A Journey Through My Collection: The 1960's

The stats in my Letterboxd profile reveal that my three highest rated decades of movie reviews are the 1940’s, 1960’s and 2020’s. It’s a rather odd span, perhaps the only movies that I seek out to watch from the ‘40’s are from my favorite older directors. The 2020’s are probably very highly rated due to recency, and a generally optimistic filmgoing attitude from lockdown and beyond. But the 1960’s is a decade that kinda sneaks up on me. Perhaps it’s a sweet spot of great world cinema as well as American directors getting weird before the next wave of young directors hit the scene in the ‘70’s. Regardless, this batch of movies was a delight, from some old favorites like La Dolce Vita and The Birds to a few first time watches that really blew me away like The Group and Medea, as well as a couple of movies that were as good as new to me, rewatches where I was not paying good enough attention the first time around only to find I love them like Mamma Roma and Juliet of the Spirits. Overall, this was the first decade I have hit where every movie is shot with incredible beauty as well as being entertaining and directed well. 

La Dolce Vita (1960)

This really is wonderful. I've watched this for more than 20 years, although this is my first time on the Criterion Fellini box set. I tend to go a few years between viewings, but every time I see this I am consistently surprised by the number of memorable sequences in this film. Every character is interesting, even if they are cartoonist versions of what real people would be like. This is like staying up all night and waking life turns into a dream, or nightmare at times. Yes, I would go to the party where they just listen to recordings of the sounds of rain.

One-Eyed Jacks (1961)

I'm not a big Marlon Brando fan, his oddness distracts me more than his acting prowess intrigues, but he did direct this incredibly well and I wouldn't want anyone else in this role. I love the scale of the landscape here, although it is often a seascape in the background that swallows up the frame. It's an incredible tone to set a Western in, with the sounds of the churning ocean and a wall of churning grey-blue just over the shoulders of the subjects. This might be one of the best examples of the advice that John Ford gave Speilberg as a child to be interesting with the placement of the horizon.

Mamma Roma (1962)

During one of the recent Criterion sales, I couldn't resist pulling the trigger on purchasing the Pasolini box set. I had taken an Italian Film class in college 20 or more years ago, which I very much loved, but it didn't screen any Pasolini directed films, although I'm pretty sure we saw a couple written by him, La Dolce Vita and Nights of Cabiria, perhaps two of my favorite Fellini films. I had seen Oedipus Rex in a high school english class, which blew my mind at the time, and more recently the internet has beaten to death meme jokes about his more controversial films. I hunted down a good chunk of Pasolini's filmography through youtube, with transfers that weren't especially great, but I enjoyed what I saw, nonetheless. The Criterion disc of Mamma Roma looks great. It is a spiritual sequel, or a spiritual sister, to Nights of Cabiria, fun characters moving through the edges of society in Rome. It's shot so well, this feels like everything you could hope for in a 1960's Italian film. This was the first I had broken into the box set, and as with every Criterion box I get into, it's like releasing a cardboard scented breath of pure joy, begging for repeated dopamine hits.

The Birds (1963)

While Vertigo manages to defy expectations of an unsettling thriller from Hitchcock, The Birds sets itself up to be a classic romcom before the wheels come off and the picturesque tongue in cheek movie tumbles into a disaster horror film. While some of the birds are comically lifeless, there are so many real birds, and they keep coming, more and more until the town explodes, and it is difficult to not feel attacked. The lack of a soundtrack at times is so ominous. I'm guessing this was a second shot at cutting the music from Hitch, who famously didn't want music during the Psycho shower scene, his previous project.

The Gospel According to St Matthew (1964)

While I am not one who believes, I grew up going to church every Sunday with my mom where I would soak up all the stories and lessons. I feel like this is incredible telling of the story of Jesus and it looks just as I would see it in my head all those Sundays. Jesus doesn't have long blonde hair and a beard, but this definitely feels like Jesus, much as Willem Defoe conveyed a weight to the role in The Last Temptation of Christ. The music elevates this into feeling supernatural. I had only previously seen this on a bad transfer through YouTube, so the Pasolini box set has been very enjoyable, especially considering that this was one of my favorites even under the worst viewing circumstances.

Juliet of the Spirits (1965)

I really don't think I was paying any attention to this movie the first time I saw it. At the very least, the transfer in the Criterion box set brings out some beautiful colors worthy of the great imagery. One thing that couldn't get over is how funny it was that Fellini had his wife Giulieta Masina acting for a significant section of the film with his long-time mistress Sandra Milo. I appreciate the descent this film takes from being more realistic to touches of surrealism to complete fantasy.

The Group (1966)

A few years ago I became aware of a fascination that grew quite quickly of Sidney Lumet's filmography. He directed just over 50 movies on his lifetime, including at least one absolute classic film for every decade for six decades. Even the films that aren't remembered as classics and might be a little harder to track down are pretty great as well, and that is because he had a few elements to each of his films (although not always comprehensive) that was a formula for high quality. 

He always has at least one incredible camera movement in each film, he loves to take advantage of his sets or locations to make something grand, he was an actor's director allowing for actors own choices to make great performances, his films are almost always about justice or injustice and they are almost always male dominant despite not necessarily being chovanistic. Interestingly, this bucks the male dominant theme with an ensamble of women coming of age after college. The story is fine, but this lives up to the great camera moves, sets, acting and a story that sheds a little light on women's liberations well as a queer storyline. Overall, it's just really nice to find one more Lumet movie that I hadn't seen before and to be in that place to enjoy his filmmaking.

Oedipus Rex (1967)

Oddly, this was a movie we watched in high school English class, and I have been scratching my head over figuring what that teacher was dealing was. He was a middle aged guy with a thick Rhode Island accent whose job the year before was driving a bread truck. We all assumed he was kinda dumb and uncultured, but he showed us this and also got very into a Mad Magazine to reference satire. It was the hardest I've ever seen a grown man laugh. I think old Italian movies and Mad Magazine could be a good representation for myself as well. I have very specific memories of this from that English class viewing, the coloring, lights, a little nudity, and the strangeness of it. I tried to revisit this on YouTube recently and it was only available in black and white, which made me rethink the reliability of my memories. Thankfully the Criterion box set is in glorious color. This movie is great, it plays with all of the weirdness, bending of time with ancient Greece in ruins, Oedipal themes, and those wonderful flashes of the sun in the lens.

Snows of Grenoble (1968)

I wanted to mix in a few Olympic films from the Criterion box set into my watchlist of 100 movies from 100 years of my physical collection with the summer games around the corner. These documentaries are amazing in their range of documentary styles and how enjoyable nearly all of them are. This one is great, filming the winter games in Grenoble like an action movie There are sequences shot in first person or following someone running through a course that must have been dramatized, mixed with competition footage, that capture the excitement of the games even if the results are secondary. There is speed, danger, and glory to these games. We may get the names of two or three gold medalists, but it's the use of music and the art of athletics that are the real stars.

Medea (1969)

While watching through movies from my collection, this installment from the Pasolini box set is perhaps the blindest of first watches I have had and ultimately a very pleasant surprise. This story from Greek Mythology is shot so beautifully, getting the most of the colors that can be captured from the natural sun and times of day, this almost looks like any Terrance Malick movies that have been shot on film. The scale and long shots of ancient Greece is stunning, neither detail nor a sheer numbers of people on the screen are skimped all in the name of placing the viewer into the timeframe of the film. It didn’t take long to realize that this likely will be moving into my favorites of the ‘60’s. 

Final Thoughts

I had worried that I was handcuffing myself a bit with this batch of movies by going very Italian director heavy and not diversifying more of my go-to favorites of the decade, but this turned out to be very satisfying. Nothing felt like a retread, and it felt nice to make a dent into a few larger box sets from Criterion.

Running List on Letterboxd

What’s Next!

Catch-22, Diamonds are Forever, The King of Marvin Gardens, Visions of Eight, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, Monty Python and the Holy Grail, Network, One Sings The Other Doesn’t, The Last Waltz, Life of Brian.