I always feel, watching movies from the late 60s and early 70s, that I can guess pretty accurately what year they were made, from just a glimpse of the hairstyles, and the expressions on the faces...
I watched Cat Ballou recently for the first time since 1965, when my parents had taken me at age 11...
Two things placed it as pre-1966: the slapstick attitude towards alcohol, which was strongly rejected by the counterculture, and the _look_ of the male romantic lead (Michael Callan, who was also in Gidget Goes Hawaiian, 1961) and his pal Dwayne Hickman (Dobie Gillis)-- they were totally uncool, by sixties standards, a-hole fratboys, practically. (You can easily imagine their characters going to Vietnam because they believe it's their patriotic duty, and they'll get to raise a lot of hell with the 'gooks'...)
Jane Fonda's character is supposed to be a just-graduated schoolgirl discovering she prefers outlaws to townsfolk-- but they're not at all the idealistic outlaws of the 60s, so it all rings a bit false.
There's a really high-energy square-dance scene that makes an
interesting contrast to 60s dance culture. Even the Indian who's supposed to be a victim of discrimination is dancing along with all the other townsfolk, as are the outlaws, and everybody has fun (significantly, _because_ they conform totally to the dancing-rules)...
And the theme song, sung by Nat King Cole and Stubby Kay as a banjo- playing Greek chorus, is also a really kick-ass song, in a totally 60s-uncool genre...
So it was very odd to look forward two years to "Barbarella", where Jane is exactly the same person/actress, but the world has turned upside down, Dobie Gillis is banished, the squaredance is banished, drunkenness is not funny, and the only credible person playing banjo is... John Sebastian.
1965 was the year of "Help!", too... which was already worlds away from Dobie Gillis. And I think the Fabs were already smoking pot, but hadn't taken acid. Rubber Soul, Revolver, and Sgt Peppers would all come out between Cat Ballou and Barbarella.
Somebody pointed out that in 1968 you could still get beaten up for speaking out against the war-- Noam Chomsky says somewhere that he thinks things have gotten freer since then in some important ways, and this took me aback...
Between 65 and 68, a huge transformation affected millions of people in the world, very deeply, allowing them to *see* problems that had been totally denied before.
People looked at the drunken Dobie Gillis, and shared a vision, that this was not the path we wanted any more... it was plastic, it was a lie...
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The sleeper hit of 1965, CAT BALLOU was declared an instant classic when its sly blend of Western parody and rapid-fire action hit the screen. Lee Mar...More at Buy.com Marketplaces
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