The 1961 Mini-List

[swo17]

Yes, Through a Glass Darkly fared very well on my latest revisit.

On a possibly unrelated note, what a great year it was for Hammer! Cash on Demand is a gripping heist film whose ending I initially found to be a bit of a cop-out, but once I saw the film as Hammer upending A Christmas Carol it became much more satisfying. (Make sure to watch the US version, as the UK version was surprisingly truncated so it could play as merely a supporting feature.) Terror of the Tongs really took me by surprise my first viewing by how brutal it was willing to be. On a revisit it more made me feel just dirty, but hey, it's still worth seeing once! And then Taste of Fear is just a really smart and effective riff on Diabolique, though I gather it doesn't need much boosting here from me. These can be found sequentially in Indicator's Hammer Volumes 2-4, and for my money, they're each the best film in their respective sets

[dustybooks]

First-time watches so far (warning, some of these are edited from my drive-by impressions on Letterboxd):

Lola (Demy): Much like DarkImbecile I'd meant to get around to this for ages, especially after seeing Jacquot de Nantes, but just hadn't made time for it till this project. Unlike most here I haven't yet felt totally connected to any of Demy's work but I probably liked this the most of those I've seen to date. One thing I really like about this and The Young Girls of Rochefort is that they're nostalgic, but not for "a simpler time" so much as a time in which matters of the heart dominate everyone's thoughts much of the time. The slightly byzantine story structure felt oddly serendipitous with the Wong Kar-wai boxed set I'm working my way through at the moment, very "could it be that she was the sister of the boy in Kansas who loved the girl with the tattered shawl who was the daughter of the maid who had escaped from the pirates?" with a similarly giddy sense of fleeting and tenuous connections between people. Like Wong, Demy zeros in on certain moments and makes them resonate even if we'd naturally find them mundane or slightly unsettling. He seems to approach the idea of "innocence" as one of missed opportunity, one that by definition is made to be spoiled (in other words, going back in time and changing things won't fix them); he would redeem these characters, after a fashion, in The Young Girls, whereas for now they're sort of stuck in time, some luckier than others. I find this more satisfying but don't especially enjoy the characters themselves so much as the convoluted puzzle of the everyday in which they're all situated.

Lover Come Back (Delbert Mann): As Day/Hudson teamings go this is so much better than Pillow Talk, which bugged the hell out of me; for one thing it's actually funny, the only big missteps being when Mann underlines the jokes too much with music or excessive pauses. It variously reminded me of Brain Candy and Giants and Toys due to all the ad-agency stuff and the introduction of a mystery product, though like a lot of sitcom-like films it does feel extremely slight and muddled story-wise at the end of the day (this movie seemed to end just because it was time to end more than because anything was resolved). Tony Randall steals the film easily, and the early scenes that revolve most around his hopeless ineffectiveness are the best parts, but the legend of Day and Hudson's chemistry is wholly deserved, and Hudson gets a few surprisingly good comedic moments himself. I’ve defended Day before as an excellent actress but for me this honestly is one of her less enjoyable performances, and the title song over the opening credits is awful. But this was fun, as both amusing comedy and eye-gouging early ‘60s kitsch.

The End of Summer (Ozu): Ozu's warm colors envelop a story capturing a brief window in the lives around a family-owned sake brewery, which ends up chronicling an elderly man's double life with surprising gentleness and lack of judgment... the message finally being, I believe,

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that coping with death is a matter for the living rather than the dead, and that such coping is ideally comprised primarily of living on one's own terms.

As ever, the characterizations are superb and Ozu's adherence to devoting one's life to one's own desires and needs places him firmly at odds with the prevailing attitudes of mainstream society in Japan at the time, which is surely the idea, but the sage attitude of it all is worth hearing far away and far down the line of history. He even gives it a little urgency in his own eccentric way

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(with crows and smoke).

A beautiful work from a master, and what a tremendous collection of performances this gathers.

Revisits so far...

West Side Story (Wise/Robbins): As mentioned earlier in the thread this was my third time, but I still haven't fallen fully in love with it. The most impressive moments are all in the first hour — the breathtaking camerawork, choreography and editing in the opening duel, and “America” which deserves its reputation as one of the last great crown jewels of the Hollywood musical — and the second act seems to go on forever, but the emotional weight at the conclusion still genuinely crushes. While Rita Moreno’s performance is the showpiece, physically vibrant and uninhibited in every sense, Natalie Wood despite the inherently problematic nature of her work here gives a divinely textured characterization… and that she survives the film, overwhelmed with grief but also empowered by her growing consciousness of the injustices around her, provides sufficient identification for the closing credits (one of Saul Bass’ greatest achievements) to transfix fully, a long sigh of despair that feels three-dimensional. A film I kept thinking of this time is Los Olvidados, which ridicules the idea of institutions coming to the aid of disenfranchised people like those at the center of this narrative; West Side Story seems to take the more classically liberal tactic of implying that the violence throughout the film is self-perpetuating (and self-defeating) rather than entirely a consequence of forces beyond the characters' control. I think there's some truth in both arguments but tend to think Bunuel's much more cynical viewpoint has aged better, even though I can't really object to the more balanced world WSS imagines, in which people really do feel ashamed when confronted with the drastic consequences of their prejudices.

Last Year at Marienbad (Resnais): This played much more humorously to me the second time; its ominous moments come across as playful in a certain context/mindset. But its beguiling dream-structure is still uniquely engaging, and for all its heavy use of verbiage to help put across its moods and motifs, for all the deliberately vague aspects of the story it semi-tells, it manages to feel remarkably complete and assured as a piece of creative inspiration. And it's hard to think of many films (Carnival of Souls is one) that do so much with the idea of "place"; it's the most utopian fruition of Resnais' focus upon life/death as reflected within the inanimate. It's a stunning and beautiful film, but my main feeling is how much fun I have with it.

El Cid (Mann): My late father loved the big Hollywood epics of the '50s and '60s and had a whole shelf of the old double-VHS cases which I would suffer through with him as an elementary schooler. With this outlying entry in this project I've now revisited them all as an adult, of course with the added knowledge that the strength of the mise en scene here is likely due entirely to Mann's expertise (in contrast to Ben-Hur, in which I think it's well documented that Wyler, a director I adore, had little to do with the best scenes). What I can't get over watching something like this or Cleopatra, even though they do little for me in a narrative sense, is how spectacular (and expensive) they look, if anything more so as the years pass. I remember Domino Harvey saying something about "netless tennis" referring to CGI-based filmmaking when Hugo came out and I must say that as absurd as this may sound, just the knowledge that what's on screen here was actually filmed in the real world in some practical / optical sense is enough to keep me intermittently engaged across the full three hours, and of course the stars look terrific and still feel like bona fide stars.

[therewillbeblus]

On a possibly unrelated note, what a great year it was for Hammer! Cash on Demand is a gripping heist film whose ending I initially found to be a bit of a cop-out, but once I saw the film as Hammer upending A Christmas Carol it became much more satisfying. (Make sure to watch the US version, as the UK version was surprisingly truncated so it could play as merely a supporting feature.) Terror of the Tongs really took me by surprise my first viewing by how brutal it was willing to be. On a revisit it more made me feel just dirty, but hey, it's still worth seeing once! And then Taste of Fear is just a really smart and effective riff on Diabolique, though I gather it doesn't need much boosting here from me. These can be found sequentially in Indicator's Hammer Volumes 2-4, and for my money, they're each the best film in their respective sets

I'll need to revisit Cash on Demand now, but I agree with the other two being the best in their respective sets. My writeups for each:

The Terror of the Tongs
This Hammer film took the greatest hits of the contrived ideas present in their formulaic mold and laid them on the table unapologetically. I had a blast with this one, to my own surprise - and slight embarrassment, for my enjoyment of Lee’s assignment to the role of a Chinese caricature. While this choice is problematic in theory, he portrays the character as an ‘evil Englishmen’ with limited stereotyping to the Asian, yet inverted stereotyping toward the Western English imperialist attitudes he exudes in character beyond vocals. The result is hilarious in its absurdity, and oddly poignant in its own reveal of prejudices of negative characters through role-playing, embodying them as the persecutor in spirit in the form of the persecuted, regardless of whether this was the intention or not (I’m guessing not). There is enough energy in the expected beats of this story to spare the audience of the dullness inherent in most Hammers, but treats the serious material of a crime syndicate dealing in murder and human trafficking, among other shady dealings, fairly by playing things straight yet with the breezy lightness the production team specializes in and treasures. These structural navigations by a character with thwarted belongingness into foreign systems have an almost noirish philosophy in concept, despite very little in execution. Needless to say, this is one of the better films I've seen across the Indicator sets with more hidden gems to unpack than there appear to be.

Taste of Fear
The way the creative team took familiar concepts and executed them relentlessly yet with precision and skill was a joy, essentially transforming the ideas behind Les Diaboliques's second act into the pitch of its climax and stretching out that grating feeling for 45 whole minutes, which is enough of a challenge to deserve a standing ovation.

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Even though I guessed the 'first' twist easily, as I'm sure many here did, the finale was a whopper, from the framing of the wheelchair-bound heroine appearing as a creepy threat on the rocks, to the sadistic ending where the heroes lure one of the killers into murdering the other unwillingly. It would be a sick form of revenge even if it was justified as the only strategy to get him arrested by the inspector, but they had already been in communication with the police who were ready to make the arrest regardless, so it was just an unnecessary pleasure to kill one off and then arrest the other after plaguing him with that traumatic responsibility!

[swo17]

To be more specific about Cash on Demand, the ending

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where the distinguished thief seems to be framing the bank manager as an accomplice only to let him off the hook in the end is both a) revealing that the entire ruse was much more of a playful bluff then we've been led to believe throughout the film--he's in no way an actual violent threat but just deviously clever and trying to see how much he can get away with, plus if he had in fact been scoping out the place, he probably could have seen that his mark kind of had it coming--and b) necessary to give the film's Scrooge a chance to get off the rollercoaster with a life lesson learned. Initially I had been disappointed when the dapper crook stopped twisting the knife and then pulled it out to reveal that it was only a prop, but when you think about it, as satisfying as it might have been to see him rake Cushing all the way under the coals, there'd be no real reason for such a gentleman to do so. His menace was all a put-on. He was never really engaging in a full-on personal attack. What would it serve him to take an innocent bystander down with him in the end? Throughout the film he's encouraged the bank manager to be less stingy and he's shaken him up enough by the end to get the point. There's no need to torture him any further.

I find the relationship to A Christmas Carol here to serve a similar purpose as the original Dracula story does to Hammer's Dracula, which is to say that it plays with the expected beats in such novel ways that it feels almost as original and iconic as its source material. Dracula was my first Hammer film and it gave me I think an unrealistic expectation that all of their films would be this way. Cash on Demand, however, is probably the closest they came to repeating that trick

[swo17]

As a reminder, you all have until the end of the month (end of the day Saturday) to suggest titles to be added to the first post of this thread. If it isn't listed there you won't be able to vote for it

[swo17]

I don't have anything to add to domino's write-up below, but this is an excellent film:

Les mauvais coups (François Leterrier 1961)
An unhappily married couple draw an innocent third party into their misery. Simone Signoret is suitably pathetic as the alcoholic wife to Reginald Kernan’s semi-retired race car driver, a man who resents the forced domesticity of their relationship with every outward signifier of his body. This is not a story headed towards a happy ending, and Alexandra Stewart’s pliable young schoolteacher is the last to figure that out. Leterrier, who was Robert Bresson’s escaped man before going behind the camera as Louis Malle’s AD, gives the whole affair a dour air in what is a remarkably confident and mature debut. The film is terrifically cruel in showing how Signoret and Kernan have so fully entwined misery with love in their relationship that emotionally using and abusing Stewart becomes the equivalent of a nice dinner out or a weekend getaway— Stewart is reduced to a cheap imitation of their own acidic amour. One of the most disturbing scenes in the film finds Signoret tricking the naive and pliable Stewart into dressing and styling her appearance in a mocking imitation of Signoret’s own fading looks just to force a reaction from her husband. Each partner is honest about their extramarital dalliances— too honest, and as an audience we are quickly reminded that many a healthy relationship has been saved by learning the value of lies.

This is one of the shortest turn-arounds for a rewatch, as I first saw this less than a year ago, but it is a thematically rich film and I appreciate it even more on a second viewing. I especially enjoyed the ominous and dreary music cues this time around, improvised piano dirges that make sure we understand that everything we see on screen is dead.

Having by coincidence seen or re-seen several of Stewart’s films in close proximity lately, I was amused to learn she was Malle’s girlfriend at the time. Gee, Malle certainly had a type, didn’t he?



Stewart’s not called on to do much more here than be a human prop for the back and forth miseries of the main couple, but that’s still more acting than Malle’s second wife was doing this early in her own career. (No commercial English-subbed release, available with subs via back channels)

[swo17]

Two Half-Times in Hell (Zoltán Fábri)


In perfect timing for 4/20 last week, this loose retelling of the 1942 Death Match between Nazis and a team of Ukrainian prisoners keeps the location but re-casts the protagonists as Hungarian nationals compelled to play to celebrate the Führer's birthday. There are some light Stalag 17 hijinks and not too much coasting on the inherent gravity of the situation or in giving the underdogs an unearned advantage--the two biggest traps into which a film like this might fall victim. Most interesting are the moral dynamics introduced by the Nazi's terms (yes, those selected for the team can have extra food rations and get out of work, and try not to pick too many Jews if you can avoid it) and the greater question of how hard you should fight to express your worth as a person when your only means of doing so is in how quickly you are willing to accelerate into a brick wall. The writing features shades of Péter Bacsó's later The Witness which adds a satirical, darkly comic edge that fits the material well to enliven what could otherwise be pretty dour proceedings (i.e. having to watch sports). In particular, there are some very sharp scenes between the lowly but still dangerous officers tasked with overseeing the POWs as they subject them to petty psychological torture. Finally, how great is that title? I think I'm going to start using it to refer to any future sporting event I am invited to attend.

This film can be found in the first Fábri boxset put out by the Hungarian National Film Institute a few years ago, making that first set 4/4 with stone-cold classics, though one of them has since been upgraded to Blu-ray by Second Run

[dustybooks]

[swo: I'm not planning on voting for it, but just FYI, The Roman Spring of Mrs. Stone isn't on your master list.]

This is the first time I've done a dive this extensive in a single year. Some random things I noticed as a result of this that I probably wouldn't normally: set dressers putting TV sets everywhere; the Coca-Cola logo being ubiquitous in apparently every country on earth (spotted in the U.S., Japan, the UK, and Italy); and Flower Drum Song (1961) being visible on a theater marquee in Victim (1961).

new films logged...

The Mark (Guy Green): This was the year of the taboo British film it seems, and this is an intelligent story about subject matter that would likely be considered unspeakable in many quarters even now, though Nicole Kassell all but remade it in 2004 with The Woodsman. It's about a pedophile, newly out of prison and attempting to restart his life with a normal job and a normal relationship. Stuart Whitman is excellent in the lead, and Rod Steiger gives a splendidly distinctive but not too terribly showy performance as his psychiatrist. The way the plot unfolds is riveting but ludicrous --

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the woman Whitman's Jim hooks up with has a young daughter, and somehow no one realizes what a dreadful idea this is until he manages to get his face on the front page of a tabloid.

And the flashback structure feels pretty clumsy. But there's quite a bit to admire here, namely its progressive ideas about rehabilitation and forgiveness, nearly negated completely by one of the most cringeworthy lines of dialogue I've ever heard in a film (by Steiger's character), which I won't reproduce here as I don't want the forum to get flagged by the FBI.

A Woman Is a Woman (Godard): I love Breathless and Contempt but otherwise it really seems that I can't find my groove with Godard at all, and I found this extremely tiresome aside from Anna Karina just being fun to watch.

The Children's Hour (Wyler): I have to differ slightly with DarkImbecile on this one, maybe because I've known what it was about for years and avoided it because I heard its treatment of homosexuality was terribly dated. I ended up being shocked by how raw it was and loved both central performances, though I do agree with DI that Audrey Hepburn's sense of poise and control is wonderful to behold; it's always a treat to see her go beyond the archetypal whimsical ladies she's so well remembered for playing. I actually felt that its treament, especially of Shirley MacLaine's character's self-torment, seemed respectful and reasonably accurate for what a teacher in such a position would've gone through at the time. And I really don't think anyone translated theater to film as well as Wyler did. I'm not saying it's as progressive a look at the subject matter as Victim (below), and

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of course it's a gay tragedy in the classic sense,

but I do think it shows a lot of maturity and empathy I didn't fully expect for the period.

Il Posto (Olmi): Biggest pleasant surprise so far, since I was expecting a relatively drab neorealist piece,

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which in some ways this is (especially at its ending),

but instead this was really a warm, mordantly funny illustration of being young and entering the "square world" with all its attendant boredom, drudgery and fleeting romance. It pulls no punches about the reality of working to live but is also surprisingly celebratory about the small pleasures that spring up along the way, and philosophical about the disappointments. It also looks tremendously good.

Summer and Smoke (Glenville): The accents in this are just on another level; I found them enormously entertaining but they also took me completely out of the story, especially Laurence Harvey's. (I just realized I don't actually know what Geraldine Page's real accent would've been, since she was from Missouri, though part of the plot here focuses on how "affected" she sounds.) The arc of the two lead characters ended up feeling perfunctory to me, something narrated rather than lived through, maybe because they never seemed three-dimensional to me. I don't mean to fault Tennessee Williams for having a set of themes he routinely revisited, as what artist doesn't, but this struck me as pretty redundant.

The Roman Spring of Mrs. Stone (Jose Quintero): Still more Tennessee Williams anxiety over feminine aging. I watched this because of my weird affliction where I still want to see most Oscar-nominated performances despite infrequently finding them worthy of the distinction, and Lotte Lenya's busybody Dangerous Liaisons-like role in this is indeed showy in the worst way, but I thought Vivien Leigh, whose two most iconic performances look a little rough to me even though I like the films they're in, was absolutely wonderful here, with a sensitivity that reminded me a little of Simone Signoret in Room at the Top, one of my favorite performances of all time. On the other hand Warren Beatty is an embarrassment, with his wacky Italian accent making up for the lack of phony Southerners in this entry in the Williams cinematic universe -- at one point Lenya announces that Mrs. Stone is lonely since her husband died of a heart attack and Beatty's response is literally "Why he do dat?"

revisits...

Victim (Dearden): Loved this when I first saw it in 2007 and honestly appreciated it even more now; for one thing I've read a lot more contextual stuff about gay life in Britain in the early '60s now. But quite apart from its agreeably progressive social purpose, I find this to be a crackerjack noir/thriller in every classic sense, including terrific sense of setting, with all of London looking gloriously seamy, a well-paced and downbeat screenplay, and excellent photography. I agree with the accolades earlier in the thread and this is likely to be at the top of my list.

One Hundred and One Dalmatians (Luske/Jackson/Geronimi): I hadn't seen this in almost 30 years; again, greater context helps, now that I have some knowledge of the Disney studio's history as well as that of Hollywood animation in general. It's much more graphically distinctive than I remembered, clearly influenced by UPA (especially the backgrounds) but not aping the UPA style so much as absorbing it. The story lags in the latter half but it's a really enjoyable film and the character designs of the humans are quite wonderful. I like the two Cinemascope Disney features before this too, so I really can't account for what a sharp downturn The Sword in the Stone was, but I found that one nearly unbearable when I tried to watch it several years back.

The Pit and the Pendulum (Corman): I became obsessed with Poe stories in elementary school and so my parents brought this home, a fatal error as the shot of

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the corpse, decayed after being buried alive

brought me nightmares for months... probably an important rite of passage, as by the time I was a teenager I was able to withstand the grisliest imaginable shit with no ill effects (though I then grew up to be more squeamish about gore and screen violence than anyone else I know). I've seen this a couple more times over the years and always enjoyed it, but watching it tonight I couldn't believe how awful the acting was, especially John Kerr... but even Vincent Price seemed to be pitched for a much less somber story; yes, I know, those histrionics are Price's stock in trade, but they hit me the wrong way this time. About that story, by the way: seems like Richard Matheson spent a bit of time at the arthouse theater looking in on Clouzot, no? The last few scenes

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-- the part of the film that actually reenacts the short story --

are pretty great, though. The film looks a little cheap in general but some of those process shots in the "torture chamber" have a wonderful texture to them, and I do sort of morbidly appreciate any movie that wallows in misery this gleefully.

[swo17]

[swo: I'm not planning on voting for it, but just FYI, The Roman Spring of Mrs. Stone isn't on your master list.]

The list isn't meant to be exhaustive (IMDb has more than 17K films logged for this year, which would not be very manageable for voting purposes) so I'm inclined to leave it off unless someone specifically requests it

[knives]

To play Corman’s advocate, that confusion of tone is definitely deliberate and something he had been hyper concerned about for years by this point and which would continue to be a hallmark of his arguably to this day. He seems consistently interested by rendering ridiculous topics he cares about. Look at Creature from the Haunted Sea from the previous year for example which has at its core a political topic of interest that is just rendered completely insane by the overall tone.

Here as well Corman and Matheson develop a dramaturge that can pain the audience, though I admit I’m a little sensitive to stories of children witnessing abuse, while also seeming absurd. I suspect this started as a work around on the budgets, but by this point it was simply and purely Corman’s voice.

Basically I’m making the classic distinction between camp and kitsch arguing Corman as delightfully and deliberately camp. Camp at its best makes you laugh with it at the existence of pain. That’s Corman at his best.

[dustybooks]

That makes good sense to me, knives, and I did still enjoy the film. Sometimes when your first impression of something is colored so much by youth, it's inevitable that it disappoints when it turns out it's doing something pretty different than you were capable of realizing.

[DarkImbecile]

The Children's Hour (Wyler): I have to differ slightly with DarkImbecile on this one, maybe because I've known what it was about for years and avoided it because I heard its treatment of homosexuality was terribly dated. I ended up being shocked by how raw it was and loved both central performances, though I do agree with DI that Audrey Hepburn's sense of poise and control is wonderful to behold; it's always a treat to see her go beyond the archetypal whimsical ladies she's so well remembered for playing. I actually felt that its treament, especially of Shirley MacLaine's character's self-torment, seemed respectful and reasonably accurate for what a teacher in such a position would've gone through at the time. And I really don't think anyone translated theater to film as well as Wyler did. I'm not saying it's as progressive a look at the subject matter as Victim (below), and

SpoilerShow

of course it's a gay tragedy in the classic sense,

but I do think it shows a lot of maturity and empathy I didn't fully expect for the period.

I think maybe my write-up was a little more dismissive of the film than it deserved, largely because of the immediate comparison to Victim; Wyler’s film is just outside the self-imposed bounds of my top ten list, but it’s not bad and as you say a more mature treatment of the subject than I would have expected. I did struggle a bit with Martha’s characterization, but to give the writing/directing the benefit of the doubt, you can make a case for her as authentically acting out the internalized homophobia of her place and time rather than having that homophobia imposed by the filmmakers (and possibly the original play, which I haven’t read). I’d be lying if I said it wasn’t hard to shake my initial presumption of the latter, though.

[domino harvey]

Summer and Smoke (Glenville): The accents in this are just on another level; I found them enormously entertaining but they also took me completely out of the story, especially Laurence Harvey's. (I just realized I don't actually know what Geraldine Page's real accent would've been, since she was from Missouri, though part of the plot here focuses on how "affected" she sounds.) The arc of the two lead characters ended up feeling perfunctory to me, something narrated rather than lived through, maybe because they never seemed three-dimensional to me. I don't mean to fault Tennessee Williams for having a set of themes he routinely revisited, as what artist doesn't, but this struck me as pretty redundant.

Sorry you didn’t get much out of this. I highly recommend checking out the 70s TV adaptation of an alternate version of the play, the Eccentricities of a Nightingale, with Blythe Danner and Frank Langella, as it’s astonishing how different the source adaptation is to the Hollywood one a decade earlier. Neither is necessarily better than the other, but it’s like watching the same characters and basic set up but as filtered through two completely different set of details ie each is a Bizarro World take on the other.

[swo17]

Last day to request additions to the first post!

[domino harvey]

I started a new job that is occupying a lot of my time, so I haven’t had a chance to give my watchlist much priority, but I did watch the other 1961 film starring Aliki Vougiouklaki, Alice in the Navy, and hated it. I would never have believed the star of this could inspire any of my effusive praise from my previous writeup, as this is a bargain basement variation on those idiotic Eddie Bracken military comedies (or, actually, let’s take it down a rung to the Sgt Doubleday sequels), with no sense of timing, shoddy production values, and an idiot plot with no laughs to give it any good will. Really shows how Lisa and the Other Woman was a better film than I realized, because it tapped into some Star magic wholly unexplored here. And of course I learned Alice is her most popular film and widely considered a national favorite / classic in Greece. Truly there just are some cultural barriers we will never understand looking in on!

[swo17]

Lisa was a welcome discovery, thanks for writing it up!

[swo17]

Vote for the top 10-25 films of 1961 (poll open until end of the day May 15)

And start discussing 1962!

[ryannichols7]

I really enjoyed The Innocents, which had been on my list for awhile but I had never gotten around to. went in mostly blind even though I'm not much of a horror appreciator and it paid off pretty well. the movie definitely sticks to a lot of comical horror movie tropes - do we really need creepy kids or a dramatic score again? but it was nice to see Deborah Kerr play the non-evil, kinda a flip on her role in Black Narcissus (one of my very favorite films/performances). had no idea Truman Capote ever had done a script until the credit sequence came on here, so that was a wild surprise to see. him and Jack Clayton really...

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...pull the rug out from the audience just at the right time. I couldn't stand Miles so his fate was pretty great, and I love how they just kinda abandoned Flora and didn't go back to her, as the movie isn't really about them at all, it's so much ...more about Kerr's Giddens and I'm glad they released this when adapting. never read the original text so can't comment on how it changed, but...

do a Bergman type script where they have a tight knit story that moves at a quick pace but has plenty of layers and ambiguity to it. definitely an enjoyable film

me and dustybooks also tag teamed Blast of Silence, which I recall got a lot of buzz around Christmas this past year. really felt like the noir equivalent of Night of the Living Dead, almost comical in its low budget nature, but all the more impressive for it. the film worked for me better than something like Le Samourai, because I was able to connect with the lead much more, and the hilariously bitter voice over really drove it all home. loved all the gritty surrealism that equally called back to Sweet Smell of Success (in the setting) before it and stuff like the Safdie Bros and Tarantino (in a lot of the randomness) to follow it. moves along really quick at 77 minutes, but I did find the ending a little cruel, but hey that's noir for you.

I do urge everyone to watch The End of Summer as I find it to be one of Ozu's best films, and I was the orphan voter for it in the main 60s list. it's nice to see him kinda take on the modernization of Japan as a backdrop to a story about the traditions of old Japan meeting the newer generations. Hou Hsiao-Hsien has made it no secret that Ozu is his idol, and I think this one probably influenced him and Yang big time on Taipei Story, which this movie is kinda the predecessor for

[swo17]

The 1960 list had a longer run but now that things are running at a brisker pace I'm thinking I'd like to allow a little more stretch time. Namely, I think it would make sense to allow for a 2-week voting period once I publish each poll (making the new voting deadline for 1961 May 15). We'll still move on to a new year at the start of each month, but having two weeks of flex time will allow more opportunity for individual participants to have anywhere from 2-6 weeks for any given film year to accommodate varying schedules and levels of interest from one year to the next. (You'd want to make sure to fit in any new watches for things excluded from the master list by each month-end deadline, but could put off anything you were planning to watch that's already eligible until the last two weeks of flex time.) Does this make sense? Any objections?

Also, if you've already completed the poll for 1961, I've sent you a PM to confirm. If you haven't gotten that, please let me know

[dustybooks]

Works for me, especially since I've still got a couple of '61 titles I'm catching up with before I vote on Saturday and then I have a gargantuan list for '62.

In general thanks for running this, I was skeptical about the year-by-year idea initially but I'm really loving it, breaking it down like this has been a great motivator.

[dustybooks]

Just submitted my list, having just squeaked up to ten. Last bit of logging...

Pocketful of Miracles (Capra): The only movie nominated for a major Oscar this year (supporting actor, Peter Falk) that I hadn't watched yet -- I actually expected far worse, and for the first hour or so I was pretty engaged, even recognizing that it was a much weaker remake of Lady for a Day (which I didn't know beforehand). I enjoyed Falk and Glenn Ford in their roles and actually enjoyed seeing Capra shoot in widescreen and try to adapt the old screwball rhythms to a then-modern setting, but the expansive structure leads to a lot of buildup with no real climax or ending. I appreciate that, as in the original film, no one really "learns a lesson," but that also contributes to a feeling that nothing really happens in the film. It's most valuable for the use of so many veteran actors reprising old archetypes, but that also makes it feel a bit stale; why not just watch the old movies again? I still don't think it's bad as its reputation, but more of a curiosity than anything.

The Innocents (Clayton): I'm not generally a horror person but aesthetically this captivated me well beyond what I expected was possible from a Turn of the Screw adaptation -- the cinematography, the bold and haunting opening sequence and finale, all striking and jolting enough that shortcomings in the story/adaptation itself that bothered me in the moment have totally faded from memory.

La Notte (Antonioni): One of several first-tier classics from this year I'd managed not to get around to until now, about half from directors whose major works haven't much appealed to me, Antonioni being someone whose films I've come away admiring while also concluding that the theme of apathy and aimlessness running through his work keeps me at a distance from it for whatever reason. This felt more resonant than Blowup and L'Avventura because the characters are acting out a situation that's considerably more universal; I think I probably deserve to be kicked in the head for how much a film like this lives or dies for me by how personally appealing I find the characters, something I'm hesitant to bring up in this setting... but unavoidably, I really enjoyed all of Jeanne Moreau's solo scenes and got irritated whenever the focus shifted to Mastroianni. That said, of course I was taken with the lazily purposeless feeling of time rolling by throughout the day and night depicted.

Chronicle of a Summer (Morin/Rouch): In the dedicated thread for this Matt points out how crucial a supplement the fifty-years-later documentary on Criterion's BD is, but I didn't have time to watch it yet and may have to carve out time to see it in close tandem with a revisit of the film itself. I bring this up because what I was most taken with about this film, besides the way that it shows how little the basic nature of people in a social setting really changes over time beyond the superficial, was how self-reflexive and self-critical it becomes in the last scenes when the preceding reels are screened for the mostly dejected participants, not to mention in the opening sequence when the directors debate how much truth their camera can realistically capture. But I also find that it causes the film to feel a little like it's hedging its bets: instead of just being a documentary about these people, it must also be a documentary about the documentary, and I can't decide if that's inventive or sort of an "easy way out" of directly confronting its real themes, becoming instead "about" cinema.

Leon Morin, Priest (Melville): I don't know Melville's work very well. Belmondo and especially Riva were wonderful here. The religious themes didn't have much impact on me, and I was a little disappointed that the Occupation itself was more a piece of background data than a pervading theme, but

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the limited nature of the central relationship, as well as its inevitable end, had a strong enough effect on me for personal reasons that I think it may have clouded my overall judgment.

And as often happens, on reading the dedicated thread afterward, the film grew a bit in my estimation -- and maybe it will continue to; it's certainly more my speed than The Flowers of St. Francis or Diary of a Country Priest, religious films that were just too reliant on philosophies of faith for me to be moved by them.

Blast of Silence (Baron): I know we all love a broad and not exclusively highbrow range of cinema here but I'd be lying if I said I didn't feel slightly guilty that I have so many hair-splitting criticisms of major works by Antonioni, Melville and Bergman in this post while this brash and slightly goofy neo-noir throttled me from start to finish, even as I can sort of shoot holes through a lot of things about it. It's a cheap and somewhat nihilistic mess, but its eccentricities are all so much fun -- and I think the way it locates a somewhat humane strain of loneliness in the loathsome hitman at its center while also making him full-on pathetic at times is complex and admirable -- even his misanthropy, in the sneering voiceover, is articulated in the form of an anxiety that a lot of people would undoubtedly find familiar even if they're not occupying the same moral universe. Such a riveting cast of weirdos in this, too.

Through a Glass Darkly (Bergman): Everything I know about Bergman suggests there's some real self-laceration going on here (underlined by the opening dedication, perhaps), especially in Max von Sydow's prolonged rant toward Gunnar Björnstrand on the boat. I found that really interesting, but otherwise I wish I shared the enthusiasm upthread for this one -- that said, in contrast to Antonioni I generally love Bergman, and I did find this to be beautiful and exquisitely performed, it just didn't resonate as strongly as his major '50s works for me. (The only '60s Bergman I'd previously seen was Persona so I have a lot coming up.)

A Taste of Honey (Richardson): This was an exhausting watch, I'm sure on purpose; Rita Tushingham and Dora Bryan are painfully strong in depicting a bickering, troubled, neglectful mother-daughter relationship. It's good to see a British kitchen sink drama that focuses so much on two women, though I recall that some of the supplements on BFI's Room at the Top release did much to counteract the idea that those films were exclusively "angry young men" stuff. Again, the issue more than anything is that I take this stuff all so personally.

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Can you guys make it through the last fifteen minutes of this film without wanting to walk into the screen and chase Mum out with some sort of non-lethal weapon? I can handle bleakness, but when it's joined by multiple people so obviously making such self-destructive decisions, it's hard to watch; I am fully aware that's not the most cogent brand of criticism I could offer here. Interesting to contrast the end of this with the end of Nights of Cabiria, too; it feels like a quote but really isn't, since Masina's trance in Fellini's film implies a way out and for Tushingham it feels as if the walls are just going to keep closing in forever.

Underworld U.S.A. (Fuller): Not sure it's an especially noteworthy story, basically a fairly ordinary revenge narrative with cops and organized crime and one vengeful teenager who grows up to a vengeful hood, but the flavor that Fuller adds everywhere makes it feel like drama on a truly heartfelt, larger-than-life emotional scale. Even when the story is at its most ludicrous --

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Cliff Robertson's Tolly having the D.A. help him typewrite fake documents to pretend to find in his safe to get several crime bosses mad at one another; insert Futurama "circuitous plan" meme

-- it's executed in such an entertaining and compelling fashion, and I appreciate how unwilling Fuller is to make any of the archetypal noir figures he plays around with fully traditional. I do wish the film were defiant enough of moral traditions to

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spin all this around into an incongruously happy ending, though.

One, Two, Three (Wilder): I realize everyone says this but even just looking at James Cagney in this made me tired. How I made it this far in life without catching Wilder's follow-up to one of my favorite films ever made I don't know, but while I did laugh a few times, it feels so frantic and flies in so many directions with its attempted satire that I finally just found it rather numbing.

The Devil's Trap (Vlacil): On ryannichols7's recommendation I endured this Czech ode to religious paranoia in the sixteenth century, revolving around well water, a moralistic priest and a drought, and found it brilliant and genuinely eerie. The performances and the degree of despair and distrust in the story reminded me of Dreyer, and on a cinematographic level, there were a number of shots that I found phenomenal and that approached the level of magic I often get from Dreyer's work as well.

Dog Star Man (Brakhage): Nothing much to say that's not obvious -- the 1961 ruling for this is especially appropriate as I think the prologue is the strongest segment, though the entire film retains its novelty and power for the full length. Watching this on my projector was the best decision I made this weekend.

...and one more revisit...

Splendor in the Grass (Kazan): This lived up to my positive memories and I think is still my favorite Kazan. Both Warren Beatty and Natalie Wood have a credibility here in their sexual chemistry but also in their enforced distance; the sexual hysteria doesn't feel to me like it's many miles away from The Last Picture Show, and several scenes positively ache with regret and angst -- the poetry reading, and the last meeting between the leads. Perhaps it's the eternal teenager in me but I find this film extremely upsetting in the best, most well-observed way.

[therewillbeblus]

Underworld U.S.A. is in the running for my favorite Fuller. He applies his sharp style and shamelessly blunt engagement with ruthless behavior to not only the dirtiest crime world and that social context's generational disease of violence-bred resentment, but systemic failure which spells out the worst macro-fatalism that is more inexorable than micro-destinies. I love how Fuller contests that vengeance with calculated violence from power, demonstrating that emotion matters but perhaps not enough to craft an authentically sympathetic figure that's pure 'hero'. In fact, one could argue that there's hardly a difference in Fuller's newspaperman eye, though he'd be the first to say that he's crafting a subjective truth by positioning us with our 'protagonist'. The gutting of blind surrogate involvement forces us into an objective skeptic, and to pull this off whilst swallowing us into the raw subjectivity of the milieu (in shocking sequences from various points of view) signifies a real mastery over combining versatile narrative and form into pulsating soup that's somehow coherent as crystal.

[ryannichols7]

One Hundred and One Dalmatians: childhood favorite Disney film, was amused to see it feature the Enter the Void of credit sequences for the time period. I have a hard time revisiting this stuff as an adult due to the fact that I don’t know what constitutes “good” and at this point I think it’s somewhere along the lines of “how much nonsense is all this, really?” this movie is somewhere in the middle. it's an amusing film but a bit exchausting, as I tend to be annoyed by films that become endless chase sequences for a giant chunk of it. amusing to hear Rod Taylor, "Cruella de Vil", and realizing just how much the latter's voice inspired Brad Bird's Edna Mode voice ("daaarling!"). as dustybooks pointed out, it's super hilarious that Cruella is just an old annoying classmate who would probably be a Facebook marketplace hoarder nowadays.

Splendor in the Grass: didn't work for me, was made too early to be daring enough (The Last Picture Show remedies this) and too late to be groundbreaking enough (Rebel Without a Cause). found a lot of it to be overly melodramatic and thought it failed to capture small town America in a true enough manner (it really should've actually been shot in Kansas), since clearly no one involved in making it bothered to understand that lifestyle. also too long and a lot of the symbolism (waterfalls as a sexual metaphor, the poetry stuff) was pretty eye rolling.

The Devil's Trap: wrote it up in the dedicated thread for it:

found this film weirdly comforting, I've only seen Marketa prior to this and I might've actually liked this better? felt more in line with Bergman and Dreyer in terms of telling a simpler story with deeper themes rather than a complex one that can be a little over-exerted. I've been watching a lot of the Czechoslovak new wave films for the ongoing 60s projects, and I felt this film's allegory using religion to dissect the regime at the time was a lot more creative than a lot of others from the same period. plus Vláčil doesn't necessarily make it the forefront (I don't think, at least) and focuses on his film and its story, with any sort of connections to the contemporary Czech time period feeling more like a coincidence than a "oh by the way guys look, this is what we're going through" like some other films from the period. I did really love that Vláčil sets up a big climax but pulls the rug out from underneath the audience and allows the ambiguity to remain. kinda helped it remain in a more poetic, dreamlike state and I thought it worked really well.

in short, I loved it, haven't stopped thinking about it, and it's climbed my list pretty quickly. will prematurely vote for it high and revisit it surely before the overall decade vote.

Dog Star Man: not actually sure I'd ever seen the whole thing. it really does peak in the extremely brilliant, earthshaking prologue, dips for part one, and then I'm on board with the rest of it. great reach from Brakhage in this one, even though usually I believe this stuff works better in shorter form. he really sells it here and it does get brilliantly more hypnotic as it goes along. minor quibble but I wish he'd done the title cards in his signature style rather than whatever went on here..I'm so used to his hand-scratched stuff.

Il Posto: really loved this and knew nothing about it prior to this project. unintentionally did a double feature of Fellini's I Vitelloni right before this and that made for a great double feature - La Notte would as well, but a little bit differently (solely by being about the dread of Milan becoming Italy's financial center). but I think it did a great job picking up where Vitelloni left off, being about what would happen when the small town life is an outsider in the big city. it's a weird, bizarre, and at times unsettling experience. the central romance was great and worked a lot more for me than something like The Graduate, and I felt this captured a lot more of the feelings that film and others (Office Space, often noted) set out to do. but man, I'm not sure any movie I've seen has ever captured the feeling of being the youngest person in a workplace/at a party as well as this one has, it felt equally surreal and believable at the same time. ending was brilliantly ironic without being overtly cruel. early Criterion spine I basically never see discussed nowadays, I need them to upgrade this (using the off the shelf 4K restoration!!) and bring it back into the conversation more, and urge all of you to watch it too if you haven't yet.

Chronicle of a Summer: I try to go into every movie as blind as possible, totally thought this was going to be some sort of road movie document, so was surprised to see what it was actually about. classic to see a lot of the commentary (not just about politics but even sex workers) be just as relevant/timeless today as it was in 1961. certainly interesting, do want to go through the Criterion supplements, but wasn't blown away. the Charlie Chaplin line was incredible though, and thought the ending was pretty interesting when it comes to meta stuff.

I think I'm done, thank you for the extension Swo! sorry I didn't participate in the 1960 list but I'm definitely hooked on this idea now. have a really good lineup for 62 upcoming...

[TMDaines]

Vote for the top 10-25 films of 1961 (poll open until end of the day May 15)

And start discussing 1962!

Can we get a copy of what we submitted? I want to add one more film watched this week.

[swo17]

I just PMd it to you. I'm not sure how modifying your ballot works. Maybe you just vote for everything all over again? Let me know how it goes, I'm curious