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From 7 Women To PsychoJul 29 '01 Write an essay on this topic.The Bottom Line The 60s were a great blend of old masters and young upstarts. I see no need for an introduction to this list so here goes: 10. 7 Women (1966) Directed by John Ford, this story of a Christian mission in China run by women (and Eddie Albert) was released when Ford was seventy-one. It was his last movie. It is, in many ways, a reworking of the director's earlier Westerns. Perhaps you could call this an Eastern. The conflict between the stern disciplinarian played by Margaret Leighton and the hard-drinking, blasphemous doctor played by Anne Bancroft is similar to the characters played by Henry Fonda and John Wayne in Fort Apache. This is not a movie to watch if you want to be cheered up. It's an unflinching look at a harsh existence and seems like the kind of movie directed by someone too old to put up with any bulls**t. My rating: A+ 9. L'Année dernière à Marienbad (Last Year At Marienbad) (1961) This picture defies description. I guess I could call it an "art movie". As much as I hate that term, it does come in handy as a way to warn people what they're in for. Don't get me wrong, I like it myself, but I don't want to trick people into seeing it if they aren't into that kind of picture. As for the story, a guy meets a woman at an opulent European spa and tries to remember if he had a love affair at that spa with the same woman last year. My rating: A+ 8. Dr. Strangelove or How I Learned To Stop Worrying and Love The Bomb (1964) When Stanley Kubrick decided to adapt a novel called Red Alert, about a mad American General who tries to start a nuclear war, he had a dilemma. Wanting to make a serious picture about the threat of nuclear war, he kept deleting the parts of the story that seemed too absurd. Eventually he realized that if he removed everything absurd about the nuclear stand-off between the U.S. and the Soviet Union based on "mutual assured destruction", he'd have no story left to tell! And so it was that the serious thriller Red Alert was transformed in to the blackest of black comedies, Dr. Strangelove. My rating: A++ 7. Pierrot le Fou (Pierrot Goes Wild) (1965) Jean-Paul Belmondo plays Pierrot, a man who becomes bored with his middleclass social life in Paris, so he runs off with Anna Karina to the Mediterranean, with thugs from Algeria in pursuit. It's a great picture but be prepared -- if you're not familiar with the work of director Jean-Luc Godard and his peculiar, impromptu, discontinuous style, then this movie will leave you in a state of either shocked delight or incensed dismay. My rating: A++ 6. Marnie (1964) Marnie is a somewhat unpopular Hitchcock picture, and I presume that I am in a minority in my championing of it. Some would argue that the rear-projection sequences of Marnie on horseback are corny, the pop psychology diagnosis of Marnie's problems are overly simplistic, and the performance of Tippi Hedron as Marnie is a bore. Still, I think many would have to admit that even "bad" Hitchcock it pretty good. My rating: A++ 5. 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968) This is by far the greatest science fiction movie ever. (There are so few good ones, anyway.) In fact, it's like a great summing-up of the entire genre. Kubrick did for spaceships what Ford did for cowboys and Hitchcock did for serial killers. He took a genre that got no respect from the arbiters of good taste and revealed the inherent beauty and poetry in it. My rating: A++ 4. Tengoku to jigoku (Heaven And Hell) (1963) Also known as High And Low, this is a Japanese thriller directed by Akira Kurosawa about a middleclass man who mortgages everything he has to pull off a business deal, only to have his son kidnapped. When the kidnappers demand ransom, the man must choose between his son and the business. And this is just the beginning of the story! I'm not going to give away the rest of the plot, but suffice it to say that it will keep you on the edge of your seat. If you're afraid of this movie because it's a foreign picture with subtitles, don't be. This is not some art picture, but an edge-of-your-seat cop movie with plenty of twists and turns to keep you engaged. My rating: A++ 3. Belle de Jour (1967) If you watch this movie back to back with Pierrot le Fou (see above), you begin to think that middleclass Parisians were bored out of their sculls in the 60s. This is the story of the wife of a doctor. To add some zest to her dull afternoons, she becomes a prostitute at a brothel, but only during the day so her husband doesn't find out (hence the title). This synopsis doesn't do this surreal, dreamlike picture justice. It's an elegant movie that most will enjoy if not offended by a bit kinky sexuality. My rating: A++ 2. Sergeant Rutledge (1960) To me, this movie inaugurated the thawing of the conservative chill that blew through John Ford movies in the 40s and 50s. This was the first in a series of movies he directed in the 60s which challenged the American status quo more openly than he ever had in the previous two decades. It was after Sergeant Rutledge that he made pictures that questioned heroic myths (The Man Who Shot Liberty Valence), embraced a South Pacific polytheism (Donovan's Reef), championed the plight of Native Americans (Cheyenne Autumn), and even challenged the existence of God (7 Women, see above). I see Sergeant Rutledge as Ford's late masterpiece. It's a complex blend of genres -- a courtroom drama where a black officer in the cavalry played by the photogenic Woody Strode is on trial for the rape and murder of a white girl; a psychosexual murder mystery about a crazed killer; a war movie about the battles between the U.S. cavalry and renegade Apaches; and, most of all, a Western where people live a harsh existence against the equally harsh backdrop of the desert. My rating: A++ 1. Psycho (1960) There's not much new I can add to what others have written about this movie. To me, it is as close to perfect as a movie can get. It's not just the best of the 60s, but of all time. I know I should try to explain why I like it, but how do I explain perfection? The word elegant comes to mind. The movie's shock value may only be good for one viewing, but there's plenty to keep a person coming back. Indeed, it's a movie designed to be seen multiple time, with plenty of dialogue that has a different meaning once you know the true nature of Norman's relationship with his mother. There are also plenty of visual elements that only become significant on a second viewing. Here's an example -- the diagonal slashing of the wipers across Marion's windshield during the rainstorm perfectly foreshadows her fate in the shower. My rating: A++  |
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by lindaohio
by cdm72
