners which is just a dull silly film lacking in anything of interest. I find too uninvolved to even get offended by the things I should. The end of the decade isn't much better with A Man for All Seasons showing how not to film a Rossellini history film. In the middle of all of this though is a film of such cinematic brilliance and political daring that you'd never guess it came from the same hand as High Noon. That film is Behold a Pale Horse which is so good that even Gregory Peck in full on Jesus mode becomes a revelation. Beyond maybe A Nun's Story Zinnemann has never been so good.

John Cassavetes
Faces (1968)--------------------Criterion R1
A Child Is Waiting (1963)---Optimum
Too Late Blues (1961) -----Olive R1

Despite reputation Cassavetes spends most of the decade as a (very personalized) studio hand turning in slick products that leave a very interesting what if had he stayed the course. Too Late Blues for instances has all of the pieces to this chess board with a typical Cassavetes turn of the A Star is Born storyline and the sort of to the grindstone characterization that practically is the defining piece of his cinema. The only major difference is how he shoots the film which is still forward looking, but awfully clean. The only serious flaw of the film is the lead who is about the most obnoxious self centered thing possible. He's still the Cassavetes archetype, but Cassavetes can't observe him right yet. A Child is Waiting is another very interesting case. The clashes with Kramer (just about the worst person to work with him) is without question what made Cassavetes so staunchly against the system, but the end result is better than could be expected. It tackles a very tough situation in a very tough and strained way that at time borders on being like that singing pirate scene in The Naked Kiss, but manages to stick with the sort of realism one expects. It's also a very weird case of auteurship as the movie is performed and shot as a Cassavetes film, but the sound is mixed more like a traditional film leaving a weird sort of confusion in goals. Finally there's Faces, an absolute masterwork that would be repeated time and again by Cassavetes.

Alfred Hitchcock
Topaz (1969)--------Universal R1
Torn Curtain (1966)-Universal R1
Marnie (1964)------Universal R1
The Birds (1963)---Universal R1
Psycho (1960)------Universal R1

What's there left to say about Hitchcock especially during this decade when he quite literally had mastered his realm in every possible way. Just staying afloat for as long as he does is an impossible task he makes look so easy. Naturally that is never more true than with Psycho which nearly reinvents the wheel in its effort to be the ultimate cinematic entertainment. I;m not as big a fan of The Birds, but it is very fun, strange, and scary all at the same time. It should probably be on everyone's must see list if just for the scene of the kids singing and the marvelously dark ending that really solves nothing. Thankfully it seems I am not alone on this board in finding Marnie to be quite practically Hitchcock's highest peak. It easily could have been a dull repeat of Vertigo or the '40s pictures, but instead he takes these known quantities and crafts something entirely new. The same unfortunately can not be said of Torn Curtain which is simply a lifeless dull machine that tries to remake past successes almost oblivious to what made them work. It is easily as bad a film as Hitchcock could make at this point in his career which I suppose means it is still better than most. I'll be mister contrary here and say that Topaz is not that bad, or at least not as bad as its reputation indicates. Firstly unlike the previous disaster Hitchcock seems to be trying for something new and exciting in laying the groundwork for Pakula, Fincher, and so many others. It's also fascinatingly dark and cynical with such a power punch of an ending that I'm willing to forgive that everything before Roscoe Lee Brown comes onto the scene is basically awful.

Francis Ford Coppola
The Rain People (1969)-------Warners Archive R1
Finian's Rainbow (1968)-------Warners R1
You're a Big Boy Now (1966)--Warners Archive R1
Dementia 13 (1963)-----------PD
The Terror (1963)-------------PD

This was a tough one to get collected since most of Coppola this decade isn't really Coppola as he was hired to Americanize and sex up a lot of foreign acquisitions like what would become known as Battle Beyond the Sun. For this I'll only use The Terror which is a regular Frankenstein of random movie parts that is fascinating more for how it developed than how it is. That said despite being random footage shot on the fly by multiple directors it comes together rather entertainingly though the only film featuring this footage this year worth listing is Bogdanovich's fantastic Targets. Coppola's first real feature, Dementia 13, is a forgettable mess for the most part that follows up what little interesting threads it has in a predictable and tired fashion imitating William Castle for minimal effect. It's really only with You're a Big Boy Now that we get the Coppola that would become a master of his realm. The plot and even style is a rather predictable go around the Richard Lester bush, but boy is it a great dashing with enormous success with the humour and enough visual tricks to satisfy. Even better is Finian's Rainbow which might as well be considered the last classic musical. Certain elements are messy and Keenan Wynn's main plot will be done infinitely better next decade by van Peebles, but in the face of all of this it manages to be a smart well crafted little ditty. Coppola's final and best effort this decade, The Rain People, feels like a real culmination of everything he has crafted this decade and in preparation for the next. His team of players are set for what comes together as what should be considered the best possible adaptation of On the Road possible.

Only two more after this.

[zedz]

Another highly recommended experimental film, which also relates somewhat to a recent discussion in the Animation List thread:

White Calligraphy (Takahiko Iimura, 1967) – The Collected Films of Takahiko Iimura 1 (Microcinema) – Japanese text scratched on film, one frame per kanji. The fascinating effect of the film is that the text doesn’t appear as discrete symbols (except perhaps for fleeting moments here and there as your brain recalibrates or shifts gears), but as flowing, frantic abstract animation. A line in one part of the screen becomes its nearest equivalent in the following frame, so we have an entire screen of incredibly fast, incredibly complex multiple simultaneous gestures. The illusion of cinema forces us to create this kind of continuity from frame to discontinuous frame, and it’s almost more than our extremely dextrous image processing neurons can cope with. Which is probably why you can feel, from time to time, your brain just give up, and the ceaseless flow of complex imagery simply becomes, for a second or two, a flashing sequence of forms. Then, just as fast, you get sucked back into reading continuity into the images, like reaching out your hand and grabbing ahold of a merry-go-round that’s whipping past you at 100 miles an hour. If you’re fortunate / unfortunate enough to read Japanese, the cognitive experience of this film is probably much more devastating.

[swo17]

Jerry Lewis (as lead actor and/or director)

Visit to a Small Planet (1960, dir. Norman Taurog) No commercial release
The Bellboy (1960) R1 Paramount
Cinderfella (1960, dir. Frank Tashlin) R1 Paramount
The Ladies Man (1961) R1 Warner
The Errand Boy (1961) R1 Paramount
It'$ Only Money (1962, dir. Frank Tashlin) R1 Olive Blu-ray
The Nutty Professor (1963) R1 Warner
Who's Minding the Store? (1963, dir. Frank Tashlin) R1 Olive Blu-ray
The Patsy (1964) R1 Paramount (OOP)
The Disorderly Orderly (1964, dir. Frank Tashlin) R1 Paramount (OOP)
The Family Jewels (1965) R1 Paramount (OOP)
Boeing Boeing (1965, dir. John Rich) R1 Olive Blu-ray
Three on a Couch (1966) No commercial release
Way...Way Out (1966, dir. Gordon Douglas) No commercial release
The Big Mouth (1967) No commercial release
Don't Raise the Bridge, Lower the River (1968, dir. Jerry Paris) R1 Columbia (OOP)
Hook, Line and Sinker (1969, dir. George Marshall) R1 SPE (MOD)

The '60s saw Lewis really coming into his own, continuing to churn out films with Frank Tashlin even as he began to try his hand at directing himself. Given how much of Hollywood cinema spent the '60s boundary pushing, there's a refreshing sort of timelessness to many of these films--were it not for the aspect ratio and occasional appearance of beatniks or rock 'n' roll, you might easily mistake some of these films as coming from as early as the '30s. Visit to a Small Planet is a perfect example of this, made squarely in the vein of early supernatural comedies like Topper that primarily concerned themselves with the simple joys of rudimentary camera tricks. The Bellboy is Lewis' first foray as director, a slight, formless string of gags that largely succeeds in capturing the spirit of M. Hulot's Holiday. It's a bit difficult to know what the film is going for though--if only it had started with some sort of disclaimer about whether it should be construed as a silly, plotless romp. Cinderfella starts off strong, with some classic bits about how poorly 'Fella is treated by his step-family, but eventually gets too bogged down worrying about how much to adhere to/deviate from its source material. Next is The Ladies Man, which I gather is considered by many to be Lewis' best film. It's not quite there for me, but there are undoubtedly some great moments (e.g. the hat fitting scene) and the giant house setpiece in which most of the film is set is certainly a force to be reckoned with. Also, in case anyone didn't know, Warner just put this DVD back in print, like, last week. Finally (for this paragraph anyway), The Errand Boy follows Lewis around a movie studio, where hijinks ensue. There are some tender Lili-esque moments with hand puppets and a fantastic scene where he mimes out a board meeting to music, but too many of the other jokes seemed a bit obvious to me.

The Tashlin-directed It'$ Only Money starts off a mostly stellar run of mid-'60s films. When Lewis' character is discovered to be the long lost heir to a small fortune, the otherwise inheritors set about to kill him (in increasingly bizarre ways) but end up learning the hard way that you can never really kill a cartoon character. This is both Lewis and Tashlin at their zaniest, which you will likely consider to be either the film's greatest asset or liability. Next is The Nutty Professor, probably Lewis' most famous film, and another one that fortunately was recently brought back in print by Warner. Paradoxically, this is perhaps the film of his that is least attempting to be a Jerry Lewis comedy, with Lewis really immersing himself in the dual roles, though the funniest parts (e.g. the first scene at the Purple Pit) are very funny indeed. I generally don't subscribe to the notion that Lewis' films are overly sentimental, though the ending to this one is certainly guilty as charged. Who's Minding the Store? is...another film that Jerry Lewis was in. Moving on, The Patsy might perhaps be considered a sequel to The Bellboy, as the lead from that film is chosen by a team of mostly menacing wranglers (impressively cast with some old school heavies, including Peter Lorre in his final role) to become a star performer irrespective of his talent. The film's plot makes zero sense, but it's held together by a procession of mostly great gags, including the best ending out of any of these films. Perhaps my expectations were just too low going in, but The Disorderly Orderly struck me as maybe the funniest Lewis film, with a manic energy that just builds and builds until exploding in the end in Tati-esque proportions. I wasn't overly thrilled with the treatment of Susan Oliver's character though. The Family Jewels is, to some, the last classic Lewis film, perhaps because it is the last one that Paramount included in its old OOP boxset. The plot is just an excuse to allow Lewis to play seven different parts (a full four or five more than usual!)--and of course the best way to distinguish between so many characters is to play almost all of them over the top--but this all works much better than you might think it would. And yes, here is another film that can't refute its charges of oversentimentality, but I for one found it heartwarming.

The rest of Lewis' films from the decade are less seen and less discussed (owing partly to availability, partly to waning quality) but not entirely without merit. Boeing Boeing brings Lewis together with Tony Curtis as playboys juggling three air stewardesses who are more or less portrayed as being dumb enough to deserve such treatment. The women, each sporting an exaggerated accent (because otherwise, how could anyone tell women apart!?), get slightly exhausting, but Curtis and Lewis still make the film watchable. Three on a Couch may also be ever so slightly misogynistic, but fares much better. The film takes a tad too long to set up its somewhat obvious premise (husband of psychiatrist must find love for three of wife's patients so that she can go away with him to Europe) but takes an inspired turn when Lewis' character decides to unnecessarily complicate matters by playing every single role in his hairbrained scheme himself. Way…Way Out, as opposed to being way, way out there, is actually a bit of a middling dud, a space-set comedy about an astronaut on a space station in competition with the Russians whose biggest concern for some reason is finding and placating a wife. The Big Mouth has its moments but you can start to sense that Lewis is running on fumes at this point (e.g. needing to come up with a disguise, he simply reprises his Julius Kelp character from The Nutty Professor). Also, for some reason, the actual Colonel Sanders is in this movie. The greatest flaw of Don't Raise the Bridge, Lower the River is that it forgets that it stars Jerry Lewis, and tries to mine laughs instead from its ridiculous, twisty plot, leaving Lewis with little to do besides get all the ethnic accents out of his system. There is a nice moment though where Lewis is playing chess with himself. True to its name, Hook, Line and Sinker starts off fairly strong as a sitcom-style depiction of life for a suburban husband and father, veers into questionable male wish fulfillment territory, and then cleverly turns this around as a commentary on the naivety of Lewis' man-child character. Not necessarily essential, but a standout among the later films, and a nice note to end the decade on.

[domino harvey]

I admire your dedication in delving into non-Tashlin or Lewis-directed Jerry Lewis films! I think you're a little hard on Cinderfella and way too soft on the Disorderly Orderly, but your comments are mostly in the vicinity of agreeable! I think I threw my weight around the Ladies Man last round but if memory serves it didn't matter, since I was the only one to vote for any Jerry Lewis movie! Looks like at least that'll change. The Patsy is definitely an underrated gem amongst Lewis' work as a director and could squeak in my list, but I don't think I'll have room for anything save the Family Jewels, which as you rightly mention, does somewhat earn Lewis' ever-present sentimentality a bit more than his other works. Plus it's brilliant from a formalist perspective.

[swo17]

Maybe it didn't come across, but I do still really like Cinderfella. It's probably the next film I would have redded if I'd been so inclined.

I'll probably only have room for one of these films on my list as well (the '60s are nuts) but I'll need to rewatch a few of them to decide which one.

[tarpilot]

The Ladies Man is a lock for me and there's no way I can see leaving The Patsy off as of right now. Great writeup, swo, though I'm a strong supporter of both Who's Minding the Store? and The Errand Boy. I misremembered One More Time as having a '69 release, and honestly feared for your sanity for a moment...I'm as obnoxiously fervent a Lewis booster as anyone and that thing's unwatchable

[swo17]

Is anyone else considering including The Apartment on their lists? I am of course referring to the Švankmajer short about the guy who lives in a crazy apartment where nothing works right (aka The Flat). Honestly, if I had to choose one Švankmajer short from this decade based purely on the idea/execution, I'd have a hard time picking between three or four of them. But the thing that launches this one into the stratosphere for me is Zdeněk Liška's score. (Seriously, who writes a score this good for a 12-minute trifle?) Also, Juraj Herz with a chicken. If you're seeking this out, you can of course find it on the BFI set, the Little Otik DVD if you're R1-locked, or here on YouTube if you are that lazy.

[zedz]

My top Svankmajer will be A Quiet Week in the House, probably because the animated interludes go furthest into dreamlike abstraction and after all these years I still have no idea what it's all about. Every time I see it it's just as mysterious and disturbing.

I don't know if I'll have room for more than that token, but The Flat would be my next choice.

(And apropos of nothing, is there any earthly reason why the image for Svankmajer's '68 short Zahrada / The Garden is a tightly cropped detail from the cover of the soundtrack album for Derek Jarman's The Garden?)

[FerdinandGriffon]

As far as Lewis's own pictures this decade, my picks are The Ladies Man and The Big Mouth, with Nutty Professor perhaps squeaking in Kelp-style.
I'm surprised to hear so little love for The Big Mouth. I think it's easily his most personal and unsettling picture, a psychological nightmare-landscape worthy of Kafka, and dangerously funny besides. And I'm not sure what's so great about The Family Jewels from a formalist perspective; the episodic structure is downright dull, reducing the film to an uneven series of half-formed vignettes.

[Wu.Qinghua]

Black Girl aka La noire de ... (Ousmane Sembene, France, Senegal 1966)

How come this beautiful film didn't make the Top100 last time? It's not only the first African film to win international recognition but also an exemplary 60s take on migration and racism telling the story of an African woman taking up a job as maid in, as far as I remember, Marseilles and featuring beautiful compositions as well as a marvellous sound track. The Kino DVD might be seriously flawed due to rendering a short color passage b/w, but this shouldn't prevent you from checking the film out (if you hadn't done that already). Spotlighted.

[knives]

I'm sure a general ignorance of African cinema and the decade just plain being so danged crowded is what's held it up. It's not my favorite of the Sembene's I've seen (that would be Xala), but it certainly is a great film.