Movies of My Life: 1965

Not one of my favorite years, but still some interesting flicks here.

(1) A Patch of Blue

The same year Martin Luther King Jr. led the march from Selma to Montgomery, Sidney Poitier was breaking stereotypes on the screen. I watched this movie so many times growing up, I know it had an impact on me. Poitier plays an educated black man who tries to help a blind girl escape from her abusive mother and her sheltered life. This movie is overshadowed by his work from 1967 (when he had three box office hits released just a few months apart), but its subtlety is exquisite.

(2) Repulsion

Wow! Catherine Deneuve plays a disturbed woman who’s left alone for the weekend. Seems like a simple enough story until she starts letting her delusions get the best of her. It’s Roman Polanski’s first English-language film. 

(3) Alphaville

Jean-Luc Godard deconstructs the science fiction movie with no special effects, costumes, or gadgets. A Ford Mustang stands in for a spaceship. The futuristic city is just Paris in the 1960s. The hero of the story is Lemmy Caution, a character that appeared in numerous crime dramas previously. He dresses, talks, and acts just like any film noir hero from the period. It’s an unusual take on a familiar genre.

(4) The Sound of Music

Christopher Plummer, who plays Captain von Trapp in this movie, called it “The Sound of Mucus.” Critic Pauline Kael called it, “the single most repressive influence on artistic freedom in movies.” Still, I love it. Great songs, great cinematography, Julie Andrews. Maybe there is a “luxuriant falseness” to it, as Kael says, but it’s the kind of “luxuriant falseness” that’s really entertaining.

(5) Flight of the Phoenix

I like stories about disparate groups of people stranded together, trying to make the best of it. This one has the advantage of the angsty postwar Jimmy Stewart as an airplane pilot arguing with an overly self-confident German engineer (Hardy Kruger) about what to do with their crashed plane.

(6) Crack in the World

One of the best in the “unintended consequences” category of science fiction movies from this era. A group of scientists trying to tap into the geothermal energy at the Earth’s core inadvertently cause the global catastrophe of the title.

(7) The Collector

Super creepy movie about a butterfly collector, played by Terence Stamp, who turns his attention toward “collecting” a young blonde art student. The movie and the book on which it was based have had some real life “unintended consequences.”

(8) The Greatest Story Ever Told

In 1964, we had an Italian Jesus. In 1965, he’s Swedish. Max Von Sydow plays Christ in this dark blockbuster that follows Jesus’s life from nativity to resurrection. The movie has an all-star cast, and perhaps it’s worth sitting through its four hours just to hear John Wayne as a Roman Centurion say, “Surely this man was the Son of God.”

 (9) Cat Ballou

Lee Marvin plays two roles – a drunken has-been gunfighter and his villainous brother with a silver nose, while Stubby Kaye and Nat King Cole perform as a kind of Greek chorus with banjos. Jane Fonda stars as the title character in this comedy western.

(10) Dr. Who and the Daleks

I’ve been a fan of the Doctor Who TV series since the 1980s, when PBS began broadcasting the Tom Baker episodes. This movie has The Doctor (played by Peter Cushing) and his most famous enemy, the Daleks, but it veers too far away from the canon of the series. It’s only in this list because it was the first movie my wife Karen and I watched together when we started dating. The fact that she still watches Doctor Who with me 30 years later says a lot about her endurance!

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.

Movies of My Life: 1963

After my list for 1962 included two of my favorite movies of all time (To Kill a Mockingbird and Lawrence of Arabia), I was even more surprised when I started on the list for the next year and discovered one of the most important movies in my life.

(1) 8 1/2 (Otto e Mezzo)

When you walk into my office, the first thing you see is a poster for this semi-autobiographical (some would say self-indulgent) film from Italian master Federico Fellini. When you hear me announcing arts events on Ann Nicholson’s “Arts Scene” program, the musical background is the circus theme from this movie. At one time in my life, you would often see me sporting a black fedora my wife bought me, styled after the hat worn by the film’s main character, Guido Anselmi. And to think, the first time I saw this film, I hated it, which is why you should never let the first viewing of a movie be your last. The complexity of Fellini’s creation is what I love so much about this film – moving seamlessly from reality to fantasy to dream sequences and flashbacks (sometimes it’s hard to know which one we’re experiencing); allusions to Pinocchio (notice how Guido touches his nose when he’s lying); themes hidden inside of word play and psychology (Asa Nisi Masa, the secret word revealed by the mind reader is a sort of pig-Latin for “anima,” about the feminine nature in men); and its dark humor (the opening dream sequence seems grim, but I think it’s hilarious). The first time I showed this movie in a college class, they were all unimpressed. The second time, I preceded the screening with a 30 minute lecture on some of the things to watch for, including those I mentioned above. The class broke out in spontaneous applause after it ended.

(2) The Haunting

 This is, by far, my favorite ghost story on film. Like so many movies about ghosts, it’s the story of a group of people who spend the night in a haunted house, and it has a similar title to several of them (see my blog post, “Hell House, Hill House,What the...” for more about this phenomenon). What makes this movie so special is the character of Eleanor, played by Julie Harris. Eleanor is a timid woman with psychic abilities who considers this trip to a haunted house a vacation. After spending years caring for an ailing mother, Eleanor suffers from social anxiety, suppressed rage, and perhaps some delusions. She’s just the kind of “steady” person you need in a haunted house tale.

(3) Lilies of the Field

A beautiful film about a black Baptist handyman (Sidney Poitier) who is hornswoggled into building a chapel for some East German nuns to serve Mexican American Catholics in the Arizona desert. Poitier became the first African American man to win a competitive Oscar for the lead role in this film. While Poitier’s career was filled with strong performances, there’s something so simple and stirring about this role I just love it, especially when he teaches the nuns the song, “Amen.” (Interestingly, Poitier’s singing was dubbed since he can’t carry a tune.)  

(4) The Birds

Trust Alfred Hitchcock to take something as innocent and natural as a flock of birds and turn it into a subject of horror. After viewing this film, you will never see a large group of birds settle in one spot without thinking about the schoolyard scene (or Mel Brooks’ parody of it in High Anxiety). There’s no practical explanation as to why the birds go on a rampage, but the attacks seem to parallel psychological conflict in the characters, making this movie much more than a “nature gone wild” story.

(5) Hud

I haven’t seen this movie in years, but the character of Hud, played by Paul Newman, remains number one in my mind when I hear the phrase “anti-hero.” Hud wasn’t just disillusioned or self-absorbed. He was amoral. And proud of it.

(6) Lord of the Flies

William Golding’s novel (a favorite of high school teachers everywhere) is brought to life in gritty black-and-white. Of the ghosts, killer birds and mad scientists mentioned in the list for this year, the scariest by far are British schoolboys left to their own devices.

(7) X: The Man with X-Ray Eyes

This low-budget Roger Corman sci fi thriller would be just another story of a mad scientist suffering the unintended consequences of his crazy experiments except for the metaphysical nature of Dr. Xavier’s x-ray visions. He describes what he sees as he looks outside: “The city... as if it were unborn. Rising into the sky with fingers of metal, limbs without flesh, girders without stone... A city unborn. Flesh dissolved in an acid of light. A city of the dead.” The ending at a revival tent is unforgettable.

(8) It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World

My son says that you should beware of comedies that are longer than 90 minutes, and I tend to agree with him. Usually, you can’t maintain laughs for two hours. This movie is more than three hours long, and while it does get tiresome, it features some of the greatest screen comedians of the 60s, including dozens of cameos, many by comedians from an earlier era. It’s worth it just to see them all in one film.  

(9) Charade

How can you not love a movie with Cary Grant and Audrey Hepburn? This film is sometimes called, “the best Hitchcock movie Hitchcock never made.” The director was Stanley Donen, but the film possesses a lot of the elements you’d find in a Hitchcock picture: characters pretending to be someone they’re not, murder and mayhem, secret agents, a macguffin, and Cary Grant, of course. (You can catch a “Home Fry-ed” version of this film on UALR University Television occasionally.)

(10) The Pink Panther

Peter Sellers created one of the most iconic comedy figures of cinema for this film, Inspector Clouseau. David Niven got top billing as a debonair jewel thief trying to steal the priceless “Pink Panther” diamond, but it was Sellers who stole the show. The character of Clouseau appears in ten more films, the best of which starred Sellers.  

Movies of My Life: 1962

One of my greatest joys over the years has been watching movies. I love all kinds of films – from foreign art films to schlocky horror movies, from the Hollywood classics of the 1930s and 40s to today’s latest releases, from big blockbusters to a movie about a couple of guys having dinner. That love of movies led me to teach film classes as an adjunct professor, to lead discussions at public screenings, to host a movie show on cable TV, and to spend countless hours researching and writing about film.

I got curious a few years ago when I realized that a couple of my favorite movies were released in 1962, the year I was born. I started compiling a list of my top ten movies made that year, and it was fun to see what other favorites had come out in ‘62. I then moved on to the next year, and the next. Some years it was hard to come up with 10, and some years it was a struggle to whittle it down. Regardless, it gave me a sense of just how much fun I’d had discovering these films. Of course, I didn’t see most of them until years after they were released, and the truth is these lists are organic, changing as I see new movies or my tastes change. Regardless, I thought that sharing these lists might be a way to tell you about a wide variety of films and give you some suggestions for your own viewing.

So for the next 52 weeks, I’m going to try to give you a list of my top ten movies from each year since I was born. I’ll post a different year, in sequence, each week, with a few comments. I hope you enjoy it.

Let’s start with one of my favorite years, 1962.

(1) To Kill a Mockingbird

This movie is beloved, not just by me, but by every member of my family. Part of the affection comes from the portrayal of a Southern family in a small town during the Depression. Growing up in a small Southern town in the 1960s and 70s, with a mother who lived through the Depression, I see things here that ring true to me personally. Atticus Finch was always one of my heroes, and I was thrilled when AFI selected him as the number one hero on its list of “100 Heroes and Villains.” This movie makes me weep uncontrollably, and the scene that makes me tear up the most is when Atticus leaves the courtroom, and the black preacher in the balcony tells Scout to “stand up. Your father’s passing.” (I’m getting verklempt just writing about it.) When I finally as an adult read the book, I understood even more deeply why this is one of the best American movies ever made. It portrays the best and the worst of our nation.

(2) Lawrence of Arabia

A restored version of this film was released in 1989, and I got the chance to see this 4 hour classic with my wife, not once but twice, at the Cinema 150 in Little Rock, a theater designed for showing wide screen pictures. I’d grown up seeing the faded pan-and-scan version on television, and while you could get the essence of its greatness, you couldn’t really appreciate how absolutely breathtaking it was until seeing it on the big screen, as it was meant to be seen. The best example is the scene at the well as Sherif Ali (Omar Sharif) comes riding from deep in the background while Lawrence (Peter O’Toole) stands stunned in the foreground at the murder of his guide. Even on widescreen DVD versions seen on an HD television, you can’t match that spectacle. I would rate the viewing of this movie at that theater as one of the best moviegoing experiences of my life.    

(3) Advise and Consent

I had a history teacher in high school who would tell us about important movies that were coming up on television and give us extra credit if we watched them and wrote a précis about them. Wow! Course credit for watching a movie? Unheard of. One of those films Mr. Offut suggested was Advise and Consent, about the confirmation hearings for a fictional president’s nominee for Secretary of State. The political intrigue and backroom negotiations still inform my opinion of what Washington politics are really like.

(4) The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance

One of only two movies where a couple of Hollywood’s biggest stars, John Wayne and Jimmy Stewart, appeared on screen together. (The other was The Shootist, Wayne’s last picture. Both were in How the West Was Won, but did not appear in any scenes together.) This movie features one of my favorite, oft-quoted lines: “This is the West, sir. When the legend becomes fact, print the legend.”

(5) The Manchurian Candidate

One of those movies I grew up reading about but didn’t see until I was an adult. Angela Lansbury plays one of the most evil women in cinematic history, a mole for the Chinese government who allows her brainwashed son to become an assassin and kill a presidential candidate. Her incestuous scenes with her son are even creepier when you discover that Lansbury is only three years older than Laurence Harvey, who plays her son.

(6) Whatever Happened to Baby Jane?

I loved this movie when I was a kid. It was a modern horror story, with real people rather than supernatural beings as the monsters. Bette Davis and Joan Crawford were both struggling to find good parts for middle aged women during this time, and this disturbing story of two embattled siblings was the perfect vehicle, further empowered by the animosity the two screen legends held for each other off screen. And you’ll never forget seeing what Baby Jane has brought her sister for lunch!

(7) The Exterminating Angel

Another movie I grew up reading about but didn’t see until I got a subscription to Facets Video in the 1990s. Like most Luis Bunuel films, it’s a critique of the bourgeoisie, with a group of party-goers who can’t leave the host’s house and go home. They’re stuck there for days, maybe weeks, taking whatever means are needed to survive, including sacrificing their host because maybe he caused the whole thing. It’s beautifully surreal.

(8) Carnival of Souls

Made on the lowest of budgets, this film was barely even noticed when it first came out. Now it’s a cult classic. Its Twilight Zone-like story is okay, but it’s the creepy atmosphere that makes this movie more than just another low budget exploitation film.

(9) Birdman of Alcatraz

It’s one of my favorite Burt Lancaster performances as Robert Stroud, the convicted murderer who becomes an ornithology expert. What makes the performance so interesting is that you so much want to sympathize with Stroud because of his superior intellect, but Lancaster never lets you forget the emotions that put Stroud in federal prison in the first place.

(10) Ride the High Country

In the first few minutes of this western, Sam Peckinpah introduces the transition from the classic western of the 19th century to the revisionist western of the early 20th century, which would become the standard setting for his later films. We see policemen dressed like English bobbies, a horseless carriage, a popcorn machine, and a race between a horse and a camel. I use this clip to show students how genre films are a mix of “novelty and familiarity” – what you expect and what you don’t expect.

Some of the other great films from 1962: Lolita, Jules and Jim, Cape Fear, Mr. Hobbs Takes a Vacation, The Longest Day, Knife in the Water, How the West Was Won, and The Miracle Worker. (Maybe I should have done a top 20!)