Old Paint It is absolutely amazing to me how badly a movie can age. I saw this one in the theatres when new. I remember thinking it was acceptable at the time. There was an actress that I knew from Bergman. There was the surprise of the Indian baby, which I saw in the segregated… Continue reading Duel at Diablo (1966)
Tag: 1960s
Films made in the 1960s
Girl With a Suitcase (1961)
Million Dollar Baby I watched this together with Eastwood’s “Million Dollar Baby.” I knew I would be challenged by that film (you can read my comment), and I wanted something that I knew would be a safe island after the offences therein. I chose this. Its between “Million” and “Nights of Cabiria” and more perfect… Continue reading Girl With a Suitcase (1961)
A Fistful of Dollars (1964)
Joe Meets Akira This is an ineptly made film, but which lives because of its sheer importance. It is the reconstruction of the western, the birth of the hardboiled, loveable thug and the reinvention of Kurosawa for the masses. Kurosawa had already been appropriated by the Hollywood western with “The Magnificent Seven,” but that project… Continue reading A Fistful of Dollars (1964)
First Spaceship on Venus (1960)
The Beginning In 1958 Russia changed the world by launching Sputnik. This really was a shock; modern readers may not appreciate it as of the magnitude (in the US) of 9-11. In terms of national will, there was a more universal mobilisation and commitment of resources than after 9-11, that’s for sure. Both the Russian… Continue reading First Spaceship on Venus (1960)
Elvira Madigan (1967)
Love is When You Borrow Someone Else’s Eyes One of the simple pleasures of life is to sit in a darkened theatre and have a film capture your soul, not as a single person, but as the whole sigh of the room. I saw this in 1967 in Boston, in a makeshift theatre. This was… Continue reading Elvira Madigan (1967)
Gumnaam (1965)
Indians This is a famously popular film in India. The composition is simple: a story that gives the film an existence, and a series of Bollywood musical numbers. I cannot recall ever experiencing such dissonance, because I am coming at the from a background in Christie. That tradition — at least the elements I like… Continue reading Gumnaam (1965)
The Man Without a Map (1968)
Life as Navigation Everyone has an anchor when they enter a film. With a little exposure to world cinema, that anchor for each film is rooted in the tradition you select from that culture. This is a personal choice, made long before you encounter the film. Quite possibly, no national cinematic tradition offers a starker… Continue reading The Man Without a Map (1968)
I Am Cuba (1964)
Sculpted Spatial Force Is this the best film ever made? For me today in its afterglow it is. I’m so fickle. I think if all else were equal, I’ll always take embodied, real cinema that is coherently integrated. The way of telling the story is ideally complex and folded, using tricks to make the story… Continue reading I Am Cuba (1964)
Nanami: The Inferno of First Love (1968)
Fluid Abstraction You may find this hard to see. It is a Japanese “new wave”, film. It has a story of course, but such things are largely irrelevant. I’ll give it because you may not see it. (In my comments, I assume most folks have seen the film.) A young man was abandoned as a… Continue reading Nanami: The Inferno of First Love (1968)
The Sinister Monk (1965)
4 Conspiracies In the heyday of mystery writing, we had Sayers, Christie, Chesterton and a dozen others who were artists of narrative curves. The game was to create a world, but us in it and only later let us know how wrong we were. And then we had formula pulp writers, many of whom had… Continue reading The Sinister Monk (1965)