Movies of My Life: 1964

1964 had more than its share of political movies, plus some fun comedies, James Bond, and Jesus Christ!

 

(1) Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb

Dictionary.com defines “black comedy” as “comedy that employs morbid, gloomy, grotesque, or calamitous situations in its plot.” Can anything be more “morbid, gloomy, grotesque, or calamitous” than global nuclear war? Yet this movie is hilarious. “Gentlemen, you can't fight in here! This is the War Room”... Crazy character names like Gen. Jack D. Ripper, Col. “Bat” Guano, Soviet Premier Dmitri Kissov... And of course, Slim Pickens riding a nuclear warhead like a bucking bronco. It’s beautiful in its blackness.   

(2) Band of Outsiders (Bande à part)

This is probably Godard’s most accessible film, and one of the most fun. The dance scene in the cafe and the race through the Louvre have become iconic. (Even Saturday Night Live parodies the dance scene.) Quentin Tarantino loves this movies so much that he named his production company, A Band Apart, after it.

(3) Seven Days in May

If Dr. Strangelove is a political satire, then this movie would be a political horror story. A Marine colonel, played by Kirk Douglas, uncovers a military plot to overthrow the president of United States. The coup is led by the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, played by Burt Lancaster. Seeing Douglas and Lancaster in verbal conflict is entertaining enough, but the intrigue is dynamite, and the idea, disturbing.

(4) The Pawnbroker

One of Rod Steiger’s finest performances as the survivor of a Nazi concentration camp who runs a New York pawnshop. The movie switches from his brooding, asocial behavior in the present to flashbacks of his brutal treatment from the Nazis.

(5) Father Goose

I love this little movie with Cary Grant as a drunken expatriate living in the South Seas during World War II and Leslie Caron as a French governess to a bevy of stranded school girls. The burgeoning romance of the “Filthy Beast” and “Miss Goody Two Shoes” is delightful.

(6) The Gospel According to St. Matthew

It took a Marxist atheist to direct a really accurate adaptation of the gospel. Italian neorealist Pier Paolo Pasolini focused on one gospel account rather than a compilation and took the dialogue directly from the Bible. (It’s said he used a Bible on the set rather than a screenplay.) The opening sequence, which cuts between the pregnant Mary and the disappointed Joseph, is priceless.

(7) Goldfinger

Perhaps the best of Sean Connery’s James Bond movies. The image of the girl painted completely in gold lying dead on the bed still haunts me, and Shirley Bassey’s rendition of the title song is just as memorable.

(8) The Best Man

Yet another political film from 1964, this one dramatizes a battle for the party nomination between two top candidates played by Henry Fonda and Cliff Robertson. The screenplay by Gore Vidal has the same insider’s view that I loved in Advise and Consent (1962).

(9) A Shot in the Dark

The second (and I think, the best) of the Inspector Clouseau movies with Peter Sellers. This film features Elke Sommer as Maria Gambrelli (I love hearing Clouseau say her full name over and over again), and there's a wonderful scene in a nudist colony.

(10) Island of the Blue Dolphins

This movie was on television often when I was a kid, and I watched it every time. Not a big blockbuster, it was a simple story about a Native American girl who gets stranded on an island for several years. The book was a Newberry award winner, and after seeing the movie so many times, I finally read the book. (Yes, I do read occasionally.)

Other favorites from 1964: Mary Poppins, My Fair Lady, Fail Safe (yet another political thriller), A Fistful of Dollars, The Night of the Iguana, 7 Faces of Dr. Lao and Lady in a Cage.