TOP-TEN NON-ENGLISH LANGUAGE FILMS OF THE SIXTIES
Jul 28 '04 (Updated Dec 23 '04)
The Bottom Line With such a wealth of wondrous films to pick from, it was tough to settle on ten. Here's a Top-Ten for the Sixties plus additional four-star films.
This being my 200th review, I wanted to mark the occasion with a list. Over the next few months, I will complement this list with ones for the rest of the decades from the forties to the nineties.
The sixties were a radical decade not only in politics, social experimentation, and drug use but also in the arts – and in international cinema in particular. The French New Wave had just taken hold (the earliest films usually credited with launching that movement were from 1959). In Italy, Fellini and Antonioni began stretching the boundaries of cinematic technique, while De Sica was in his romantic comedy phase and Rossellini had turned from Neorealism to epics. Bergman was producing some of his best films in Sweden. The Franco dictatorship had stifled artistic expression in Spain, but Spain’s best director, Buñuel, was working in exile, mainly in France during the sixties. Soviet censorship was limiting cinematic creativity from Russia, to an extent, but a few high quality works nevertheless emerged. In Soviet-occupied Czechoslovakia, the Czech New Wave reached full bloom in the second half of the sixties. Germany was still a few years away from its major post-World War II cinematic resurgence. Chinese cinema had yet to make a serious impact internationally. In Japan, Kurosawa was producing fine films in the first half of the decade while Mizoguchi’s career was already complete. Outside of Hollywood, French cinema was the most advanced and prolific in the world, which is reflected in almost half of the thirty-one films listed below originating in that country. There are six Italian films, four from Sweden, and three from the U.S.S.R. The rest include two from Czechoslovakia and one each from India and Algeria.
TOP-TEN NON-ENGLISH LANGUAGE FILMS OF THE SIXTIES:
#1. 8 ½ (1963)___Country: Italy___Director: Federico Fellini
Arguably the most famous and most popular foreign film of the decade, 8 ½ was a breakout film for Fellini from his Neorealism period to his more psychoanalytic, autobiographical, and phantasmagoric phase. Fellini sought truth and if that meant exposing his own weaknesses to the public, we would – and did, in 8 ½. The integration of surrealism and realism in 8 ½ is uncanny. This film won the Academy Award for Best Foreign Film in 1963.
#2. The King of Hearts (1966)___Country: France___Director: Philippe de Broca
This film is a bona fide cult film. It combines a gorgeous and imaginative musical score by Georges Delerue with humor, romance, idealism, surrealism, and a powerful antiwar message. This film is a miracle of ensemble acting, with superb performances turned in by Alan Bates, Genevieve Bujold, Michel Serrault, Micheline Presle, Francoise Christophe, and others.
#3. My Life to Live (1962)___Country: France___Director: Jean-Luc Godard
Susan Sontag characterized this film as “one of the most extraordinary, beautiful, and original works of art that I know of.” It really is. The camera technique for this film was highly ingenious, behaving like a human observer. My Life to Live tackles the issue of finding oneself through intensive facial close-ups of star actress (and Godard wife) Anna Karina.
#4. Persona (1966)___Country: Sweden___Director: Ingmar Bergman
This film is an extraordinary piece of psychodrama, featuring Bibi Andersson and Liv Ullmann, two actresses with very similar facial features. The cinematography is very special in both composition and lighting, emphasizing facial details and expression. There are also three jarringly brilliant, almost surreal sequences that are cinematographic marvels.
#5. Shop on Main Street (1965)___Country: Czechoslovakia___Director: Ján Kadár & Elmar Klos
This film provides a heart-rending look at one small piece of the Holocaust by focusing on the effect of history’s most incomprehensible event on two main characters: an aging Jewish widow and shopkeeper and the simple man who is appointed as her Aryan controller. The performance by Ida Kaminska was honored by an Academy Award nomination for best actress. The film won the Academy Award for Best Foreign Film in 1965.
#6. Last Year at Marienbad (1961)___Country: France___Director: Alain Resnais
This brilliant early film of the New Wave is a mind-blower! It examines the nature of creative representation and art by confronting viewers with a mysterious artificial reality. For many years, this film was interpreted as pure formalistic art and high modernism, until the source of the script was discovered to be an Argentinian science fiction story. Either way, it’s a marvelous film for viewers who enjoy intellectual puzzles.
#7. Contempt (1963)___Country: France___Director: Jean-Luc Godard
This was Godard’s only foray into “commercial” filmmaking as well as one of the few quality roles for French bombshell Brigitte Bardot. The film is best known for its brilliant centerpiece scene which consists of a classic marital dispute, filmed with extraordinary realism in the apartment of the protagonist couple. The final segment is beautifully filmed at the magnificent chateau in Capri, on the Mediterranean.
#8. Charulata (1964)___Country: India___Director: Satyajit Ray
Charulata, or “The Lonely Wife”, the twelfth film of the great Indian director Satyajit Ray, is often regarded as his greatest one. Ray’s great strength as a director was his mastery of subtly communicating through artistry and cinematographic technique rather than action and dialogue alone. Madhabi Mukherjee’s performance in the title role is magnificent.
#9. Through a Glass Darkly (1961)___Country: Sweden___Director: Ingmar Bergman
Like all films of Ingmar Bergman, this superlative psychodrama examines essential questions of human existence: the nature of perception and the challenge of existential isolation. With a cast of just four, Bergman creates a “chamber piece” that features an amazing performance by Harriet Andersson as a woman sinking into schizophrenia. This film won the Academy Award for Best Foreign Film in 1961.
#10. War and Peace (1968)___Country: U.S.S.R.___Director: Sergei Bondarchuk
This Russian adaptation of the great Tolstoy novel boasts a kind of authenticity and faithfulness that has rarely been equaled by other adaptations of great books. This Soviet-Italian co-production took seven years to produce at a cost in excess of $100 million dollars. It features one of the most elaborately staged battle scenes in film history, utilizing tens of thousands of extras. Paintings and furnishings were borrowed from Russian museums to ensure period authenticity. At over 400 minutes in length, it’s a major time investment, but the best scenes in the film rival any recorded on film. This film won the Academy Award for Best Foreign Film in 1968.
OTHER FOUR- AND FIVE-STAR FILMS FROM THE SIXTIES (CHRONOLOGICALLY):
L’Avventura (1960)___Country: Italy___Director: Michelangelo Antonioni
Ballad of a Soldier (1960)___Country: U.S.S.R.___Director: Grigori Chukhraj
Les Bonnes Femmes (1960)___Country: France___Director: Claude Chabrol
A Bout de Souffle (1960)___Country: France___Director: Jean-Luc Godard
Rocco and His Brothers (1960)___Country: Italy___Director: Luchino Visconti
Two Women (1960) ___Country: Italy___Director: Vittorio De Sica
The Virgin Spring (1960) ___Country: Sweden___Director: Ingmar Bergman
Sundays and Cybele (1962)___Country: France___Director: Serge Bourguignon
Red Desert (1964) ___Country: Italy___Director: Michelangelo Antonioni
Umbrellas of Cherbourg (1964)___Country: France___Director: Jacques Demy
Alphaville (1965)___Country: France___Director: Jean-Luc Godard
Juliet of the Spirits (1965)___Country: Italy___Director: Federico Fellini
Closely Watched Trains (1966)___Country: Czechoslovakia___Director: Jirí Menzel
A Man and a Woman (1966)___Country: France___Director: Claude Lelouch
The Rise of Louis XIV (1966)___Country: France___Director: Roberto Rossellini
Anna Karenina (1967)___Country: U.S.S.R.___Director: Alexander Zarkhi
Belle de Jour (1967)___Country: France___Director: Luis Buñuel
Bad Girls (1968)___Country: France___Director: Claude Chabrol
The Shame (1968)___Country: Sweden___Director: Ingmar Bergman
This Man Must Die (1969)___Country: France___Director: Claude Chabrol
Z (1969)___Country: Algeria___Director: Constantin Costa-Gavras
Please check out my other decade lists:
Top-Ten Non-English Language Films of the Thirties and Forties
Top-Ten Non-English Language Films of the Fifties
Top-Ten Non-English Language Films of the Seventies
Top-Ten Non-English Language Films of the Eighties
Top-Ten Non-English Language Films of the Nineties
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