The Usual Choices
The Collector (William Wyler)
Darling (John Schlesinger)
Dr Zhivago (David Lean)
Repulsion (Roman Polanski)
The Sound of Music (Robert Wise)
But how about...
The Hill (Sidney Lumet)
This is my favourite up-yours-to-authority film (with Cool Hand Luke as #2). Both are set in prisons; both are framed by the Sixties "Down With The Man" counter-culture. As fatalistic and doomed-from-the-outset as 1969's Easy Rider, The Hill is lifted above that overrated hippie-icon by two blistering performances: Sean Connery as the targeted prisoner, and Harry Andrew as the fully-starched British Sergeant-Major...who's not a mere gaoler...he's a re-builder of men. There's not much of a plot, but the struggle between Power and Humanity is fought between soldier and soldier, all in the same WWII army. "Just following orders" (aka The Nuremberg Defence) is picked up and thrown about for the load of cop-out bullshit it has always been. No demands for sympathy or calls for an uprising...just common sense instead; look them in the eye and say no.
...and what about...
King Rat (Bryan Forbes)
A WWII P.O.W. film set in a SE Asian camp, this shares a protagonist-type with 1953's Stalag 17 (the shifty scrounger / trader who lives the high-life compared to his fellow prisoners and breeds resentment as a result) and is appropriately focussed on starvation, disease and do-anything-to-survive. What it (relievedly) doesn't share with Stalag 17 is the buffoonery...King Rat is wholly about the effect ever-impending-death has on ordinary men and how one man cynically taps into this to improve his own quality of life. The acting by the two leads (George Segal & James Fox) is superlative, as they form a friendship based on mutual need. Tom Courtenay supplies the conflict as the lieutenant who is determined not to be fooled, to not allow corruption, to maintain justice...after every other officer has given up. A grim but riveting character study.
...not to mention...
Lord Jim (Richard Brooks)
Another film to add to the "Only-I-Seem-To-Like-It" list. To me, the negatives most often stated by critics break down to only two: over-length (at 154 minutes, it is half an hour too long, and the draggy spots / potential cuts are immediately obvious) and a gazing-into-nothingness lead performance by Peter O'Toole (which I don't see is much different to how he played Lawrence of Arabia). A story of a decent man who commits one low act (cowardice) and spends the rest of his life in self-imposed penance...hey, I'm a sucker for a redemption story. Part exciting gung-ho adventure in exotic locales, the film is also blessed with a superb support cast (James Mason! Eli Wallach! Paul Lukas! Curt Jurgens! Akim Tamiroff! Jack Hawkins!). The blend of personal quest saga with action tale is effectively done. What is the gripe?
...and one personal unmentionable...
Inside Daisy Clover (Robert Mulligan)
What dreary tripe. Nothing in it is quite right or even entirely comprehensible: it's a musical of sorts with few songs (and certainly zero good ones..."the circus is a wacky world...wacky world..."); it is set in 1930's Hollywood but there aren't enough people or era-appropriate props around (and no jazz); Christopher Plummer is a Dark Lord movie producer who doesn't seem to be employed; Natalie Wood is the hot movie property who doesn't seem to have much talent (and makes a lousy tomboy teenager); Robert Redford is the hetero/homo/bi-sexual film star who doesn't seem to have much flair at all for acting; and Roddy McDowall is the repugnant toady who seems to be saying the same lines over and over. At least Ruth Gordon plays a dementia mother who is clearly just a sad dingbat (and she plays it well). And most confusing of all...we're expected to take the whole mess seriously...or possibly even be emboldened by it. As if.
My Top 10 Films of 1965
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| CAUTIONARY TALES OF HOUSEKEEPING #29: When fingermarks are not wiped off properly. |
#02 A King Rat (Forbes)
#03 A The Flight of the Phoenix (Aldrich)
#04 A- The Spy Who Came in From the Cold (Ritt)
#05 A- Chimes at Midnight (Welles)
#06 A- Von Ryan's Express (Robson)
#07 A- 36 Hours (Seaton)
#08 A- Mickey One (Penn)
#09 A- Repulsion (Polanski)
#10 A- Lord Jim (Brooks)
Overflow: More A-/B+ Films
#11 A- The Pawnbroker (Lumet)
#12 A- The Bedford Incident (Harris)
#13 B+ It Happened Here (Brownlow; Mollo)
#14 B+ The Ipcress File (Furie)
#15 B+ Dr Zhivago (Lean)
#16 B+ Darling (Schlesinger)
#17 B+ Bunny Lake is Missing (Preminger)
#18 B+ Return From the Ashes (Thompson)
#19 B+ Young Cassidy (Cardiff; Ford)
#20 B+ Thunderball (Young)
#21 B+ The Nanny (Holt)
Sorry, They Didn't Make It...
> B The Cincinnati Kid [great final card game; shame about most of the other stuff before that]
> B The Great Race [graded leniently for inspiring Wacky Races]
> B Dear Brigitte [so lightweight it's a nothing, but bewilderingly still fairly appealing]
> B Blindfold [OK spy comedy where Rock tries to be Cary and Claudia tries to be Audrey]
> B Othello [a great Shakespearean tragedy which causes me to nod off]
> B- A High Wind in Jamaica [an action-less pirate film featuring rather annoying children]
> B- A Study in Terror [a Sherlock Holmes Meets Jack the Ripper story, with a lousy Holmes, Watson & Jack]
> B- Cat Ballou [Lee Marvin shoulda done an Alec Guinness and played all the parts]
> B- The Fool Killer [aka Tom Sawyer Meets Norman Bates and They Visit The Waltons]
> B- The Collector [a well-acted male bondage fantasy which is artificial and icky]
> B- Sky West and Crooked [a Hayley Mills coming-of-age pastoral that's a bit of a snooze]
> C The Agony & the Ecstasy [a guy is hired to paint a ceiling; the customer is impatient; it turns out nice]
> C The War Lord [Charlton Heston with a very large sword]
> C The Greatest Story Ever Told [aka Life of Brian: The Prequel]
> C You Must Be Joking! [features great British comic actors...forgets to feature a great British comic script]
> C Two on a Guillotine [dumb haunted house movie that's not as scary as the mole on the back of my leg]
> C The Spy With My Face [#2 in the Man from U.N.C.L.E. film franchise...James Bond has nothing to worry about]
> C That Darn Cat! [watch Skippy the Bush Kangaroo instead]
> D Help! [aka What a Movie Would Be Like If You Were Stoned All The Time...Plus Some Great Songs!]
> D Inside Daisy Clover [A Personal Unmentionable]
> D The Sound of Music [my secret cure for constipation]
> D Baby, the Rain Must Fall [nearly worth it just to see Steve McQueen trying to lip-synch a rockabilly song]
> D Ship of Fools [don't these people ever shut up?]
> D Sylvia [tawdry, tedious and a hundred minutes too long]
> E The Knack...and How to Get It [groovy rape jokes, anyone?]
"Ah!..Sweet Mystery of Life...": 1965 Films I Apparently Still Need to See
Boeing Boeing (Rich); The Face of Fu Manchu (Sharp); Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill! (Meyer); Four in the Morning (Simmons); He Who Rides a Tiger (Crichton); The Heroes of Telemark (Mann); In Harm’s Way (Preminger); The Loved One (Richardson); Major Dundee (Peckinpah); Mirage (Dmytryk); The Naked Prey (Wilde); Operation Crossbow (Anderson); A Patch of Blue (Green); Rapture (Guillermin); Sands of the Kalahari (Endfield); The Satan Bug (Sturges); Shakespeare Wallah (Ivory); Shenandoah (McLaglen); The Slender Thread (Pollack); Those Magnificent Men in Their Flying Machines (Annakin); A Thousand Clowns (Coe)
Best Performances of 1965
Julie Andrews in The Sound of Music
Julie Christie in Darling
Lee Marvin in Cat Ballou
Laurence Olivier in Othello
Omar Shariff in Dr Zhivago
Rod Steiger in The Pawnbroker
Shelley Winters in A Patch of Blue
But how about...
James Stewart & Richard Attenborough & Hardy Kruger in The Flight of the Phoenix
Basically a shipwreck-survival story, TFotP is a tense & terrific who's-gonna-make-it-out-alive film. What lifts it a couple of notches above the usual disaster flick is the three-way tug o' war between grizzled Jimmy, eternally-nervous Richard and arrogant brainwave Hardy. Jimmy vs Hardy (the past vs the future) with Richard trying to patch them up after every attack. As the desert takes it physical toll, and each stranded man is forced to his breaking point, these three keep dancing with each other, trying, in their own ways, to maintain control. It is a masterful partnership-performance whose importance to the film was underestimated when the dubious 2004 remake was attempted.
...and what about...
Richard Burton in The Spy Who Came in From the Cold
If they aren't full-bore actioners, then spy films need to be like this...a mucky wallow in a netherworld of betrayal, lies and inhumanity. Like Callan (still my #1 fave TV show ever made...thanks Ella!) TSWCiFtC is one of those and Richard plays an agent who is at the fag-end of his career (therefore usefulness) and he knows it. Just one more operation and it will all be over...he can return to the human race. Staring into space with the blankness of stone, Richard doesn't make us feel pity for the man (we know he has been responsible for some evil-goings-on) but we do feel his weariness. We know from the outset that this is not going to end well, and Richard seems to be prepared for that, playing the little mind games and keeping his fingers crossed that he flukes survival just one last time.
...not to mention...
Samantha Eggar in Return From the Ashes
A somewhat peculiar story, RFtA is a movie of two distinct halves which are barely connected: 1) ex-prisoner comes home after the liberation of the Nazi concentration camps and tries to locate her husband and 2) husband and step-daughter plan to murder woman for her money. Samantha is the step-daughter and a more self-centred, vicious teenager you could never find. Her sole driving force is to punish her step-mother for abandoning her...the excuse of Belsen be damned. The performance could have so easily been OTT, but Samantha makes the girl's obsession and hatred completely believable. She never goes for the "feel-sorry-for-the-psycho" plea...the girl is a small force of inhuman nature.
...and one personal unmentionable...
Vivien Leigh in Ship of Fools
I feel bad about this because Vivien was going through major health deterioration during the filming of this (she suffered from a bipolar disorder and severe depression and recurring tuberculosis). In fact, it was her last movie...she was dead two years later. However, the performance exists...and it is painful to see Scarlett O'Hara and Blanche DuBois withered down to this. Like in 1961's The Roman Spring of Mrs Stone, Vivien seems to be afraid to move her face too much, lest it crack apart. She awkwardly delivers rather than acts with her dialogue and clearly doesn't know how to interact with her co-stars (especially Lee Marvin...a bizarre coupling anyway) to help push the scenes along. Throughout it I kept thinking of Billie Holiday's Lady in Satin album...the voice is shot; the will is crumbling; the sadness is large.
My 10 Favourite Performances of 1965
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| Hollywood Secrets: How Liz Got Richard to Stop His Carousing Ways |
#02 Sean Connery in The Hill
#03 James Fox in King Rat
#04 Richard Burton in The Spy Who Came in From the Cold
#05 George Segal in King Rat
#06 James Stewart & Richard Attenborough & Hardy Kruger in The Flight of the Phoenix
#07 Paul Lukas in Lord Jim
#08 Frank Sinatra in Von Ryan's Express
#09 Sean Connery in Thunderball
#10 Julie Christie in Dr Zhivago
Overflow: More List-Worthy Performances
#11 Orson Welles in Chimes at Midnight
#12 Terence Stamp in The Collector
#13 Ingrid Thulin in Return From the Ashes
#14 Rod Steiger in Dr Zhivago
#15 Michael Caine in The Ipcress File
#16 Rod Steiger in The Pawnbroker
#17 Julie Christie in Darling
#18 Samantha Eggar in Return From the Ashes
#19 Edward G. Robinson in The Cincinnati Kid
#20 Oskar Werner in Ship of Fools
#21 Henry Hull in The Fool Killer
#22 Billy Mumy in Dear Brigitte
Sorry, They Didn't Make It...
> Laurence Olivier in Othello [I keep expecting him to say "Mammy"]
> Julie Andrews in The Sound of Music [she's very very nice]
> Omar Shariff in Dr Zhivago [how does he get his eyes to stay that wet?]
> Shelley Winters in A Patch of Blue [great casting rather than great acting]
> Lee Marvin in Cat Ballou [the horse played a better drunk]
And so...onto the annual awards (with a nod of appreciation to Danny Peary)...
The Alternate Oscars for 1965 are:
FILM of the YEAR
GOLD: The Hill (Sidney Lumet)
SILVER: King Rat (Bryan Forbes)
BRONZE: The Flight of the Phoenix (Robert Aldrich)
LEAD ACTOR: PERFORMANCE of the YEAR
GOLD: Sean Connery (The Hill)
SILVER: James Fox (King Rat)
BRONZE: Richard Burton (The Spy Who Came in From the Cold)
LEAD ACTRESS: PERFORMANCE of the YEAR
GOLD: Julie Christie (Dr Zhivago)
SILVER: Ingrid Thulin (Return From the Ashes)
BRONZE: Julie Christie (Darling)
SUPPORTING ACTOR: PERFORMANCE of the YEAR
GOLD: Harry Andrews (The Hill)
SILVER: Paul Lukas (Lord Jim)
BRONZE: Rod Steiger (Dr Zhivago)
SUPPORTING ACTRESS: PERFORMANCE of the YEAR
GOLD: Samantha Eggar (Return From the Ashes)
SILVER: Maggie Smith (Young Cassidy)
BRONZE: Ruth Gordon (Inside Daisy Clover)
ENSEMBLE or PARTNERSHIP: PERFORMANCE of the YEAR
GOLD: James Stewart & Richard Attenborough & Hardy Kruger (The Flight of the Phoenix)
SILVER: Terence Stamp & Samantha Eggar (The Collector)
BRONZE: Oskar Werner & Simone Signoret (Ship of Fools)
JUVENILE: PERFORMANCE of the YEAR
GOLD: Billy Mumy (Dear Brigitte)
SILVER: Edward Albert (The Fool Killer)
BRONZE: Deborah Baxter (A High Wind in Jamaica)
The Alternate Razzies for 1965 are:
CRAP FILM of the YEAR
The Knack...and How to Get It (Richard Lester)
CRAP MALE PERFORMANCE of the YEAR
Steve McQueen (Baby, the Rain Must Fall)
CRAP FEMALE PERFORMANCE of the YEAR
Natalie Wood (Inside Daisy Clover)
