REVEALED: THE ILX TOP 100 FILMS OF THE 1960s IN CINERAMA!

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20. The Wild Bunch
Sam Peckinpah, 1969
POINTS: 214
VOTES: 11

COMMENTS:

“"The Wild Bunch" is one of my favorite films--the Bunch might not be totally admirable, but I find much to admire about them, as SP wants us to. They're certainly more admirable than anyone else in the film, except Robert Ryan.”
-- es hurt

“The Wild Bunch, which is maybe my favorite film of all time.”

-- Gear!

19. Belle De Jour
Luis Bunuel, 1967
POINTS: 239
VOTES: 12

COMMENTS:

“Belle du Jour is excellent but the sheer omnipresence of it in film study and, yeah, the "shock value" of parts of the story line are incredibly tame by today's standards...it kind of becomes like a reference point more than it is a film; it's hard not to be uninteresting (comparatively) with that to live up to.”

-- Ally

“i dunno, i think belle de jour is still sort of shocking”

-- Amateur(ist)

“i fucking love her sunglasses in belle.”

-- kacka thompson

18. The Producers
Mel Brooks, 1968
POINTS: 240
VOTES: 13

COMMENTS:

“I don’t know what it is with this movie but sometimes it can make me laugh
till it hurts and other times, I find it tremendously sad and melancholic.
Whatever, I always absolutely love Mars’ German playwright Liebkind; the
epitome of the comedy movie Nazi: “I am the author. You are the audience. I
outrank you!””

--FIVE-EIGHT

17. Jules and Jim
Francois Truffaut, 1962
POINTS: 241
VOTES: 13

COMMENTS?

16. Yojimbo
Akira Kurosawa, 1961
POINTS: 244
VOTES: 10
#1’s: 1

“Yojimbo - I prefer this over "A Fistful of Dollars" (although, no good lines like, "My mule don't like people laughing") - another solid Kurosawa.”

--mj

From “Funniest scene in non-comedy” thread
“Yojimbo -- when Mifune wakes up after getting a beatdown, he asks where he is.

Guard #1: "The brewery---"
Guard #2 [slaps #1]: "Quiet! [to Mifune] At the gates of Hell."”

-- Leee

Hey! I remember neither making that post, nor seeing that scene!

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15. Once Upon A Time In The West
Sergio Leone, 1968
POINTS: 246
VOTES: 12
#1’s: 3

COMMENTS:

“Once Upon A Time In The West particularly is full of gorgeous and memorable scenes and shots, I think. I once went out with a woman who was named Leone because her father loved Sergio's films so much.”

-- Martin Skidmore

“There's that line that Jason Robards say to Claudia Cardinale's character, which starts off sort of funny and a split second later because of Leone's camera movement, the Morricone music, and her expression is is unbearably touching:

Cheyenne: You know, Jill, you remind me of my mother. She was the biggest whore in Alameda and the finest woman that ever lived.

“The final shot of OUATITW is remarkable on many, many levels. Primarily how in one camera move Leone shows the modern world ushering the old world out.”

-- Gear!

“Actually the best film ever committed to celluloid.

“Anyone with half a spark of life in them should be able to recognise that like the most impressive, inspirational creative articulations, One Upon A Time In The West rewards repeated viewings, rigorous intellectual scrutiny and technical appraisal with startling accomplishment, unmistakable presence, multifaceted interpretive dimension and of course, electrifying entertainment.

“The film is an opus. A sprawling paean to the genre and at the same time an exhilarating annihilation of the conventions it pays such reverent homage to. This film killed the Western, but in so doing, emerged as the greatest articulation of the form yet conceived.

“A brooding, haunting trip into the grimy world of the West, Leone sets a quartet of charismatic players against each other, in a desolate, unforgiving environment where half-hidden motives and cruel instinct clash head-on with human fragility and noble endeavour. Weaknesses are exploited and rampant greed rules; and against the backdrop of a railroad marching inexorably across the desert, so the protagonists ride roughshod over anybody who stands in the way of their ambitions; be they revenge, wealth,
lust, or fulfilment of fantasy. And yet when the dust settles, the cost of their collective ambition proves ultimately destructive, fatal even, their efforts squashed under the irresistible juggernaut of ‘Progress’, as the completion of the railroad heralds a new era or even greater greed and ambition. Perhaps a metaphor for the cyclical cannibalism of Western Capitalism, no one in this film takes any discernable satisfaction from the
realisation of their dreams, though the viewer is left exulted through the magnificent process of this discovery.

“Much is made of Morriocone’s score, and for my money it’s his most impressive – his core themes (one for each of the four central characters) meet and mingle throughout the piece, heightening the climaxes to the realm of ecstasy and lending the lulls a peculiar urgency and uneasiness. The thought the composer put into his work is frightening – the
unforgettable tone of Bronson’s Harmonica motif is the sound the instrument would make if you were to breath in and out through it without moving up and down the
scale (like say, if it was rammed in your mouth when your hands were tied behind your back, or if, like Frank, it was placed in your mouth after you had just taken a slug to the chest). It’s detail like this that makes Once Upon A Time In The West such a complete picture. The fact that Leone played the score to the actors on set as he filmed, can only have helped add to the strange aura the piece projects.

“The look and feel of this film is nothing short of majestic, encompassing an eerie, desolate, lunar-like landscape (like the very souls of the characters themselves, the landscape is for the most part a husky shell). In this world, law has no meaning, rules do not apply, morality is corrupt and not even money can buy you everything; the director is at pains to convince the viewer that anything is possible in his vision of the West, and the
familiar codes of the Western are systematically obliterated.

“The grime and dust practically slips off the screen, the intense detail of stubble and sweat puts the viewer right next to the players, the dialogue is both stilted and sparing, dramatic and at times incongruently comic; for stylistically, Leone is no realist. He takes his depictions one step further into the realms of mannerism, which means Once Upon A Time In The West truly lives up to its epic storybook title. The acute angles, elongated
shadows and monochromatic flat colours all add to the feeling of
otherworldliness and uneasiness that permeates the whole (a compositional technique Leone surely purloined from the Italian metaphysical painter De Chirico.
Seriously, next time you stand in front of a de Chirico, check it out – you’ll see what I mean).

“Turning to the narrative framework of the piece, Leone’s film contradicts
and twists the rules of the game right from the outset; The film opens with
the gunning down of three well known actors from the history of the
Western in what is the longest opening sequence in cinema history (originally
Leone planned to use Eastwood, Van Cleef and Wallach for this memorable
opening sequence, reprising their roles from the director’s previous film, The Good,
The Bad and The Ugly and so symbolising some kind of perverse closure).
Elsewhere, Leone underlines his intention to confound, in presenting to
the viewer the blue eyed hero of the bygone Western era Henry Fonda as a
stone-cold crystal-eyed, child murderer. In many other aspects, Once Upon A
Time In The West reworks the conventions of the genre and explodes the
expectations of the viewer; the most benevolent, comical character doesn’t
make it out of the story alive, while the beautiful woman at the heart of
the film, could either be metaphorically taking everyone for a ride, or
a stand as a symbol for the victims of ubiquitous masculine brutality and
ambition (in the film, even when the despicable Frank forces himself on
her, there are elements at work which hint that perhaps he is also being
played here). These are all examples of how each character in the film shifts
and skews with the slowly unfolding and twisting perspective that Leone
offers the viewer.

“Like the narrative (where good and evil merge into one moral entity),
the characters themselves defy expectation; and when they shoot each other
on screen, effectively they are blowing holes in the traditions and history
that Leone studied so meticulously before embarking on his greatest project.
The fact that the film is packed with countless references and symbols
culled from the cinematic history of the Western is perhaps added proof
that Leone intended to bury the genre with his picture.

“But there is still more to Leone’s piece than self-reference and movie making motifs. If you root deeper into the fabric of Leone’s movie, you may imagine, and with a not inconsiderable degree of plausibility, that it is loaded up with social metaphor and cultural resonance. This is a movie that can be taken any number of ways; that can be pushed beyond the point of snapping of many such other lauded cinematic achievements. Ambition, Greed, Revenge, Love, Lust, Progress; these are some of the universal key
themes that the viewer may flesh out from the bones of Leone’s complex and often subtle plot. Leone presents to the viewer a vision whereupon Old and New worlds collide at a crossroads, and the driving forces of acquisition and wish-fulfilment collapse in futility, bringing down with them a maelstrom of death and destruction. The fact that he sets the Western on a burning pyre through the process, merely confirms Once Upon A Time In The West’s place in the pantheon of great cinema.’

--FIVE-EIGHT

14. Lawrence of Arabia
David Lean, 1962
POINTS: 248
VOTES: 13

COMMENTS?

-- a spectator bird

Yeah, who would say they all die at the end?!

sorry, i didn't mean "all" as every last dude in the movie, but "all" as in all the people who die. argh. go see it anyone who hasn't.

Butch Cassidy: NO BACHARACH POP IN CIRCA 1900 PERIOD FILMS, PLEEZ

13. A Hard Day’s Night
Richard Lester, 1964
POINTS: 268
VOTES: 13

COMMENTS:

(from “100 big dance numbers” thread) “99. When The Beatles Go To The Nightclub In A Hard Day's Night and Ringo Freaks Out On The Dancefloor”

-- Fritz Wollner

‘It occurs to me that the best plotless film I can think of is "A Hard Day's Night." (Well, virtually plotless. "Ringo goes out wandering for a while and then comes back" is as close as it gets.)”

-- Douglas

2001
A Taste of Honey
Bonnie & Clyde
Breathless
Dr. Strangelove

In Cold Blood
Irma La Douce
Last Year in Marienbad
Midnight Cowboy
Psycho

Rosemary's Baby
Satryicon
The Apartment
The Good, The Bad and the Ugly
West Side Story

Is there an obvious three on that list that won't appear in the top 100 at all?

(You've picked three that I put in more or less because I associate an aura of general appreciation with the names - I've never actually seen them, so I can't go "No way!")

Ayways, from you list I'd guess West side story won't make it (or rather I wish it didn't). Same with A taste of honey, it won't make it. Dunno for the 3rd one.

BTW, didn't anybody vote for Jungle book?

i don't think these are locks (from least likely to place to most):

A Taste of Honey
Irma La Douce
In Cold Blood
Satryicon
West Side Story
Last Year in Marienbad

the rest, for better (breathless, the good, the bad, and the ugly) or worse (2001, rosemary's baby), are probably sure things.

the only thing i get out of all the president's men is that i'd rather be watching robards in a leone film!

strangelove seems like a good bet for #1.

hoffman i could take or leave. straw dogs has its moments, as does marathon man. the rest = very eh.

my guess at the top five:

01 The Good, The Bad and the Ugly
02 Dr Strangelove
03 Breathless
04 The Apartment
05 Band of Outsideres

2001 i loved when i was 14, but it's really pretty empty-headed in a lot of ways. the HAL scenes are great, but i think i prefer real antonioni to kubrick-doing-antonioni, really.

That's Kael I'm pretty sure, unless GM stole it.

Armond White:

"In 1962, John Frankenheimer's The Manchurian Candidate was too wildly improbable to believe—-and that's why its satirical story about a Korean War veteran being brainwashed into a political assassin was such scary fun. The 60s assassinations that followed made the movie seem eerily prescient, and many viewers mistook that coincidence to be proof that it was a great movie.

Truth is, the '62 film, adapted by impish screenwriter George Axelrod from Richard Condon's burlesque thriller novel, was more kitschy than profound. Today it looks like a pretty scar hiding the malaise of the 60s. Its naïve shock (concerning war fatigue, political subterfuge, incest) doesn't do justice to the real-life sorrow that had once seemed unimaginable."

I don't go along with AW's idea that the remake is better (save Liev Schreiber is an improvement on Laurence Harvey).

As films adapted from Condon novels go, I prefer Prizzi's Honor. (Now, if the film had made Eleanor a junkie like the book... JD, the novel's INSANE compared to the film. Read it.)

I really should've voted for at least one Jerry Lewis movie. Not that anyone else did, apparently.

"I remember first seeing it alone, when it came out in 1962, at the Varsity Theatre in Palo Alto, California, a Moorish wonderland of a movie house. The first thing I did when it was over was call my best friend and tell him he had to see it, too. We went the next night; as we left, I asked what he thought. "Greatest movie I ever saw," he said flatly, as if he didn't want to talk about it - and he didn't.

He said what he said stunned, with bitterness, as if he shouldn't have had to see this thing, as if what it told him was both true and false in a manner he would never be able to untangle, as if it was both incomprehensible and all too clear, as if the whole experience had been, somehow, a gift, the gift of art, and also unfair - and that was how I felt, too."

the rest here:

http://books.guardian.co.uk/extracts/story/0,6761,754309,00.html

that armond white excerpt almost reads like a parody of kael! "scary fun," "kitschy," and espec "many viewers mistook that coincidence to be proof that it was a great movie" (incredibly condescending!!)

i didn't bother with the remake, i'll check out the novel though.

Tom, you're not from the "it's funny cuz it's old" school, like the clowns at the Film Forum who laugh through the climax of Rififi, are you?

Manchurian works best as a nightmare comedy, as with the liberal senator getting shot right in the milk carton.

The deal with Janet Leigh was someone convinced her to walk around only in her underwear for 90% of the film.