The 1966 Mini-List

[bottlesofsmoke]

I’ll third the recommendation of Alvarez Kelly and also add a rec for another great western, The Professionals, both of which I prefer to The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly. Just marvelous storytelling and acting. The Professionals feels like the perfect bridge film between the classic western and late 60s westerns like The Wild Bunch, blending the violence and brutality of a more realistic western setting with the classic western’s sense of honor and professionalism, playing with both in interesting ways. The current blu is almost 15 years but available for cheap.

[therewillbeblus]

Agreed on the charms of The Professionals, which is one of many very good films I didn't include in my shortlist because then it just turns into a top fifty. I revisited it again earlier this year and it's still a lot of fun, but now mostly for the group dynamic of strong personalities clashing and syncing together, and less for its action or narrative trajectory

[domino harvey]

One of my favorite Oscar random occurrences is that the film was somehow nominated for Best Director (and it was of course better than 4/5 of the films that were nominated for Best Picture) in the bizarre lineup where only 2/5 of the Director noms had Best Picture noms

[alacal2]

Please could you add
Alfie (Lewis Gilbert)
The Family Way (Roy Boulting)
I Was Happy Here (Desmond Davis)

Thankyou

[swo17]

Added

[yoshimori]

Not particular favorites, but Resnais' La guerre est finie and Ichikawa's Genji monogatari should probably be on the list, no? Had both on my re-watch list for 1966 and was surprised not to find them in the top post.

[swo17]

OK, added

[therewillbeblus]

Peckinpah's adaptation of Noon Wine is pretty excellent, economically comprising the action into a brief runtime without shaving off any of the significant tissue illustrating characterization and fleshing out rich, complicated relationship dynamics with implicit direction. Peckinpah treats the material with the intimacy it deserves, but isn't shy about imbuing brutality within the limitations of ABC's parameters, particularly in the manhunt, where an exceptional Per Oscarsson (who out-acts Robards and de Havilland here, great as they are) emits a scream that shook me to the core. Robards' performance is interesting, as he becomes better and better as his character becomes more vulnerable and suffers greatly, which is an interesting approach to portraying a man shielding substance under a facade of toxic dominance. Normally an actor may hide their emotional dexterity inside the character, only to gradually reveal what's clearly being considered by the actor all along, but Robards moves from a borderline phoned-in perf to one of great virtues and sensitivity by the credit roll. At least that's how I experienced it, but it was a welcome surprise to see him go places that I know he can but didn't think he would.

[knives]

Could you add Circus of Fear, a fine crime flick with Christopher Lee and a not yet fully famous Klaus Kinski. I was expecting something similar to Money’s City of the Dead, but instead this drums to a whole new beat kid of like a Hawks noir.

[swo17]

Circus of Fear

This looks like an interesting case--a German/UK co-production released in Germany (with Werner Jacobs credited as director) in April 1966 and then not in the UK (with John Llewellyn Moxey credited as director) until November 1967. Any idea how the two versions compare? I like Moxey, Lee, and Kinski so I'm curious to watch it and perhaps will then be in a better position to assign it to a year

[knives]

I’ve got no clue on version differences.

[swo17]

Circus of Fear

This looks like an interesting case--a German/UK co-production released in Germany (with Werner Jacobs credited as director) in April 1966 and then not in the UK (with John Llewellyn Moxey credited as director) until November 1967. Any idea how the two versions compare? I like Moxey, Lee, and Kinski so I'm curious to watch it and perhaps will then be in a better position to assign it to a year

I watched this and listened to the director commentary, which revealed that Werner Jacobs had basically nothing to do with the film, but was credited as its director for the German release purely for financial reasons. In any case, I'll go ahead and put this in 1966

[alacal2]

Sky West and Crooked (John Mills)

Could you please add this. Watched this on YT and Hayley Mills gives a blinding performance as a young girl coping with grief and an alcoholic mother. The film is a bit of a family affair with Mary Hayley Bell responsible for the screenplay. Quite Ealingesque in many ways in its anarchic treatment of death and bereavement. Known as Gypsy Girl in the US I believe. Network just released this on Blu-ray

[swo17]

Added

[swo17]

Isn't Dracula: Prince of Darkness 1966?

You're about three weeks late with that question!

[Rayon Vert]

Can you point me to those posts? I'm not finding them with the search function.

[domino harvey]

I think he meant questions of eligibility need to be raised before the end of the original month the list started

[Rayon Vert]

Ah OK. I wouldn't have necessarily voted for it, but I always thought of it as a 1966 film and that's what IMDB and Wiki says. So I'm interested in what says otherwise.

[swo17]

In the clean-up that I'm doing behind the scenes to prepare for future years I actually already reassigned it to 1966, but that happened after I had created the 1965 poll. It's been eligible this whole time and only managed a single vote that way so I'm not inclined to make it eligible again for 1966, though as always if someone passionately disagrees with this I'm open to reconsidering

[Rayon Vert]

It's been eligible this whole time and only managed a single vote that way so I'm not inclined to make it eligible again for 1966, though as always if someone passionately disagrees with this I'm open to reconsidering

I will vote for it if it's eligible for 1966, fwiw.

[swo17]

It's been eligible this whole time and only managed a single vote that way so I'm not inclined to make it eligible again for 1966, though as always if someone passionately disagrees with this I'm open to reconsidering

I will vote for it if it's eligible for 1966, fwiw.

How's this: If someone else commits to vote for it, I'll make it eligible again for 1966

[Rayon Vert]

That works for me. Thanks swo.

[therewillbeblus]

Harper (Jack Smight): The jury's still out on how often this film wants us to take it seriously, or when and on what terms, which may be its greatest fault next to setting up all the chess pieces for something interesting to occur only to fail at every would-be setpiece. The lame ol' college-try begins as an unapologetic The Big Sleep-aping, casing Bacall as General Sternwood (Ha... ?) and continues to model itself after the Hawks, at about the same pace and sprawling intersectionality of characters and Russian-doll plot points. The film even stalls for bouts of argumentation, only inverted from sex-fueled animation into the banality of divorce logistics and spats emasculating Newman for his pathetic avoidance tactics as a meek target. So is it a postmodern riff on Bogey's false image and these narratives' lack of entertainment value in real life, like someone decided to make Altman's The Long Goodbye a few years earlier without thinking it through? The problem is that, whatever this 'is', none of the big players sell their parts or lines with any enthusiasm or earned comic apathy, the writing is obnoxiously overstated, and the director appears to be arrhythmically addressing the tone of the material, not only not understanding it himself but not committing to an approach with confidence. The ending seems to indicate that the whole thing is a joke, and might want us to let out a gasp of dry laughter at what may be darkly-comic cynicism, the characters (and film itself?) self-reflexively disappointed at their own botched death, or impotence to enact a satisfying climactic setpiece with all the tools present to do so. But that's a cop-out and emblematic of the whole film's awkward and self-conscious feel: an inert struggle to arrive at a definitive stance. Intentional or unintentional, it's disengaging to the point of frustrating boredom.

[DarkImbecile]

Yeah, Smight has less control over the tonal coherence of this film than Julie Harris' character does over the protagonist's Porsche, with a similarly fatal outcome.

For the first few minutes in Harper's office and as he gets his initial assignment from Bacall, I actually thought this could work quite well as a sunny California noir dappled with the cultural affectations of the mid-'60s, especially as Newman seemed committed to the gruff yet pathetic PI archetype. Instead, the plot just drags aimlessly and without investment from incident to incident, with Newman alternating between ineffective mugging and tough-guy posturing. The plot machinations are mostly uninteresting, and when they're not they tend to be confusing — and not in a mysterious, enticing way, but more of a "oh, I guess I was supposed to remember that guy from before" way. The ultimate twist is eyeroll-inducing, and the final scene aspires to drama it hasn't earned in the least.

The most off-putting element of Goldman's script is its intermittent, discordant nastiness, whether from Harper himself or the film's villains — unlike the noirs the film is trying to ape, none of this darkness feels inevitable or organic to the world or the characters, and so comes off as inauthentic feints in the direction of grittiness.

To avoid being totally negative: the one character moment I liked quite a bit was Harper's brief reunification with his estranged wife: his sad, bedraggled appearance at her door developing quickly into a kind of wounded, desperate sexuality made more clear why this woman would have fallen for him in the first place — and his cold abandonment of her the next morning similarly clarifies why she's so desperate to be rid of him. Leigh is consistently good throughout (which I can't say for nearly any other actor) but especially here; I would have been much more interested in a movie centered around her character's determined efforts to get away from her husband.

[therewillbeblus]

To avoid being totally negative: the one character moment I liked quite a bit was Harper's brief reunification with his estranged wife: his sad, bedraggled appearance at her door developing quickly into a kind of wounded, desperate sexuality made more clear why this woman would have fallen for him in the first place — and his cold abandonment of her the next morning similarly clarifies why she's so desperate to be rid of him. Leigh is consistently good throughout (which I can't say for nearly any other actor) but especially here; I would have been much more interested in a movie centered around her character's determined efforts to get away from her husband.

Well said, I'm in total agreement. While their earlier conflicts were tiring, that was entirely on Newman and the writer's ends, whereas Leigh showed up as fully committed to her role and amusing whenever the camera cut to her end of the phone calls, if only to see her stretch the range of appropriate tonal responses born from justified resentment. My tirade excluded that reunification, which was a pretty effective island of spark amidst the ocean of mismanaged atmosphere around it