1961's Best Movies: 60 Years Later

Too many canonical things here I still need to see; might go with either Buñuel or Kurosawa, but I have to say (controversially?) that this is one year where I actually have no quarrel with the Best Picture winner.

Can't decide which arthouse cliche I prefer right now. Therefore I will write in The Connection.

I have to say (controversially?) that this is one year where I actually have no quarrel with the Best Picture winner

It's probably my favorite of the decade's BPs also, maybe just behind In the Heat of the Night.

I've read auteurists defending El Cid.

Chronicle Of A Summer. Docs that centre on ordinary ppl talking about their lives are catnip to me, cf the Up series and Place de La Republique.

xp I mean, I've read auteurists defending My Son John.

I haven't seen Divorce Italian Style but Seduced & Abandoned is one of the most harrowing films that I've ever seen billed as a comedy; Germi seems more interested in calling bullshit on Italian masculinity than any of his contemporaries.

DIS is some cute bullshit, though, and I realized re-watching La Dolce Vita for the sake of my film class that Mastroianni's charms are lost on me.

Il Posto is a perfect small movie in its way.

It is. I sometimes wonder if it gets confused with Il Postino (not crazy about the English title, The Sound of Trumpets).

i have seen one film on this list so i guess i’ll vote for it (the godard, which i’ve seen many times and probably would still really love if i watched it again)

I still haven't watched Il Posto.

Olmi's work has a range that you wouldn't know if you only saw Il Posto (which is good) and Tree of Wooden Clogs (pretty dull). I really liked a couple of mid-career films that are neither gentle social observation or blunt realism: One Fine Day from 1969 and The Circumstance from 1973. They take place in a middle class environment and they're like a less-arty Antonioni.

see I find Tree of Wooden Clogs soothing: his ambient Eno fiflm.

These are the 5 masterpieces I've seen from this year:

The Ladies’ Man (Jerry Lewis, USA)
Last Year at Marienbad (Alain Resnais, France)
Chronicle of a Summer (Jean Rouch & Edgar Morin, France)
The Innocents (Jack Clayton, UK)
Viridiana (Luis Buñuel, Spain)

Tho if I'm to be honest, I probably rate Viridiana toward the bottom of the '60s Buñuel list. (Still a masterpiece.)

Me too. It gets too slow in the second third.

In the best Buñuel films, it feels like he's challenging his own assumptions as well as the audience's. Viridiana feels like he's already proved his points, I don't feel he's weighing any of the issues.

that's a shrewd point

Somebody said that Buñuel didn't really understand her character, which explains why the film becomes more inert once the uncle dies.

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I've only seen a few of these, but The Hustler is a really dark and fucked-up movie, so that.

Don’t want to have to pick.

But I did

The problem with The Hustler is it's so damn literary and Newman's still besotted with the Method. I wish the performance he gave in The Color of Money was the one he'd given then.

It's not Newman's best work, but everyone around him (Jackie Gleason, George C. Scott, Piper Laurie, Murray Hamilton) is great.

It is very method-y, but I'd say it's about as great as that kind of thing ever gets, this side of On the Waterfront. And yes, the supporting cast is amazing, Scott and Laurie especially. Keep an eye peeled for Jake LaMotta as a bartender.

I loved the cynicism in Viridiana, the mirror images of the end and the beginning and its criticism of Franco's Spain. immediately following it The Exterminating Angel was another amazing film

voted for Last Year at Marienbad a very strange film

Scott is by far the best thing in it.

George C. Scott in his "blink-and-you-miss-it" role in Last Year at Marienbad.

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