The 1969 Mini-List

[swo17]

Law and Order by Wiseman, The Red Tent by Soy Cuba director Kalatozov, and the first good Kramer film The Secret of Santa Vittoria

Added

[Red Screamer]

Good call. I’d vote for Law and Order, which I shared some thoughts about in the 60s thread. Probably the least of Wiseman’s films this decade but still stunning.

[swo17]

VOTE HERE THRU JAN 15

[knives]

That’s fast moving. Here’s a couple of small thoughts.

Uncle Mustache isn’t too dissimilar from what Kiarostami’s children shorts provide, but Beyzai adds a rascally comedic element to it making for a film where a random Fellini reference makes perfect sense.

Less successful for me is Go, Go Second Time Virgin. This feels like a prime example of what Oshima was sticking his finger toward when he made Pleasures of the Flesh. This is a very beautiful and artistically made film which is utterly grotesque in its actual text playing trauma for a cheap attempt to seem deep and having utterly empty female characterization posing as subversive maturity. The female lead never really is something other than an object to rape and the male lead is a creep, yet the film is insistent that their this rebel without a cause romantic horror story that you should love to be afraid of. As alluded to above this places on offer some great artistry, but given that it’s in service to such bad content I see no reason to give your time to this when dozens of other Japanese filmmakers of the same period were doing similar things fused to better content. This was my first Wakamatsu, but I’m trying out some more to success. Here’s to this being the worst film by him.

Finally, I don’t know if it qualifies, but Huszárik‘s Amerigo Tot is a real winner. A very powerful ode to the work of art and the art of work.

[Matt]

I've got way too many major gaps in my viewing for this year to feel confident submitting a list

[swo17]

Uncle Mustache
Amerigo Tot

I didn't have either of these as eligible but have now added them as 1969 films

[Rayon Vert]

I've got way too many major gaps in my viewing for this year to feel confident submitting a list

That hasn't stopped me so far!

[knives]

Yeah, I’ve seen only a pittance of the films on the master list and will be submitting. As long as you’ve seen ten films from the year there’s no reason not to.

[DarkImbecile]

For the first time, I’ll have actually started this particular year’s mini-list having seen fewer than ten titles (at least recently enough to evaluate and rank them with any confidence), but you can be damn sure I’ll be submitting the most basic list ever in two weeks, as per usual

[knives]

Chahine’s The Land, which is streaming on Netflix, has the same basic concept and structure as the two Shariff starring struggle films making the evidence of Chahine’s growth all the more evident. Replacing their noir melodrama is an expansive ensemble that truly feels like a biography of a region and way of life. He really digs into what daily life means and while he never foregoes the momentum of narrative it never rules the film with characterization being king.

Also color truly makes Chahine stand on his own as a unique stylist. In black and white he felt familiar, but with color he paints the terrain and faces in a way that highlights how this is a story for Alexandria alone. It is now clear to me how and why Chahine managed to become the representative of Arab cinema for the wider world.

[the preacher]

Chahine’s The Land, which is streaming on Netflix, has the same basic concept and structure as the two Shariff starring struggle films making the evidence of Chahine’s growth all the more evident. Replacing their noir melodrama is an expansive ensemble that truly feels like a biography of a region and way of life. He really digs into what daily life means and while he never foregoes the momentum of narrative it never rules the film with characterization being king.

Also color truly makes Chahine stand on his own as a unique stylist. In black and white he felt familiar, but with color he paints the terrain and faces in a way that highlights how this is a story for Alexandria alone. It is now clear to me how and why Chahine managed to become the representative of Arab cinema for the wider world.

No to mention the best lead performance of the year. That mustache...

[therewillbeblus]

I doubt I'll have room for it on my list, but I noticed Fulci's Perversion Story isn't on the list of eligible films for '69 or on SNAPSЖOT, and I believe it's a 1969 film

[swo17]

I've added it now

[geoffcowgill]

Is The Magic Christian (Joseph McGrath) 1969-eligible? I don't think it's on the list yet, and everything I'm seeing suggests that is the correct year

[swo17]

I've added it, thanks

[knives]

Laughter in the Dark
To get it out of the way, I’m sure this doesn’t in any way hold a candle to the book, but many masterpieces of cinema such as Murnau’s Faust are in the same boat. Richardson and crew have developed a movie that is engaging and disturbing with a depth that sneaks up even as it is not readily apparent. The film’s greatest boon is Anna Karina who acts so wonderfully and naturally in English. The script sets up a plot like Scarlet Street and it could be very easy for Margot to be some villain or femme fatale, but the cruelty of the film is born out of the fact that Karina plays her character with such innocence and seeming kindness. Even as the depths of the damage she causes comes forward the film shocks because of the dissonance until we are shown the light in the darkness and still can’t comprehend the naivety she exudes with the person she is.

The elements around her are great as well. Williamson, in the same year as his other and even better Richardson team up of Hamlet, goes from lustful buffoon to pitiable joke with such slow movement that I was totally unsure what to feel in response to him. In between these two performances I’ve been dancing around the term callous. The film isn’t such, but the theme that fuses all of the disparate elements together seems to be how callousness and innocence intertwine to make for a horror of personhood.

The Girl From Rio
Ostensibly a spy film this is more of a hangout movie where George Sanders, who apparently was paid enough to stand or walk, and a gaggle of folks lazily do the mechanics of the genre between just hanging out and being weird. This nonchalance makes for a very enjoyable experience. Adding to the delight of the movie is the weirdly sex positive for the genre and era presentation. That’s not to say the film is going to win awards, but the hero isn’t some grotesque Bond and while the title character is into S and M that’s kind of incidental to how the film views her. Mix that in with some great production design and costuming and this might be, low bar that it may be, the best ‘60s Bond descendant I’ve seen outside of Chabrol.

Actually Chabrol is a good comparison to Franco in general. I’ve now gotten to a pitiful four films by him and all could adequately be described as a low genre era Chabrol film rendered as mediocre and blind to its political presentation as possible. That still makes for a surprisingly good experience though.

Gheisar
I’m pretty sure this is listed under a different spelling in the masterlist, but these are but the woes of transliteration. You won’t believe my overwhelming joy at realizing that this was Persian just from the spoken words alone. The film itself while engaging is no great shake. It plays a bit like a classy Street Fighter with an in media res opening that sets up the titular lead, why he should be empathized with and why he’s a danger to the villains. There’s not a real depth to its ethical inquiries, but it does well in weaving a man of violence’s inability to see other paths to justice. It also does well in detailing the fallout of his actions all without losing engagement in the form of entertainment.

[bottlesofsmoke]

The Learning Tree
Plot-wise definitely of a piece with 1950s Hollywood melodramas, in many ways this really feels like studio film from that era (how many of these films climax with a court case?) You could see this being directed by a Delmer Daves a decade earlier, except the story would focus on the white judge and his horny son, with the black characters relegated to supporting roles, at best sharing the spotlight like Hurry Sundown a few years earlier. That it looks and feels like a major studio film and the main characters are all black, and the producer-writer-director-composer is black is obviously where the historical significance comes from. But even if the coming-of-age story filtered through 50s drama doesn’t stand out much today, this isn’t just one of those “important but not good” movies, mainly because of Parks, whose attention to detail goes well beyond what you’d expect from a similar film. It really feels like an actual, lived-in world with beautiful location shooting and rough textures, a feeling of being worn and used. Compared with the studio-bound feel of a similar milieu in To Kill a Mockingbird, it’s a very different experience that suits the story being told very well. And even if some of it it is heightened in the melodrama fashion, I appreciate that the film does its best to demonstrate the brutality - both cruel and swift - of prejudice and violence of the era. There is something disturbing about the suddenness that young black men are gunned down by police in this film, without any chance at justice. That this resonated both at the time and today goes without saying.

Downhill Racer
I enjoyed that this took the standard sports movie tact - personal growth and overcoming problems in the athletes private life leads to overcoming on the field, court, slopes, etc, - and totally disregarded it, presenting instead a character that doesn’t change or grow much if at all, yet triumphs none-the-less. This character study of an arrogant, self-centered athlete is probably truer to life than the standard sports story, particularly in individual sports that require intense, inward-looking focus and drive. Like many character studies, it does feel a little slight, though there is some nice cinematography and action, it still feels like their some more meat on the bone here, both psychologically and in terms of inter-character relationships. It would have been fascinating to see what Polanski would have made of this.

[therewillbeblus]

I also liked The Learning Tree for similar reasons, though it seemed to me that Parks was being more deliberately reflexive regarding his intentions to play with melodrama in ways that would affect a variety of demographics differently. My writeup:

I'm not sure if I'm reading the film's intended approach correctly (I haven't dug through any supplements nor have I read up on any of them), but I thought this was an effective recalibrated melodrama, playing to the beat of a familiar narrative skeleton and tonal markers that were utilized in the 50s. That genre concocted a deceptively shallow sense of aesthetic artifice to exhibit the juxtaposition between the faux-security of external apparatuses and the raw authentic experience of social systems' conflict spawning unbearable alienation on an individual level. Although the melodrama typically centered around white communities, Parks remodels the formula to meet black life as he sees it, with some interesting twists: instead of meditating primarily around how a fragmented society eliminated safe spaces for expression of emotion that in turn led to dreadful consequences, Gordon Parks focuses on cruel tangible realities of black lives in the dominant white communities- which, in the time period the film takes place, is all of them. The drama often starts and stops with acerbic action. Deaths are brutal and shocking, and the abrasive methods used within the organized fixture reminded me of Peyton Place's stark disruption of norms of cinema within a normative framework, both opting for a stirring effect over form-reflexive irony.

This refurbishing of the Hollywood Melodrama must have stuck out like a sore thumb in 1969, and yet it's perfectly timed to propagate a progressive audience with post-Code violence and a harsh realistic finale that evades justice. One scene I particularly loved was the white judge's didactic finger-wagging at the white courtroom audience, which would have made me roll my eyes in another film, but Parks is so keenly perceptive to the constructs he's manipulating, knowing full well that white audiences need this message coming from a white old man to land, and that black audiences will appreciate the gag as a utopian piece of wish fulfillment advocacy from public officials, yet one that still carries immense power in its truth for the context of what our main principal had to do to execute 'justice.' It's interesting -and not artificially or ironically conveyed whatsoever- that Newt is the only character who acts judicially on a wholly moral plane defying cultural allegiance- which, if a Fuck You, is a rather gentle and humbly-portrayed one. It's also a sad example of the thankless and lonesome process of acting in step with one's virtues against the friction of a domineering and oppressive milieu, and Parks graciously and unsurprisingly doesn't allow his empowering affirmation bestowed in accordance with the rules of melodrama to dilute that experience of its sincere force.

[knives]

Submitted my list which basically included every eligible Italian film. Last film watched for this was Franco’s Venus in Furs which is easily the best film I’ve seen from him yet with such style and power. He’d have made a great silent film director.

Are any of his films as good as the ones produced by Harry Alan Towers?

[swo17]

Where is domino to answer knives' question?

Also, as a reminder you have until I wake up tomorrow morning to

VOTE HERE

[TMDaines]

Submitted my list. Looks like I did a bad job of scanning the shortlist this time and overlooked both Detektive and Vinni-Pukh not being nominated.

[knives]

I was tempted to mention Winni-Pooh, but since I did have room for it on my list didn’t.

[swo17]

Detektive and Vinni-Pukh

I've added these, if you'd like to revise your list sometime in the next hour or so

[swo17]

The 1969 List



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

01. Ma nuit chez Maud [My Night at Maud's] (Éric Rohmer) 273/14(7)/1(x5)
02. Spalovač mrtvol [The Cremator] (Juraj Herz) 216/12(6)/1
03. La Voie lactée [The Milky Way] (Luis Buñuel) 215/11(7)/2(x2)
(tie) Z (Costa-Gavras) 215/12(5)/1(x2)
05. The Wild Bunch (Sam Peckinpah) 211/11(6)/1(x4)
06. Սայեաթ-Նովայ [Sayat-nova] [The Color of Pomegranates] (Sergei Parajanov) 204/11(6)/2
07. L'Armée des ombres [Army of Shadows] (Jean-Pierre Melville) 191/13(4)/1
08. They Shoot Horses, Don't They? (Sydney Pollack) 170/10(4)/1
09. En passion [The Passion of Anna] (Ingmar Bergman) 155/9(3)/1
10. Midnight Cowboy (John Schlesinger) 145/8(3)/3(x3)
11. Que la bête meure [This Man Must Die] (Claude Chabrol) 134/9(3)/1
12. Satyricon (Federico Fellini) 107/8(1)/3
13. Easy Rider (Dennis Hopper) 102/6(2)/3
14. Diaries, Notes and Sketches [Walden] (Jonas Mekas) 100/5(2)/2
15. エロス＋虐殺 [Erosu purasu gyakusatsu] [Eros + Massacre] (Kijū Yoshida) 98/6(1)/1
16. La Femme infidèle [The Unfaithful Wife] (Claude Chabrol) 95/6(2)/4(x2)
17. Porcile [Pigsty] (Pier Paolo Pasolini) 88/5(2)/2
18. I Start Counting! (David Greene) 82/5(1)/3
(tie) 少年 [Shōnen] [Boy] (Nagisa Ōshima) 82/6(1)/1
20. Le Chagrin et la Pitié [The Sorrow and the Pity] (Marcel Ophuls) 81/5(1)/4
21. Kes (Ken Loach) 78/6(1)/5
22. Dillinger è morto [Dillinger Is Dead] (Marco Ferreri) 73/4(2)/2(x2)
23. Salesman (Albert & David Maysles & Charlotte Zwerin) 72/6/7
24. Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid (George Roy Hill) 67/4(2)/3
25. Medium Cool (Haskell Wexler) 66/5(1)/2
26. Women in Love (Ken Russell) 65/4/6
(tie) Le Gai savoir [The Joy of Learning] (Jean-Luc Godard) 65/5/8
28. 盲獣 [Mōjū] [Blind Beast] (Yasuzō Masumura) 61/5/7
29. Sweet Charity (Bob Fosse) 60/3(2)/4
30. Medea (Pier Paolo Pasolini) 59/3(2)/4
31. Skřivánci na niti [Larks on a String] (Jiří Menzel) 57/4/6
(tie) La Sirène du Mississippi [Mississippi Mermaid] (François Truffaut) 57/4(1)/2
33. The Honeymoon Killers (Leonard Kastle) 54/4/10(x2)
34. 御用金 [Goyōkin] (Hideo Gosha) 48/3(1)/5
35. Queimada [Burn!] (Gillo Pontecorvo) 47/5/10(x2)
36. O Dragão da Maldade Contra o Santo Guerreiro [Antonio das Mortes] (Glauber Rocha) 46/4/7
37. Götterdämmerung [The Damned] (Luchino Visconti) 45/4/9
38. Žert [The Joke] (Jaromil Jireš) 42/2(1)/4
(tie) Take the Money and Run (Woody Allen) 42/3/6
40. Frankenstein Must Be Destroyed (Terence Fisher) 41/2(1)/5
41. Katzelmacher (Rainer Werner Fassbinder) 34/3(1)/3
(tie) Age of Consent (Michael Powell) 34/2/6
(tie) Last Summer (Frank Perry) 34/2/7
44. True Grit (Henry Hathaway) 33/3/7
(tie) La Piscine [The Swimming Pool] (Jacques Deray) 33/3/6
(tie) The Learning Tree (Gordon Parks) 33/3/12(x2)
47. Všichni dobří rodáci [All My Good Countrymen] (Vojtěch Jasný) 31/2(1)/4
(tie) A tanú [The Witness] (Péter Bacsó) 31/2/7
49. Une corde... un Colt... [Cemetery Without Crosses] (Robert Hossein) 30/2(1)/5
50. Tichý týden v domě [A Quiet Week in the House] (Jan Švankmajer) 29/2(1)/4
(tie) That Cold Day in the Park (Robert Altman) 29/2/7
(tie) Sirokkó [Winter Wind] (Miklós Jancsó) 29/2/9
(tie) 心中天網島 [Shinjū ten no amijima] [Double Suicide] (Masahiro Shinoda) 29/3/12

ALSO-RANS

ფიროსმანი [Pirosmani] (Giorgi Shengelaia) 28/2/7
新宿泥棒日記 [Shinjuku dorobō nikki] [Diary of a Shinjuku Thief] (Nagisa Ōshima) 27/4/16
Hamlet (Tony Richardson) 26/2/8
On Her Majesty's Secret Service (Peter R. Hunt) 26/3/9
الأرض [Al-ard] [The Land] (Youssef Chahine) 24/2/6
گاو [Gaav] [The Cow] (Dariush Mehrjui) 23/2/6
Paint Your Wagon (Joshua Logan) 23/2/10

المومياء [Al-mummia] [The Night of Counting the Years] (Shadi Abdel Salam) 22/2(1)/5
Tell Them Willie Boy Is Here (Abraham Polonsky) 20/2/15
Liebe ist kälter als der Tod [Love Is Colder Than Death] (Rainer Werner Fassbinder) 19/2/12
Atti degli apostoli [Acts of the Apostles] (Roberto Rossellini) 17/2/10
Alice's Restaurant (Arthur Penn) 17/2/11
Putney Swope (Robert Downey Sr.) 17/2/14
A Married Couple (Allan King) 10/2/17

ORPHANS

Film (Director) highest ranking

Lions Love (...and Lies) (Agnès Varda) 21
Femmine insaziabili [The Insatiables] (Alberto De Martino) 20
Valparaíso mi amor (Aldo Francia) 21
La muralla verde [The Green Wall] (Armando Robles Godoy) 1
Frosty the Snowman (Arthur Rankin, Jr. & Jules Bass) 24
Gražuolė [The Beauty] (Arūnas Žebriūnas) 8
Kevade [Spring] (Arvo Kruusement) 17
The Assassination Bureau (Basil Dearden) 15
A Boy Named Charlie Brown (Bill Melendez) 8
Анничка [Annychka] (Boris Ivchenko) 5
A Time for Dying (Budd Boetticher) 4
Otley (Dick Clement) 15
La taglia è tua... l'uomo l'ammazzo io [The Reward's Yours... The Man's Mine] (Edoardo Mulargia) 3
Slávnosť v botanickej záhrade [Celebration in the Botanical Garden] (Elo Havetta) 15
The Rain People (Francis Ford Coppola) 14
Hello, Dolly! (Gene Kelly) 25
La collina degli stivali [Boot Hill] (Giuseppe Colizzi) 9
My Name Is Oona (Gunvor Nelson) 5
Le Clan des Siciliens [The Sicilian Clan] (Henri Verneuil) 18
人斬り [Hitokiri] (Hideo Gosha) 17
Lemon (Hollis Frampton) 12
The Birth of Magellan: Palindrome (Hollis Frampton) 8
The Night of the Following Day (Hubert Cornfield) 9
Mackenna's Gold (J. Lee Thompson) 22
Model Shop (Jacques Demy) 16
Manden der tænkte ting [The Man Who Thought Life] (Jens Ravn) 18
Paroxismus [Venus in Furs] (Jesús Franco) 12
The Gypsy Moths (John Frankenheimer) 16
A Walk with Love and Death (John Huston) 24
Marooned (John Sturges) 12
Yawar Mallku [Blood of the Condor] (Jorge Sanjinés) 4
The Magic Christian (Joseph McGrath) 15
Vtáčkovia, siroty a blázni [Birds, Orphans and Fools] (Juraj Jakubisko) 18
ゆけゆけ二度目の処女 [Yuke yuke nidome no shojo] [Go, Go Second Time Virgin] (Kōji Wakamatsu) 14
Struktura kryształu [The Structure of Crystal] (Krzysztof Zanussi) 6
It's Alive! (Larry Buchanan) 25
Our Lady of the Sphere (Larry Jordan) 9
冬暖 [Dong nuan] [The Winter] (Li Han-hsiang) 13
L'Inde fantôme [Phantom India] (Louis Malle) 18
Infanzia, vocazione e prime esperienze di Giacomo Casanova, veneziano [Giacomo Casanova: Childhood and Adolescence] (Luigi Comencini) 9
L'Hiver (Marcel Hanoun) 20
Il seme dell'uomo [The Seed of Man] (Marco Ferreri) 24
Bambi Meets Godzilla (Marv Newland) 11
昭和残侠伝 唐獅子仁義 [Shōwa zankyō-den: Karajishi jingi] [Brutal Tales of Chivalry 5: Man with the Karajishi Tattoo] (Masahiro Makino) 15
قیصر [Qeysar] [Caesar] (Masoud Kimiai) 2
Civilisation (Michael Gill, Peter Montagnon & Ann Turner) 5
Bye Bye, Barbara (Michel Deville) 10
Հայկական հողի գույնը [Haykakan hoghi guyne] [The Color of Armenian Land] (Mikhail Vartanov) 19
La Fiancée du pirate [A Very Curious Girl] (Nelly Kaplan) 13
Spheres (Norman McLaren & René Jodoin) 25
The Owl Service (1969-1970) (Peter Plummer) 18
Oh! What a Lovely War (Richard Attenborough) 8
The Bed Sitting Room (Richard Lester) 7
Une femme douce [A Gentle Woman] (Robert Bresson) 17
The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie (Ronald Neame) 13
79 primaveras (Santiago Álvarez) 23
Джамиля [Dzhamilya] (Sergei Yutkevich & Irina Poplavskaya) 14
つぶれかかった右眼のために [Tsuburekakatta migime no tame ni] [For My Crushed Right Eye] (Toshio Matsumoto) 12
薔薇の葬列 [Bara no sōretsu] [Funeral Parade of Roses] (Toshio Matsumoto) 2
На войне как на войне [Na voyne, kak na voyne] [At War as at War] (Viktor Tregubovich) 16
Nezvaný host [The Uninvited Guest] (Vlastimil Venclík) 24
Česká rapsodie [Bohemian Rhapsody] (Vojtěch Jasný) 20
Line (Yvonne Rainer) 22

19 lists submitted

[therewillbeblus]

Thanks swo! Cool list, glad to be vindicated of my omission since Z didn’t need my help, and a hat tip to whoever else helped propel That Cold Day in the Park into the main list. With all the experimental fans on this board, I’m surprised to to see My Name is Oona wind up an orphan, and not surprised but disappointed to see one of Michel Deville’s best films, Bye Bye Barbara, unable find a home even amidst a niche voting body capitalizing on back channel access