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knives wrote: Sun Sep 18, 2022 3:07 pm Oh, I thought Alphaville was the choice of the year.

it's the only one I'll be voting for, if it's any consolation

I didn’t find Intimate Lighting very memorable either, but I hope those who are making their way through unopened Second Run piles make room for a screening of Before Tonight is Over prior to this list’s due date (read: before tonight is over). It’s by far my favorite discovery from the label since Zeman, and an easy top ten contender for the year. Those who enjoy hangout movies, shaggy dog multinarratives, nouvelle vague youth pics, or all of these combined should check it out especially

I still have the unwatched Slovak DVD of that one!

I think you'll really like this one

therewillbeblus wrote: Tue Sep 06, 2022 11:24 pm Nice post, Ryan- Weiss' film has gotten little discussion or public love here, but I'm glad it may not be orphaned. I revisited it recently for the 60s project, and it's still great, if not quite the All-Timer I thought it was the first time. My initial thoughts:

therewillbeblus wrote: Tue Sep 24, 2019 2:39 am A nice mix of English kitchen sink drama and Czech New Wave, with the latter’s style perfectly woven through the narrative, deliberately uneven in amplification based on our heroine’s emotional state. There is a depth to the relationship between the camera and Anne Heywood that can feel frighteningly claustrophobic one moment and beautifully intimate the next, depending on the mood of the scene, and made me feel more uncomfortable and yet cathartically close to, even blended with, her for most of the runtime. When this wasn’t happening, the curious character of the inspector was treated with a tender lens that while ambiguous somehow humanized him just as much as her. The strangeness here is that the camera is often clearly objective and yet the subjective involvement is piercing as the restraint serves an equally emotional purpose. There is a tragic disconnect present throughout this film, between people, within oneself, exemplified by struggles at communication and often literal objects blocking the camera’s ability to capture the action and achieve subjective alignment.

I liked The Collector far more than you on a recent revisit, though not so much on my first watch years ago. It's a bit dated, but Samantha Eggar is playing a less fleshed-out or cathartic version of Mary Elizabeth Winstead's intelligent heroine in 10 Cloverfield Lane. I can see how the film's disengagement from surrogate involvement with her can alienate (and risk boring) audiences, since this kind of rush really works outside of an objective portrait. Still, I thought Wyler balanced the diagnostic study of Stamp well with Eggar's acute stress response translated into tactical dynamic-shifting. It's not a list-maker, but well-worth seeing again someday with adjusted expectations. I think Stamp gets flack for his role when he's supposed to be antisocial, and plays into a character who seems bored because he had a lack of feelings well, without appearing bored himself with the role.

I definitely voted for it, and will encourage others to check it out. the Indicator LE is still not yet sold out, and considering the great Jonathan Owen did the booklet essay its certainly worth a blind buy. I think anyone who gets anything out of British or Czechoslovak films of the time period will find much to be rewarded with here. great writeup TWBB!

"dated" is the word to describe The Collector. I definitely just wish I could get more from either character, I think the purposeful detachment thing didn't quite work for the story we got. I can definitely see how it works for many others, but I was reminded of Blow-Up, which is not a positive for me, but likely is for many others.

therewillbeblus wrote: Sun Sep 18, 2022 8:03 pm I didn’t find Intimate Lighting very memorable either, but I hope those who are making their way through unopened Second Run piles make room for a screening of Before Tonight is Over prior to this list’s due date (read: before tonight is over). It’s by far my favorite discovery from the label since Zeman, and an easy top ten contender for the year. Those who enjoy hangout movies, shaggy dog multinarratives, nouvelle vague youth pics, or all of these combined should check it out especially

I will not get to write up my final blurbs until morning (I just punched in my list at 320am EST, as per monthly tradition now) but I will say that I revisited Intimate Lighting and Before Tonight is Over on back to back nights and it did the former no favors. while its still a nice film and I voted for it, I feel as though there's so much less for the audience to grasp onto and be compelled by. Before Tonight is Over really registered with me this goaround and it made my top 5 - I found the film (and dustybooks did too, whenever he writes it up) to be such a personal experience that can definitely fluctuate based on the viewer's experience with "going out", nightlife, bar culture, and the random encounters with weirdo people of the world that gets examined in everything from Stagecoach to Fallen Angels. it's a tremendous film and absolutely one of Second Run's very best releases. I sincerely hope we weren't the only two votes for it - dom I'd encourage you to check it out!

The 1965 List



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

01. Simón del desierto (Luis Buñuel) 274/14(7)/1
02. Repulsion (Roman Polański) 254/14(5)/1
03. Pierrot le fou (Jean-Luc Godard) 240/11(9)/1(x6)
04. Bunny Lake Is Missing (Otto Preminger) 187/11(2)/3
05. Alphaville, une étrange aventure de Lemmy Caution (Jean-Luc Godard) 168/11(3)/3
06. The Shop on Main Street (Ján Kadár & Elmar Klos) 149/8(3)/3(x2)
07. Tokyo Olympiad (Kon Ichikawa) 141/7(4)/1
08. Giulietta degli spiriti (Federico Fellini) 140/7(4)/1
09. Loves of a Blonde (Miloš Forman) 118/8(2)/1
10. The Spy Who Came in from the Cold (Martin Ritt) 117/7(2)/2
11. Per qualche dollaro in più (Sergio Leone) 114/7(2)/1
12. The Collector (William Wyler) 100/7(1)/1
13. A High Wind in Jamaica (Alexander Mackendrick) 99/7(2)/3
14. Red Beard (Akira Kurosawa) 98/7(2)/2
15. Gare du Nord (Jean Rouch) 91/4(4)/2
16. The Knack...and How to Get It (Richard Lester) 89/6(2)/4
17. Before Tonight Is Over (Peter Solan) 78/5(2)/2
18. In Harm's Way (Otto Preminger) 77/6(2)/3
(tie) 90° in the Shade (Jirí Weiss) 77/6/9
20. Le Bonheur (Agnès Varda) 74/5(1)/2
21. King Rat (Bryan Forbes) 71/5(1)/4
22. A Charlie Brown Christmas (Bill Melendez) 70/5(2)/1
23. Io la conoscevo bene (Antonio Pietrangeli) 68/4(1)/1
24. Pleasures of the Flesh (Nagisa Ōshima) 66/5(1)/4
25. Intimate Lighting (Ivan Passer) 60/4/7
26. The Tomb of Ligeia (Roger Corman) 59/4(1)/2
(tie) The War Game (Peter Watkins) 59/4(1)/5
(tie) My Way Home (Miklós Jancsó) 59/4(1)/5
29. Darling (John Schlesinger) 56/4(1)/2
30. Doctor Zhivago (David Lean) 53/3(1)/4
(tie) Diary of Yunbogi (Nagisa Ōshima) 53/3(1)/5
32. I pugni in tasca (Marco Bellocchio) 51/4/8
33. Help! (Richard Lester) 46/3(2)/4(x2)
(tie) A Story Written with Water (Kijū Yoshida) 46/3(1)/1
35. The Naked Prey (Cornel Wilde) 45/3(1)/5
(tie) Mickey One (Arthur Penn) 45/3/8
37. Il momento della verità (Francesco Rosi) 44/2(2)/4(x2)
(tie) Long Live the Republic (Karel Kachyňa) 44/3(1)/4
39. Walkower (Jerzy Skolimowski) 43/3(1)/3
40. The Hand (Jiří Trnka) 42/3(1)/1
(tie) The Coward (Satyajit Ray) 42/3/7(x2)
42. La bugiarda (Luigi Comencini) 39/2/6
43. Story of a Prostitute (Seijun Suzuki) 36/2(1)/5
44. The Pawnbroker (Sidney Lumet) 35/3/7
45. Le Mystère Koumiko (Chris Marker) 34/2(1)/5
(tie) The Hill (Sidney Lumet) 34/2/6
(tie) The Family Jewels (Jerry Lewis) 34/2/8
48. Major Dundee (Sam Peckinpah) 32/2/6
49. I Saw What You Did (William Castle) 31/2/6
50. Yoyo (Pierre Étaix) 30/3/6

ALSO-RANS

Kustom Kar Kommandos (Kenneth Anger) 29/2(1)/3
Bad Girls Go to Hell (Doris Wishman) 28/2/10
You're the Judge (George B. Seitz Jr.) 27/2/9
The Flight of the Phoenix (Robert Aldrich) 26/3/8
Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill! (Russ Meyer) 23/3/11
Inside Daisy Clover (Robert Mulligan) 23/3/14
The Holy Man (Satyajit Ray) 22/2/15(x2)
The Restless Ones (Dick Ross) 21/2/15
Man Is Not a Bird (Dušan Makavejev) 17/2/13
A Fugitive from the Past (Tomu Uchida) 17/2/14

Terrore nello spazio (Mario Bava) 16/2/11
Color Me Blood Red (Herschell Gordon Lewis) 14/2/13
Rapture (John Guillermin) 10/2/18

ORPHANS

Film (Director) highest ranking

Always on Sunday (Ken Russell) 24
Beautiful Duckling (Lee Hsing) 8
Belphégor ou Le fantôme du Louvre (Claude Barma) 24
Blood of Revenge (Tai Katō) 6
Blood on the Land (Vasilis Georgiadis) 9
Born Under Crossed Stars (Seijun Suzuki) 6
La brûlure de mille soleils (Pierre Kast) 6
Compartiment tueurs (Costa-Gavras) 12
The Debussy Film (Ken Russell) 19
Dom Juan ou Le Festin de pierre (Marcel Bluwal) 11
Dracula: Prince of Darkness (Terence Fisher) 25
The East Is Red (Wang Ping) 12
Film (Alan Schneider) 15
Forest of the Hanged (Liviu Ciulei) 16
Les Grandes Gueules (Robert Enrico) 24
The Great Race (Blake Edwards) 10
House of Terrors (Hajime Satō) 8
Instant Cinema (Jeff Keen) 8
Invasion of Astro-Monster (Ishirō Honda) 18
Das Kaninchen bin ich (Kurt Maetzig) 19
The Loved One (Tony Richardson) 12
Metel (Vladimir Basov) 22
The Money Trap (Burt Kennedy) 23
Mudhoney (Russ Meyer) 16
El mundo sigue (Fernando Fernán Gómez) 5
Nightmare (Arne Mattsson) 19
Organ (Štefan Uher) 14
Othello (Stuart Burge) 23
Presence (Miklós Jancsó) 9
Quixote (Bruce Baillie) 7
Red Line 7000 (Howard Hawks) 10
Samurai Spy (Masahiro Shinoda) 9
Shakespeare Wallah (Merchant Ivory) 5
The Skull (Freddie Francis) 12
Le soldatesse (Valerio Zurlini) 3
Song 14 (Stan Brakhage) 13
Sopralluoghi in Palestina (Pier Paolo Pasolini) 20
The Sound of Music (Robert Wise) 14
A Spring for the Thirsty (Yuri Ilyenko) 7
Strange Bedfellows (Melvin Frank) 16
Subarnarekha (Ritwik Ghatak) 15
Sword of the Beast (Hideo Gosha) 21
Ten Second Film (Bruce Conner) 12
Thomas l'imposteur (Georges Franju) 2
Thunderball (Terence Young) 3
Time to Love (Metin Erksan) 2
La 317ème section (Pierre Schoendoerffer) 11
Two: Creeley/McClure (Stan Brakhage) 21
Vapors (Andy Milligan) 9
Viagem aos Seios de Duília (Carlos Hugo Christensen) 10
Viento negro (Servando González) 1
Von Ryan's Express (Mark Robson) 18
The War Lord (Franklin Schaffner) 11
White Mountains (Melis Ubukeyev) 18
With Beauty and Sadness (Masahiro Shinoda) 10

18 lists submitted

Thanks swo.

Isn't Dracula: Prince of Darkness 1966?

Also, thanks swo! Shocked Pierrot le fou only came in at 3

And with a third of voters placing it at the top of their lists!

So that kind of makes it the winner in my eyes!

domino harvey wrote: Mon Sep 19, 2022 2:00 pm Also, thanks swo! Shocked Pierrot le fou only came in at 3

<meekly slumps in his seat>

That’s pretty much my fault; I blanked and left my favorite Godard off my list entirely! I personally blame the absence of general discussion around the director in the days before the end of voting.

Had I listed correctly, it would have pushed ahead of Repulsion (my #1), but not the Buñuel…

Thanks swo. My top ten.
1. Pierrot le fou
2.Juliet of the Spirits.
3.The Shop On The High Street
4.Dr Zhivago
5.Shakespeare Wallah (my orphan sadly)
6.Alphaville
7. The Coward
8.Mickey One
9.Fists In The Pocket
The War Game

Thanks swo! My list:

1. Pierrot le Fou
2. Juliet of the Spirits
3. Thunderball
4. Gare du Nord
5. Alphaville: une étrange aventure de Lemmy Caution
6. La bugiarda
7. Before Tonight is Over
8. House of Terrors
9. Bunny Lake Is Missing
10. The Family Jewels
11. 90 Degrees in the Shade
12. Simon of the Desert
13. King Rat
14. Inside Daisy Clover
15. I Saw What You Did
16. You’re the Judge
17. A High Wind in Jamaica
18. The Tomb of Ligeia
19. Repulsion
20. YoYo
21. Sword of the Beast
22. Walkover
23. Red Beard
24. The Knack…and How to Get It
25. Loves of a Blonde

Thanks so much, swo!

01 A Charlie Brown Christmas
02 Darling
03 Repulsion
04 Help!
05 Juliet of the Spirits
06 The Hill
07 Tokyo Olympiad
08 The Spy Who Came In from the Cold
09 Simon of the Desert
10 The Knack
11 Loves of a Blonde
12 Alphaville
13 The Shop on Main Street
14 Bunny Lake Is Missing
15 The Collector

Well over half those were new to me, plus one (Fellini's) that I just saw for the first time in the past year. Despite not being in the thread much this time I discovered even more on this goround than in previous, though mostly films that have been discussed a lot at this board over the years. The biggest surprise and the biggest "wow" response to me was to Lumet's The Hill; I'm an admitted sucker for prison stories but I found this one compellingly brooding and tactile in a way that I haven't really seen before, and the cinematography in it was utterly breathtaking, as compelling a constant recasting of limited space in my opinion as Woman in the Dunes.

There were some duds as well that really didn't work for me -- Burge's Othello, Monicelli's Casanova '70 which was so well broken down in its problems by Domino Harvey earlier in the thread (speaking of classic DH takedowns, I sat through Ship of Fools -- part of my wrongheaded attempt to see all major Oscar nominees -- and bust out laughing when the infamous screenshotted sequence came up); and I really, really didn't care for The Naked Prey or Flight of the Phoenix, though maybe I just am not built for that kind of action-oriented cinema. Was highly disappointed by Red Beard too but maybe I just need to try it again down the line.

Per tradition, I also watched two movies in the wrong year: Shadows of Forgotten Ancestors a year late and Chimes at Midnight a year early. Loved both.

DarkImbecile wrote: Mon Sep 19, 2022 2:13 pm

domino harvey wrote: Mon Sep 19, 2022 2:00 pm Also, thanks swo! Shocked Pierrot le fou only came in at 3

<meekly slumps in his seat>

That’s pretty much my fault; I blanked and left my favorite Godard off my list entirely! I personally blame the absence of general discussion around the director in the days before the end of voting.

Had I listed correctly, it would have pushed ahead of Repulsion (my #1), but not the Buñuel…

Shoot, it's my fault too. I just got home from work tonight and realized I totally forgot to participate. It's been extremely busy on the job front these past two weeks along with other things eating up my time. Pierrot le fou would have been in my top 5, which might have pushed it to #1 if DI and I hadn't blanked. Then again, Simon of the Desert would have been on my list too, just lower. It would have been close call at #1 between the two films. By the way, I think Simon of the Desert is a very interesting #1 choice. I don't think it's as well-known as Buñuel's other 60s works, and I didn't know it had a such a consensus here.

Godard would’ve been so pissed at you guys

I'm really pleased with the results, for my money this is our best list of the 60s yet. very glad to see a good few films I thought would get orphaned not being so. I only had two also-rans and no orphans, and all of my top 3 made the top 10. as usual, *-revisited/watched for 60s project, **-revisted for this project, *** for both, bold watched for this project

20 Alphaville**
19 A Charlie Brown Christmas
18 Simon of the Desert
17 The Holy Man
16 Darling
15 Long Live the Republic
14 Intimate Lighting***
13 Man is Not a Bird
12 For a Few Dollars More**
11 My Way Home
10 The Knack...and How to Get it
09 90 in the Shade
08 The Spy Who Came in From the Cold*
07 The Coward
06 Repulsion
05 Before Tonight is Over***
04 Help!
03 A Blonde in Love***
02 Juliet of the Spirits*
01 Tokyo Olympiad

I will try and write these up soon but Help! was the biggest surprise, not only surpassing A Hard Day's Night but also every other British film from the 60s that I've watched so far. my "to do" list for stuff i haven't seen:

The Hill
King Rat
A Fugitive From the Past (my Arrow order should arrive soon)
Bunny Lake is Missing (which I saw eons ago but remember it as not being good? I'll revisit as I don't remember much)

A 4-decade-long Beatles fan here and I enjoy Help! for the great proto-music videoclip collection that it is, but I don't think I've seen the same film others here have!

The humor in Help! is obviously not going to work for everybody but it lands for me to an extreme degree (which may mean nothing as it's been one of my favorite films since I was 8). I wouldn't say I prefer it to A Hard Day's Night, which I find both hilarious and deeply touching and has (IMO) better songs, but I do think Help! is a real treasure and fits in with the eccentricity of Lester's other films of the period a bit more.

Thanks again swo!

I’m really surprised Yo Yo ranked so low / was on so few lists, I would have thought it would be one of the high rankers. Did people not like it or just not get around to seeing it?

Von Ryan’s Express was my last cut from the list, so whoever voted for it, I’m with you!

1. Loves of a Blonde
2. Pierrot le Fou
3. Repulsion
4. Simon del desierto
5. Bunny Lake is Missing
6. Yo Yo
7. Io la conoscevo bene
8. Alphaville
9. Tokyo Olympiad
10. The Shop on Main Street
11. Ninety Degrees in the Shade
12. Mickey One
13. The Tomb of Ligeia
14. A High Wind in Jamaica
15. The Spy Who Came in From the Cold
16. Giulietta degli spiriti
17. The Naked Prey
18. I pugni in tasco
19. The Collector
20. King Rat
21. A Fugitive from the Past
22. Before Tonight is Over
23. A Story Written with Water
24. The Flight of the Phoenix
25. In Harm's Way

I voted for Yoyo but his 1966 film is actually my favorite

bottlesofsmoke wrote: Wed Sep 21, 2022 6:05 pm
Von Ryan’s Express was my last cut from the list, so whoever voted for it, I’m with you!

I think that was me?

therewillbeblus wrote: Tue Sep 20, 2022 2:32 pmGodard would’ve been so pissed at you guys

I think Godard would've forgiven me. I'll make it up to him by not forgetting the main 60s list. Anyway, if I hadn't forgotten, some films on my list would've included For A Few Dollars More, Bunny Lake, The Collector, Le Bonheur, Simon of the Desert, Pierrot le Fou, Red Beard, Shop on Main Street, and Sword of the Beast. Is it just me, or was '65 one of the decade's weaker years?

It was not a strong year. I think this is the second year of the decade where I submitted a Top 20 instead of a Top 25. I’ve seen something like 150 films from the year

‘66 though. Yesterday I was checking and it’s actually my second most seen year ever. Only 2006 beats it.