For further background on the year in film, please refer to the Some Other Movies From 1960-1964 entry.
The following things happened during this time period:
- 17 African nations gained their independence from colonial powers.
- John F. Kennedy became the 35th President of the United States.
- Rachel Carson's series of articles in the New Yorker gave rise to the modern environmental movement.
- Marilyn Monroe was found dead of an apparent overdose.
- The Cuban Missile Crisis took place.
- American troops began replacing French troops in Vietnam.
- Martin Luther King Jr. delivered his "I Have a Dream" speech.
- President John F. Kennedy was assassinated.
- Beatlemania swept both Europe and North America.
Linked entries can be viewed in their entirety on YouTube.
Excellent
1. Fail-Safe (1964)
I knew I'd love this movie the minute I saw director Sidney Lumet's name after the bullfighting sequence. Peter Fonda stars as the President, with Walter Matthau as an unhinged advisor to the U.S. military. It'll remind you a lot of Dr. Strangelove, maybe also a little bit of WarGames, but this movie is very much its own creature, with a lot to say on the subject of mutually assured destruction.
Fun Fact 1: Both Larry "J.R." Hagman and Dom DeLuise are in this. Fail-Safe was DeLuise's second movie.
Fun Fact 2: Both this movie and Dr. Strangelove were based on the same novel, and came out the same year. Stanley Kubrick sued the studio over similarities between his movie and Fail-Safe, forcing the studio to release Dr. Strangelove months before Sidney Lumet's film, which had been completed around the same time. For what it's worth I think Dr. Strangelove is far more memorable, but Fail-Safe is almost as good.
2. The Hustler (1961)
Not to dismiss the efforts of director Robert Rossen, co-stars Piper Laurie or George C. Scott, but this movie would've only been half as good without Paul Newman. I say this, moreover as someone who never liked pool. The line Newman's character walks between skill and addiction makes for riveting viewing, and there isn't a scene in this movie you could cut out without compromising the whole.
Robert Rossen, by the way, was a member of the American Communist Party, and as a result he was blacklisted in the 50s. His career waxed and waned after that, and The Hustler was something of a last gasp for him. He made one more movie, Lilith, in 1964, and died two years after that.
Martin Scorsese's sequel, The Color of Money, which paired Newman and Tom Cruise, is also excellent.
Sean Connery (!) stars opposite the beautiful Gina Lollobrigida as a man scheming after his uncle's fortune. At the time Connery had both Dr. No and From Russia With Love under his belt, with smash hit Goldfinger appearing the same year as Woman of Straw. This suspenseful movie, full of memorable twists and turns, is an interesting look at Connery's more sinister side.
4. Lolita (1962)
The great Stanley Kubrick directed James Mason in this adaptation of Nabokov's famous novel. It's a story of obsession, yes, but the real highlight is the dark sense of humor that pervades the film. Kubrick's Lolita came under intense scrutiny from censors for obvious reasons, yet even though much of Humbert Humbert and Lolita's relationship is only hinted at it's still a riveting story.
Fun Fact 1: Actress Sue Lyon, who played Lolita, would essentially do so again two years later in Night of the Iguana.
Fun Fact 2: That nurse look familiar? That's Lois Maxwell, who'd appear as Ms. Moneypenny in Dr. No the same year.
Simply Adorable
Two guys take a rocket up to the moon and discover... nudity! This movie has been described as one of the earliest pornographic films ever made, but it's really more of an advertisement for the nudist lifestyle. Could someone masturbate over Nude on the Moon? Maybe, but it would require a lot of willpower.
Fun Fact: Take note of the theater the astronauts pass on their way to the rocketship. It's playing Hideout in the Sun, director Doris Wishman's first movie.
Some Good Ones
1. Jason and the Argonauts (1963)
Ray Harryhausen extravaganza retelling the Greek myth. It's not Shakespeare, but as an action picture it holds up. Does Hera look familiar? That's Honor Blackman, who'd play Pussy Galore in Goldfinger a year later.
2. The Children's Hour (1961)
Audrey Hepburn and Shirley MacLaine star as two schoolmistresses accused of indulging in the love that dare not speak its name. This movie is a little too much like a play for my taste, but it's well done and must have raised a lot of eyebrows at the time.
An airline executive investigates both an airline crash and his longstanding friendship with a deceased pilot. Star Glenn Ford, who also heads up Pocketful of Miracles below, is much better used in this movie. The conclusion, centered around the intricacies of chance or fate, is particularly well done.
An everyman gets mixed up with VOODOO. It feels a lot more 50s than 60s, but it's short and I can't fault it in terms of execution. Robert Alda, the star of this movie, was Alan Alda's father.
5. The Trial (1962)
Orson Welles directed this Kafkaesque film which is, unsurprisingly, based on the novel by Franz Kafka. Anthony Perkins, at that time not too far removed from his breakout performance in Psycho, stars as the stand-in for the famous author. Some critics have described this movie as "a masterpiece," and while I can't disagree I feel obligated to say that one would need to be in a certain kind of mood to sit through The Trial. It's certainly an achievement, but it's not exactly light viewing.
Biblical Exploitation
Spoiler Alert: No one in this movie gets sodomized. There's mention of a "sodomite patrol," but none of the attractive men and women in this Italian-led epic get patrolled on. Oh well, maybe they saved that for the sequel?
The passages from the Old Testament describing Lot, Sodom and Gomorrah can be found here. The movie sidesteps Lot's treatment of his own daughters, and also their treatment of him after the fall of the two cities.
Sodom and Gomorrah is pretty bad, but entertainingly so. Many of the actresses to be found within it are very beautiful, and attempts to shock the audience with torture chambers and hints of "perversion" adds to its charm. Most hilarious of all is Lot's "battle staff," which he uses to great effect whenever confronted with a sword wielding opponent.
A remake of this movie could be great. The script, of course, would need a lot of work, but an exploration of how the pagan, materialistic Sodomites interact with the monotheistic, agrarian Hebrews could be fascinating. Similar themes have been explored in movies like The Last Temptation of Christ and Brave New World, but there will always be room to (re)investigate this aspect of human culture.
Some Bad Ones
1. Charade (1963)
Adorable Audrey Hepburn and dashing Cary Grant are adorable and dashing together. The cutesy dialog made me slightly nauseous. I get why it was such a hit at the time (Hepburn and Grant's chemistry is off the charts), but yeah, I really wasn't feeling this one. Charade came out a year after the first Bond film, Dr. No, and during the same year as From Russia With Love. In my opinion those early Bond movies leave movies like Charade in the dust.
2. Pocketful of Miracles (1961)
Frank
Capra directed this improbable story of an alcoholic street hustler and
the gangster who helps her reconnect with an estranged daughter. This
is the last movie Frank Capra directed, and it was also Ann-Margret's
first screen appearance. Definitely NOT an amazing film, but it passes by innocuously enough.
Roger Corman production in which an old count is terrorized by a vengeful ghost. Sandra Knight is stunning, but not the greatest actress in the world. Her then husband Jack Nicholson, at the ripe old age of 25, stars as a French officer who stumbles upon the old count after a military engagement.
Fun Fact 1: Roger Corman didn't direct all of this movie. His young protege Francis Ford Coppola directed parts of it too.
Two things that will bother you about this movie: 1) Why does Marlon Brando relight his pipe during the inquiry if it's already smoking? and 2) What's up with that mustache? It's one way in the beginning of the movie, and another way after he arrives in the fictional Sarkhan.
And even if those two things don't bother you, you'll still wonder at the clumsiness of this flimsily veiled allegory on American intervention in Vietnam. It presents neither side of the conflict to anyone's satisfaction, and the characters in it are extremely hard to sympathize with.
It makes almost no sense but at least it's short. A random bank robber is freed from prison and made invisible... but wait! Radiation is involved, and the invisibility process is slowly killing him! The best I can say about The Amazing Transparent Man is that the invisible man's love interest is very sexy in her travel dress.
6. The Haunting (1963)
Too talky. Two men and two women investigate a haunted house. It starts off great, with weird shots of the house and bizarre subplots, but after the first twenty minutes I completely lost interest. It received a mixed reception during its theatrical run, but has since grown to be considered a classic by directors such as Scorsese and Spielberg. Better than whatever Hitchcock was doing at the time? Not in my opinion.
7. The Longest Day (1962)
Yawn. For a war movie there's not much war on offer here. The Allies prepare for D-day while the Nazis occupying France sit around and convince themselves that the Allies aren't ready to launch a large scale invasion of Europe. In other hands this movie would have been a taut 2.5 hours leading to an epic 30 minute conclusion, but as it is this movie gets bogged down in the details. Were the paratrooper dummies that big a deal? Were they worth spending that much screen time on?
Fun Fact 1: Dwight D. Eisenhower almost played a younger version of himself in this film.
Fun Fact 2: Richard Burton and Roddy McDowell, both filming Cleopatra while this movie was underway, phoned producer Richard Zanuck and offered to appear in The Longest Day for free. They even flew themselves to the filming location.
So Bad It's Not Bad
1. Color Me Blood Red (1964)
A painter happens upon a new technique. It's Herschell Gordon Lewis, so don't expect subtlety, but it's really short and the violence isn't so gratuitous that it puts you off the movie. It's been called "uninspired" by fans of the director, but in this context I have no idea what "inspired" is supposed to mean.*
Related Entries:
*Wikipedia says this movie came out in 1965, not 1964. With movies this obscure I'm never sure which online source to believe.
