It’s been a while since I last posted about a movie – I’ve still been watching, but sometimes the films are just too much fun to take the time to write about. I’m currently working through Hollywood movies, from screwball comedies to film noirs and westerns, filling in more gaps but this time Anglophone ones….
Category: 1960s
Chronicle of a Summer (1961) and David Holzman’s Diary (1967)
“Sometimes, when I leave home, I have things to do. But I don’t necessarily do them. I never know what I’ll do the next day. I live by the principle that tomorrow’s another day. For me, adventure is always just around the corner.” Two films, one a documentary, the other a mockumentary, give a sense…
The Dr. Mabuse Trilogy (1922, 1933 and 1960)
“When humanity, subjugated by the terror of crime, has been driven insane by fear and horror and when chaos has become supreme law, then the time will have come for the empire of crime.” Three years ago I watched the final film directed by Fritz Lang, The Thousand Eyes of Dr. Mabuse (1960). Here’s my…
Le Trou (1960)
Le Trou (1960), directed by Jacques Becker, is a French prison break drama based on a novel by José Giovanni. Four prisoners share the same cell. They all face long sentences so they dig a tunnel and gain access to storerooms under the cell and then to the sewer system. It’s a simple but highly…
Karel Zeman Triple Bill
Before the nightmarish taxidermy and Jungian symbolism of Jan Švankmajer and the irreverent surrealism of Terry Gilliam came Czech film director, artist, production designer and animator Karel Zeman. Over the course of thirty years, Zeman produced a series of accessible, witty and imaginative fantasies. Zeman had a preoccupation with the stories of Jules Verne and Rudolf…
The Woman in the Dunes (1964)
“This is futile. If it wanted to, the sand could swallow up cities and even entire countries. Did you know that? A Roman town called Sabrata and the one in The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam, both completely buried under particles an eighth of a millimeter wide. You can’t fight it! It’s hopeless!” Directed by Hiroshi…
Věra Chytilová Double Bill
Czech director Věra Chytilová’s most famous film Daisies (1966) is a classic of avant-garde cinema. Seemingly childish and playful but with a searing undercurrent of transgressive politics, it is short but packs a punch above it’s weight. But the arrival of Daisies had been heralded by Chytilová’s earlier films: notably A Bagful of Fleas (1962) and Something Different (1963)….
One of the Missing (1968)
Tony Scott’s first short movie bears few similarities to his later glossy thrillers (Top Gun (1986) and Days of Thunder (1990), for example), but as an example of an efficient and punchy, folk-horror tinged drama, One of the Missing is exceptional. An adaptation of an Ambrose Bierce short story, the film follows an American civil war soldier on…
Land Without Bread (1933) and The House is Black (1963)
“I said, if I had wings of a dove I would fly away and be at rest. I would go far away and take refuge in the desert. I would hasten my escape from the windy storm and tempest. For I have seen misery and wickedness on Earth.” Two short documentaries from different countries and…
Hold Me While I’m Naked (1966)
“Hold Me While I’m Naked was a picture I made. It was supposed to be about a mother and a daughter vying for the affections of the same man. Then the star got sick, so I decided to make a picture about a filmmaker who couldn’t make a movie, and that would be me: I couldn’t…
Winter Light (1963)
“This emphasis on physical pain. It couldn’t have been all that bad. It may sound presumptuous of me – but in my humble way, I’ve suffered as much physical pain as Jesus. And his torments were rather brief. Lasting some four hours, I gather? I feel that he was tormented far worse on an other…
Lucía (1968)
‘Lucía’, directed by Humberto Solás, is a Cuban drama from 1968. The film contains three stories: the first set in the 1860s, the second set in the 1930s and the third set in the then present day of the 1960s. Each focuses on a woman called Lucía, played by a different woman each time, and follows…
Wavelength (1967)
‘Wavelength’, directed by Michael Snow in 1967, is an experimental film, 45 minutes long and minimal. The film is one shot: the camera focuses on a room with windows and pictures on the wall opposite – too far away to see clearly. Over the course of the 45 minutes, the camera imperceptibly zooms in on…
The Sound of Music (1965)
“You brought music back into the house. I had forgotten.” ‘The Sound of Music’, directed by Robert Wise in 1965, is an American musical drama starring Julie Andrews and Christopher Plummer. Andrews plays Maria, a novice nun in Austria. Maria is a free-spirited and, at times, disobedient, so her superiors decide she should spend time…
Closely Observed Trains (1966)
“I’m Milos Hrma. I’ve tried to kill myself because I’m suffering from premature ejaculation. But that’s really not so. Even though I flop every time, I’m a real man.” ‘Closely Observed Trains’, directed by Jiří Menzel in 1966, is a Czechoslovak drama set in a small town during the Nazi occupation of Czechoslovakia in the…
Best Films – 2017
2017 has been (another) year of political upheaval and personal wobbles. Life and work have meant that, towards the end of the year, I have stopped blogging once a day, but shifted to two or three times a week. Despite this, I continue to discover films that chime with me personally, emotionally and academically. Some…
La Notte (1961)
“When I awake this morning, you were still asleep. As I awoke I heard you gentle breathing. I saw you closed eyes beneath wisps of stray hair and I was deeply moved. I wanted to cry out, to wake you, but you slept so deeply, so soundly. In the half-light you skin gloved with life…
I Am Curious (Yellow) (1967)
“Are there any interesting social cases here? People in sleazy flats? People with unpaid dental bills? Drug cases will do, too. I work for “Expressen” the paper with a sting. My paper is planning a conservative victory in the ’68 elections. We’re doing a series on the ten most sordid social welfare cases” ‘I Am…
The Longest Day (1962)
“You remember it. Remember every bit of it, ’cause we are on the eve of a day that people are going to talk about long after we are dead and gone.” ‘The Longest Day’, directed by Ken Annakin, Andrew Marton, Bernhard Wicki, Gerd Oswald and Darryl F. Zanuck in 1962, is an American war movie…
Kes (1969)
“Mere fodder for the mass media.” ‘Kes’, directed by Ken Loach in 1969, is a British drama starring David Bradley as Billy Casper, a school kid growing up in Barnsley. Casper is coming to the end of his time as a pupil and is expected to get a job once he has done with studies….
Point Blank (1967)
“Do you remember… when we met? The rain? You were a little drunk. So was I. You were funny when you were drunk. Strange. I don’t remember very much, but… suddenly… we were together. It was wonderful at first. I loved you. Then Mal happened. You talked a lot about Mal. Mal Reese. He was…
My Way Home (1965)
“There are few directors so akin to a choreographer. His cinema does not conform to narrative or psychological conventions, but opens other areas that are usually found in the screen musical. His films are elaborate ballets, emblematically tracing the movements in the fight for Hungarian independence and socialism. In these ritual dances of life and death…
The Servant (1963)
“He may be a servant but he’s still a human being.” ‘The Servant’, directed by Joseph Losey and written by Harold Pinter in 1963, is a British social psychodrama starring Dirk Bogarde and James Fox. Fox plays Tony, an affluent Londoner who returns from abroad to a rundown house. He employs a valet called Barrett,…
Film (1965)
‘Shh’ ‘Film’, directed by Alan Schneider and written by Samuel Beckett in 1965, is an American short movie, the only film written by the Irish avant-garde playwright. A man, played appropriately silently by Buster Keaton, is followed by a pursuing camera from the streets of New York into an apartment block. His face for the…
Spartacus (1960)
“Your followers are deluded enough to trust you. I intend that you shall speak to them tomorrow for their own good, their peaceful and profitable future. From time to time thereafter, I may find it useful to bring you back to Rome to continue your duty to her, to calm the envious spirit and the…
Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? (1966)
“You take the trouble to construct a civilization, to build a society based on the principles of… of principle. You make government and art and realize that they are, must be, both the same. You bring things to the saddest of all points, to the point where there is something to lose. Then, all at…
Gertrud (1964)
“I seek your lips and you give me your cheek. And the door to your room has been locked to me for more than a month. I used to be welcome there. I often lie awake, thinking of you. I’ve thought you might be in love with someone else and I’ve wondered who it could…
La Dolce Vita (1960)
“You are the first woman on the first day of creation. You are mother, sister, lover, friend, angel, devil, earth, home.” ‘La Dolce Vita’, directed by Federico Fellini in 1960, is a long and rich film focusing on seven nights and mornings in the life of playboy journalist and wannabe novelist Marcello Rubini as he…
The Valley of the Bees (1967)
“Just like the comparisons to the classical art house cinema of Eisenstein, Bergman, Kirosawa and Bresson are easy to draw and even easier to see, to burden ‘The Valley of the Bees’ with such weighty labels is and political readings, in all honesty, rather unfair, since obviously more than capable of standing up and speaking…
Mouchette (1967)
“Bresson was one of a handful of directors whose very frames identified their author. Like Fellini, Hitchcock and Ozu, he had such a distinctive way of seeing that his films resembled no others. What you noticed was the extreme restraint of his actors (he preferred to call them “models”), and the way the action centred…
Film Ark 