The 1964 Mini-List

[swo17]

Well I see nothing wrong with recommending a film and highlighting that it's only listed on the ballot under one of its several names. Calling attention to eligible films is kind of the whole point of each of these discussion threads!

I specifically brought up the Skolimowski because I had broken my own rule and not listed it under its English-translated title in the first post

[therewillbeblus]

That makes a lot of sense, I hadn't inspected that fine print specifying language filters for English vs native. I'll draw attention to specific titles I see come up going forward

[swo17]

The 1964 List



##. Film (Director) points/votes(top 5 placements, aka likely votes in decade list)/highest ranking

01. Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb (Stanley Kubrick) 342/16(12)/1(x7)
02. Yearning (Mikio Naruse) 222/11(6)/2
03. Il deserto rosso (Michelangelo Antonioni) 200/10(7)/1(x3)
04. Woman in the Dunes (Hiroshi Teshigahara) 190/10(6)/1(x2)
05. Pale Flower (Masahiro Shinoda) 173/10(2)/1
06. Onibaba (Kaneto Shindō) 170/10(1)/4
(tie) Kwaidan (Masaki Kobayashi) 170/11(3)/2
08. Soy Cuba (Mikhail Kalatozov) 167/11(4)/2(x2)
09. Shadows of Forgotten Ancestors (Sergei Parajanov) 166/8(5)/1(x3)
10. A Hard Day's Night (Richard Lester) 164/8(4)/2(x3)
11. Diamonds of the Night (Jan Němec) 163/9(3)/1
12. Il vangelo secondo Matteo (Pier Paolo Pasolini) 154/9(4)/2(x2)
13. Charulata (Satyajit Ray) 151/9(4)/1
14. Bande à part (Jean-Luc Godard) 129/8(2)/2
15. Lilith (Robert Rossen) 123/6(4)/2
16. The Masque of the Red Death (Roger Corman) 122/8(2)/5(x2)
17. Marnie (Alfred Hitchcock) 116/7(2)/3
(tie) Une femme mariée (Jean-Luc Godard) 116/8(1)/4
19. The Naked Kiss (Samuel Fuller) 99/7(2)/1
20. …And the Fifth Horseman Is Fear (Zbyněk Brynych) 97/6(2)/2
21. Les Parapluies de Cherbourg (Jacques Demy) 94/5(2)/1
22. Fail-Safe (Sidney Lumet) 92/6/6
23. Sedotta e abbandonata (Pietro Germi) 86/5/6(x2)
24. Culloden (Peter Watkins) 80/5(2)/3
25. Seance on a Wet Afternoon (Bryan Forbes) 75/6/6
26. Intentions of Murder (Shōhei Imamura) 69/5/7
27. Le Journal d'une femme de chambre (Luis Buñuel) 66/7/11
28. Bedtime Story (Ralph Levy) 65/5(1)/4
29. Deus e o Diabo na Terra do Sol (Glauber Rocha) 61/3(2)/4
(tie) Seven Days in May (John Frankenheimer) 61/5(1)/5
31. Per un pugno di dollari (Sergio Leone) 59/6/6
32. Paris When It Sizzles (Richard Quine) 57/3(1)/5
(tie) Sex and the Single Girl (Richard Quine) 57/4(1)/4
(tie) The Pumpkin Eater (Jack Clayton) 57/4/9
35. The Saragossa Manuscript (Wojciech Has) 55/3(2)/2
36. Three Outlaw Samurai (Hideo Gosha) 51/5/8
37. An Untitled Film (David Gladwell) 50/3(1)/2
38. 6 donne per l'assassino (Mario Bava) 49/4(1)/3
(tie) Man's Favorite Sport? (Howard Hawks) 49/4/10
40. The World of Henry Orient (George Roy Hill) 48/3(1)/5
41. La Peau douce (François Truffaut) 45/3(1)/3
42. Il magnifico cornuto (Antonio Pietrangeli) 44/2(2)/3
(tie) Gertrud (Carl Dreyer) 44/4/12
44. The Train (John Frankenheimer) 42/3/8
45. Assassination (Masahiro Shinoda) 41/3/10
46. Nothing But a Man (Michael Roemer) 40/2(1)/5
(tie) De l'amour (Jean Aurel) 40/3/11(x2)
48. Salut les cubains (Agnès Varda) 39/4/7
49. Point of Order! (Emile de Antonio) 37/2/7
(tie) Goldfinger (Guy Hamilton) 37/3/10
(tie) Gate of Flesh (Seijun Suzuki) 37/4/12

ALSO-RANS

The T.A.M.I. Show (Steve Binder) 34/2(1)/3
À Meia Noite Levarei Sua Alma (José Mojica Marins) 34/2(1)/4
Empire (Andy Warhol) 34/2/6
Kiss Me, Stupid (Billy Wilder) 34/3/9
Nightmare (Freddie Francis) 30/2/9
The Pink Panther (Blake Edwards) 30/3/9
The Night of the Iguana (John Huston) 30/3/11
Prima della rivoluzione (Bernardo Bertolucci) 29/3/9
Swastika (Yasuzō Masumura) 28/3/10

Two Stage Sisters (Xie Jin) 27/2/10
The Fall of the Roman Empire (Anthony Mann) 27/3/11
The Up Series (Michael Apted & Paul Almond) 26/2/6
My Fair Lady (George Cukor) 26/2/8
Der geteilte Himmel (Konrad Wolf) 25/2(1)/4
Identification Marks: None (Jerzy Skolimowski) 25/2/12
Lemonade Joe (Oldřich Lipský) 25/3/16
A Shot in the Dark (Blake Edwards) 24/2/8
Strait-Jacket (William Castle) 22/2/9
Loving Couples (Mai Zetterling) 21/2/14

Le tigre aime la chair fraîche (Claude Chabrol) 20/2/11
A Jester's Tale (Karel Zeman) 20/3/13
Zulu (Cy Endfield) 18/2/10
All These Women (Ingmar Bergman) 17/2/17
Good Times, Wonderful Times (Lionel Rogosin) 17/3/16
Hamlet (Grigori Kozintsev) 17/3/17
The Hat (John & Faith Hubley) 15/2/14
O Crime de Aldeia Velha (Manuel Guimarães) 14/3/16
Two Thousand Maniacs! (Herschell Gordon Lewis) 12/3/16
Children of the Damned (Anton Leader) 3/2/24

ORPHANS

Film (Director) highest ranking

Age of Illusions (István Szabó) 8
The Americanization of Emily (Arthur Hiller) 24
L'Amour à la mer (Guy Gilles) 2
Behold a Pale Horse (Fred Zinnemann) 22
The Best Man (Franklin Schaffner) 19
Black Hair (Lee Man-hee) 9
Black Sun (Koreyoshi Kurahara) 17
Blow Job (Andy Warhol) 3
El camino (Ana Mariscal) 15
Carol for Another Christmas (Joseph L. Mankiewicz) 18
Le Chat dans le sac (Gilles Groulx) 17
Cruel Gun Story (Takumi Furukawa) 12
Cyrano et d'Artagnan (Abel Gance) 11
Daisy (DDB & Tony Schwartz) 8
Dry Summer (Metin Erksan) 17
Duo concertantes (Lawrence Jordan) 17
Échappement libre (Jean Becker) 14
El extraño viaje (Fernando Fernán Gómez) 1
Fathomless (Jim Davis) 8
Ghidorah, the Three-Headed Monster (Ishirō Honda) 16
Girl with Green Eyes (Desmond Davis) 24
The Gorgon (Terence Fisher) 13
Le Grand Escroc (Jean-Luc Godard) 19
Guns at Batasi (John Guillermin) 25
Harlot (Andy Warhol) 16
L'Homme de Rio (Philippe de Broca) 3
I Think They Call Him John (John Krish) 19
Italiani brava gente (Giuseppe De Santis) 13
Les Jeux des anges (Walerian Borowczyk) 10
The Killers (Don Siegel) 5
King & Country (Joseph Losey) 11
Kitten with a Whip (Douglas Heyes) 25
Lucky Jo (Michel Deville) 14
Mary Poppins (Robert Stevenson) 13
One Potato, Two Potato (Larry Peerce) 19
The Patsy (Jerry Lewis) 14
The Peach Thief (Vulo Radev) 2
Percé on the Rocks (Gilles Carle) 22
Le Puits et le Pendule (Alexandre Astruc) 20
La ragazza di Bube (Luigi Comencini) 18
Rio Conchos (Gordon Douglas) 18
La Rivière de diamants (Roman Polański) 10
Robinson Crusoe on Mars (Byron Haskin) 18
La Ronde (Roger Vadim) 7
Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer (Larry Roemer) 20
Sallah Shabati (Ephraim Kishon) 23
Son (Vladimir Denisenko) 10
36 Hours (George Seaton) 23
La tía Tula (Miguel Picazo) 4
21-87 (Arthur Lipsett) 6
23 Skidoo (Julian Biggs) 11
Week-end à Zuydcoote (Henri Verneuil) 21
What's Happening! The Beatles in the U.S.A. (Albert & David Maysles) 16
Zorba the Greek (Mihalis Kakogiannis) 24

21 lists submitted

[swo17]

You are welcome to post your individual lists here now, but as a reminder, you can also post them here and keep them all in one place

[Rayon Vert]

Thanks swo. Wow: Yearning at no. 2!

[therewillbeblus]

Thanks swo!

1. Red Desert
2. Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb
3. Lilith
4. Sex and the Single Girl
5. The Masque of the Red Death
6. Bedtime Story
7. Paris When It Sizzles
8. Black God, White Devil
9. Kiss Me, Stupid
10. Man's Favorite Sport?
11. Pale Flower
12. Goldfinger
13. Bande à part
14. At Midnight I’ll Take Your Soul
15. Seance on a Wet Afternoon
16. De l'amour
17. Loving Couples
18. Robinson Crusoe on Mars
19. The Gospel According to St. Matthew
20. Une femme mariée
21. Three Outlaw Samurai
22. Percé on the Rocks
23. Manji/Swastika
24. O Crime de Aldeia Velha
25. Kitten with a Whip

[Rayon Vert]

I sent in a top 15, but here's my top 10:

1. Dr. Strangelove
2. A Hard Day's Night
3. La Peau douce
4. Red Desert
5. The Gospel According to Matthew
6. Seduced and Abandoned
7. Marnie
8. Yearning
9. Strait-Jacket
10. Une femme mariée

[Maltic]

So, do people find the war room line funny, or no?

[Matt]

No.

[dustybooks]

So, do people find the war room line funny, or no?

I'll take the risk of a public lashing by saying that sure, I think it's amusing in context, but like any line in any comedy that becomes iconic -- "this one goes to 11," etc." -- it's become too over-familiar to be "funny." I'm sure someone will respond to that by informing me it was never funny in the first place, and hey, fine.

Seance on a Wet Afternoon: I just revisited this today and it's still as chilling and involving as it was when I first watched it ten years ago. Kim Stanley's performance is a marvel, as she plays a sensational and disturbing narcissistic personality, and Richard Attenborough is more than up to the task as her meek sparring partner of a husband, who understandably doesn't know quite how to contend with this kind of walking untreated-and-dangerous mental health disorder. The film rings true to the experience of ingrained relationship dynamics built around specific mental illness and grief, and while the film never serves as a commentary on either, that seems to be a strength rather than a weakness as its refusal to box up 'reaction to grief' or 'reaction of a mentally ill person' would invalidate the whole messy, complex system that is inseparable. The thriller components admirably never flinch from dragging out, which would undercut Attenborough's brutal contention with his conscious and humane anxiety to his immoral activity. By leaning into these stretches, Forbes respects his characters and the events they're caught up in. As a thriller, it's above-average, but check this one out for the performances that elevate a B-move plot into raw socio-philosophical horror that becomes psychological catharsis by the film's unexpectedly-touching and harmonic conclusion.

Saw this for the first time this month and I think you positively nailed it -- in addition to just being a gripping and fun (if mortifying) thriller it captures toxic relationship dynamics and narcissism so well, as well as the predatory behavior that's so often attached to those who profit off belief in the supernatural. I think it's particularly telling that

Spoiler

at the conclusion, Stanley's character seems downright blasé about being "caught," so to speak; she's achieved what she's set out to do, whether she's punished or not.

This was one of the most electrifying surprises of the project for me, as I really had no idea what to expect going into it.

[therewillbeblus]

Nice appreciation, dustybooks! I also find the War Room line funny, but less because the line itself is funny and more because the deadpan humor works in general. For me it’s not much different from other lines that are sincerely pitched but absurd in context, so the sincerity of the delivery is what makes them succeed, a cleverness in juxtaposition rather than screenwriting divorced from aesthetics. I think this is what separates people who find Kubrick’s films funny or not, since he’s adopting more of a Hawksian approach to comedy this way. Anyways, now I’m trying to explain comedic wins, and that’s never a good thing

[Maltic]

I appreciate the honesty

I guess I'm on the fence about the line, as with Kubrick in general. I have a hard time with the brashness, the famous cruel ironies and so on, but then he isn't trying to make me comfortable, and asking for "nuance" is missing the point.

This apart from the line being overly familiar by now, as Dusty says.

[therewillbeblus]

I had no idea the line was contentious 'til you mentioned it

[Maltic]

Maybe it isn't

[domino harvey]

Thanks swo! Looking at our list… boy, this is surely the year where I disagree the most with my colleagues on what are the best films. I don’t love the word “overrated” but this list is rough for me

[Maltic]

It's the clearest winner yet

01. L'Année dernière à Marienbad 320
02. The Innocents 239
03. Through a Glass Darkly 214
04. Viridiana 213
05. La notte 199

01. Dr. Strangelove 342
02. Yearning 222
03. Il deserto rosso 200
04. Woman in the Dunes 190
05. Pale Flower 173

And 5 Japanese in the top 7

[domino harvey]

I didn’t vote for it, but even I know I’m in the minority in that

My list:

Il deserto rosso (Michelangelo Antonioni)
Soy Cuba (Mikhail Kalatozov)
Bande à part (Jean-Luc Godard)
Bedtime Story (Ralph Levy)
Lilith (Robert Rossen)
the World of Henry Orient (George Roy Hill)
La Ronde (Roger Vadim)
Daisy (DDB & Tony Schwartz)
Paris When It Sizzles (Richard Quine)
La Rivière de diamants (Roman Polański)
De l'amour (Jean Aurel)
Une femme mariée (Jean-Luc Godard)
Sex and the Single Girl (Richard Quine)
Échappement libre (Jean Becker)
Gate of Flesh (Seijun Suzuki)
Kiss Me, Stupid (Billy Wilder)
the Night of the Iguana (John Huston)
La ragazza di Bube (Luigi Comencini)
Le Grand Escroc (Jean-Luc Godard)
Le Puits et le Pendule (Alexandre Astruc)
Le tigre aime la chair fraîche (Claude Chabrol)
Seven Days in May (John Frankenheimer)
36 Hours (George Seaton)
Zorba the Greek (Mihalis Kakogiannis)
Children of the Damned (Anton Leader)

[Maltic]

I didn't vote this time, having failed to watch/rewatch a single film from the pool yet again.

[therewillbeblus]

I'd like to have seen and potentially rescued some folks' orphans/also-rans but in general I haven't found there to be much discussion pushing lesser-known darlings in these threads, so I'm often falling back on concocting lists of already-seen and rated films rather than seeking out many new-to-me ones. I really appreciated the preacher's rec that made my list, and I wonder to what degree Matt is responsible for Yearning's high placement with just a leisurely few sentences a month ago! I have to imagine that prompt made a lot of people seek it out, or revisit and rank it up, and it's especially interesting since it doesn't look very accessible to native English-speaking audiences

[swo17]

It's streaming on Criterion Channel. I don't know that I would have prioritized a rewatch if not for multiple people talking it up here, and it did make my list. So there you have it.

[dustybooks]

Last log for '64. (Going to post my actual list on swo's new dedicated thread.) I had a copy of The Masque of the Red Death on hand but failed to fit it in before the deadline; I'll still watch it in the next few days, though.

First time around for me (not counting Seance on a Wet Afternoon, addressed in another post above):

Diamonds of the Night (Nemec): A quick, stabbing, intriguingly ethereal chase sequence which has two young men running from a concentration camp during WWII; memories interfere with and haunt the narrative in the manner of Ivan's Childhood or Last Year at Marienbad though as a contemporary viewer I was reminded of Come and See: that sense of unending motion and terror, basically, and the impossibility of escape -- imprisonment essentially in oneself. This didn't make my list but I imagine it gains a lot on repeat viewings.

The Train (Frankenheimer): I saw a few critics compare this to Argo, which tracks because the real story this is based on, about Nazis' attempts to remove French masterpieces from the country aboard a train during the final days of Occupation, is both more mundane and funnier than the sexier, more daring variant filmed here by John Frankenheimer, which is overlong and repetitive but impressively mounted with a great cast. The ending is also enjoyably ambiguous.

That Man from Rio (Philippe de Broca): I barely understood the plot of this, and didn't especially care about the parts I did follow, but it's terrific bubbly lifestyle porn and the chases and action scenes are often extremely impressive (some are ridiculous; a few are both). It's basically like watching Belmondo play parkour for two hours. Major clues to the lineage of Raiders of the Lost Ark and Romancing the Stone toward the end.

Band of Outsiders (Godard): The skepticism of aging that makes these dumb kids seem less than infallibly cool and the happy ending seem melancholic and complex is really baked into the text here -- so much bored "hanging around" in advance of the big ripoff, so much voiceover enhancing all the doubt and apathy -- but it already was in Breathless. The only issue I have with the formal experimentation and the sense of pastiche is how much the best moments really rise above and burst out with much baser (and in my view, more original) pleasures: the jukebox dance scene and the Louvre chase obviously, but also the romantic but wizened ending. I'm astonished by Anna Karina's performance. I'm jealous of the endless youth embodied by the characters here; I also pity them for it.

The Unsinkable Molly Brown (Charles Walters): Not a good musical, not a good comedy, not good. The songs are few and far between and they are awful (I also hate the songs in The Music Man aside from "Till There Was You," so probably not surprising). Some of the scenes dealing with class snobbery around her new-money status are slightly amusing but I'm honestly surprised this is from the '60s; it feels like a relic compared with everything else I watched for this project. I do think Debbie Reynolds deserved her Oscar nomination, she's quite good.

The Pawnbroker (Lumet): I recently watched Beanpole and it strikes me how this film depicts an extremely similar processing of grief and trauma in numerous ways, with both residual trauma playing out in a life that has been permanently and irreversibly derailed by the events of World War II. As usual in the director's work, New York City comes alive and the casting is outstanding, and the film is impressively frank and modern. The score (Quincy Jones) and editing (Ralph Rosenblum) are excellent. But I come up against a similar block to the one I had with Beanpole: I feel near-boundless empathy toward Steiger's character in this, and his performance is extremely impressive, but I feel this emptiness upon being shown his misery so unrelentingly at this length -- I don't feel as if the film shows me anything I don't already know or suspect at the outset. Maybe that's unfair, though, and I do think it's good.

Onibaba (Shindo): Not at all the film I was expecting from the posters and the cover art of various home media releases, this feels more to me like a Clouzot film than it does something like Kwaidan. It's eerie but not exactly a horror story, full of torment and terror of a much more earthly variety -- or so we think -- born of uncomfortable jealousy and desire, and eventually a thirst for revenge.

Spoiler

As in Hitchcock's ghost stories (Rebecca, Vertigo etc.) the demon is a human creation; as on Ida Lupino's great Twilight Zone episode "The Masks," a costuming becomes a symbol of inward hideousness. Between the stunning cinematography and editing and the powerfully confident eroticism, this feels simultaneously like a story built for cinema and one that wholly transcends it, entering (like several of Mizoguchi's films) the realm of enhanced folklore. And what makes the best folklore, the best stories in general, from Shakespeare to passed-around-the-fire ghost tales so timeless is how their intimacy is complemented by the massive, overwhelming stakes of human needs and emotions they explore.

I Am Cuba (Kalatozov): This blew me away but I have to say honestly that much of what I find remarkable about it comes out of its formal aesthetics. As he did in The Cranes Are Flying, Kalatozov presents a camera that is wholly untethered from any rational physics. You can absolutely distract yourself wondering how he and Sergey Urusevsky achieved some of this, but you never wonder why: this movie has nothing in common with the works of Alfred Hitchcock except in one sense, the degree to which camera becomes an outgrowth of human emotion. This is surely one of the all-time best filmed propaganda pieces.

Charulata (Ray): An exquisite rendering of loneliness within marriage and the attendant discord: perceptive, subtle and believable, with Ray's brilliant observational skills with family dynamics (and his formal genius obviously; that swing sequence!) turning the warm hug of The Big City back on itself -- these are still characters you come to love, but you also come to recognize gaps that can't be bridged,

Spoiler

and the film emphatically does not imply that this has much hope of changing, which is a sobering thing to leave with.

Revisits:

The Gospel According to Matthew (Pasolini): This was one of the first foreign language films I watched outside of school and I believe the first Italian film that wasn't directed by Sergio Leone. Being very much an atheist then as now I can't quite explain what drew me to it then, finding so much beauty in its matter-of-fact realism and the effortless power of its enactment of familiar images, but now I think that my continued love of it has something to do with the similarity in its deceptively simple storytelling to silent cinema. The unorthodox use of source music is a close second; it really gets me when Blind Willie Johnson comes in, and flashing back to the corresponding moments in Ben-Hur I have to say is one of those moments when Hollywood cinema, much as I love it, looks particularly dire.

The Umbrellas of Cherbourg (Demy): The first time I watched this was in the kind of bad circumstances that sometimes grow out of having something presented to you on a pedestal (ask me sometime about my impossibly uncomfortable experience seeing Monty Python and the Holy Grail with my sister): I was told just prior to one of its TCM airings by a film student friend that it would make me question why other movies were made. To say the least, it didn't, but I was very young then and over the years I've remembered bits and pieces and come to just about assume that it would ring out with beauty and truth all these years later. Sadly I was wrong; I've seen four of Demy's features now and this is by far my least favorite, which along with my violent distaste for Blade Runner feels like one of my most indefensible bits of contrarianism, but I swear I'm not trying to be an asshole about it. What disturbs is how the film clearly connects with most of its fans on such a deep emotional level and I walk away feeling nothing for its characters. Part of it is definitely that I don't care for the musical approach taken here; the conceit of singing all of the dialogue, while I understand the appeal, serves to do nothing except take me out of the story, and I don't think Legrand's melodies here are nearly as good as the work he later did for The Young Girls of Rochefort. Right up to the end, which I do admire for its uniquely downbeat-yet-not nature, I sense the movie desperately trying to engender something that feels out of my reach. I think I actually liked it less than before, which really shocked me. Oh well.

[swo17]

FYI The Pawnbroker is eligible for 1965

[dustybooks]

I’ll be darned. Sorry for repeating my Winter Light gaffe guys!

[Toland's Mitchell]

I've seen 21 of the top 22.

My list:

Woman in the Dunes
Soy Cuba
Dr. Strangelove
Onibaba
Il deserto rosso
Yearning
Bande à part
Intentions of Murder
Fail-Safe
Goldfinger
Seven Days in May
The Pumpkin Eater
Charulata
Pale Flower
The Train
Diamonds of the Night
The Naked Kiss
Per un pugno di dollari
The Best Man
The Night of the Iguana
Marnie

For me, those top 7 in bold were the standouts of the year. I didn't put much thought into the ordering of the non-bolded films. I like them all to somewhat similar degrees, but they fall considerably short of the titles above them. As for the war room line, sure it's funny, albeit over-quoted.

[alacal2]

Thanks once again swo. My top 25.

Dr Strangelove
Bande a Part
Yearning
Fifth Horseman is Fear
Lilith
Diamonds in The Night
Onibaba
Pale Flower
Les Parapluies de Cherbourg
La peau douce
King and Country
The Pumpkin Eater
Une femme mariee
Seance On A Wet Afternoon
The Naked Kiss
Seduced and Abandoned
Salut les Cobains
Woman In The Dunes
Charulata
The Up Series
Kwaidan
Diary of A Chambermaid
Before the Revolution
Girl With Green Eyes
Soy Cuba

Yearning was a no-brainer for me. Thanks to matt for pushing me to the Varda.