SCFZ

1963 poll viewing No2:
AN EATER (Kazufumi Fujino)
https://letterboxd.com/film/an-eater/

A waitress at a busy restaurant dreams that she is trapped on an operating table while the food inside her body is being served to the guests.
—IMDb

https://youtu.be/f4-F1pWn_kE

1963 poll rewatch:
HOW A HOUSE WAS BUILT FOR A KITTEN (Roman Kachanov)
https://letterboxd.com/film/film:223251/

In a world where all people have completely disappeared, a little kitten is suffering from hallucinations and voices in his head.
—IMDb

https://youtu.be/MztIbN-67QM

1. Contempt — J. L. Godard

8½ — F. Fellini
Autumn Days — R. Gavaldón
Barren Lives — N. Pereira Dos Santos
The Birds — A. Hitchcock
The Executioner — L. García Berlanga
The Fire Within — L. Malle
Goryeojang — K. Ki-young
High and Low — A. Kurosawa
The House Is Black — F. Farrokhzad
In an Old Neighborhood — N. Guillén Landrián
Joseph Kilian — P. Jurácek, J. Schmidt
The Leopard — L. Visconti
The Paper Man — I. Rodríguez
Raven's End — B. Widerberg
Scorpio Rising — K. Anger
The Silence — I. Bergman
Valparaíso — J. Ivens
Winter Light — I. Bergman
Young Aphrodites — N. Koundouros

1963 poll viewing No3:
INSOMNIA (Pierre Étaix)
https://letterboxd.com/film/insomnia-1963/

A man tries to cure his insomnia by reading a book about vampires.

https://archive.org/details/insomnie_201609

1963 poll rewatch:
THE CRITIC (Ernest Pintoff)
https://letterboxd.com/film/the-critic/

This is cute. This is cute. This is nice... What the hell is it?
I don't know much about psychoanalysis but I think this is a dirty picture.

https://youtu.be/BpYSaGzWEJ0

oh I like that one, thanks for the reminder

Mahanagar (Satyajit Ray)
The Leopard (Luchino Visconti)
Le Petit Soldat (Jean-Luc Godard)
The Silence (Ingmar Bergman)
Bandini (Bimal Roy)
The Bakery Girl of Monceau (Éric Rohmer)

some things to see:

55 Days at Peking (Nick Ray), Narthanasala (Kamalakara Kameshwara Rao), Saat Pake Bandha (Ajoy Kar), Les Carabiniers (Jean-Luc Godard), The Cardinal (Otto Preminger), The Adulturess (Li-Han Hsiang, Ho-Meng Hua), Scorpio Rising (Kenneth Anger), The Love Eterne (Li-Han Hsiang), Mere Mehboob (Harnam Singh Rawail), I fidanzati (Ermanno Olmi), Donovan's Reef (John Ford), Acto da Primavera (Manoel de Oliveira), The Gun Hawk (Edward Ludwig), Sunday in New York (Peter Tewksbury), She and He (Susumu Hani)

1. Winter Light

2. L'immortelle (Robbe-Grillet)
3. Lord of the Flies (Brook)
4. The Silence (Bergman)
5. Charade (Donen)
6. The Ceremony (Harvey)
7. 8 1/2 (Fellini)
8. The Mind Benders (Dearden)
9. The Servant (Losey)
10. Ophélia (Chabrol)
11. The Birds (Hitchcock)
12. Le feu follet (Malle)
13. The Nutty Professor (Lewis)
14. Judex (Franju)
15. Joseph Kilián (Juráček/Schmidt)
16. Les carabiniers (Godard)
17. The Damned (Losey)
18. The Haunting (Wise)
19. The Pink Panther (Edwards)
20. Machorka-Muff (Straub/Huillet)

1963 poll rewatch:
SAINT JANE (Elo Havetta)
https://letterboxd.com/film/saint-jane/

https://youtu.be/kTIA8YvTaIs

Thanks for the links Jiri! I watched that first obayashi and the Russian one about the cat. I enjoyed both and the cat one might make my ballot! rischka check it out, it's essential cat-person viewing

8 1/2

The Great Escape
The Squeaker
From Russia with Love
Charade
The Birds
Youth of the Beast
The Leopard
The Indian Scarf

The Red Lanterns (Vasilis Georgiadis) looks interesting but...it was nominated for a best foreign film Oscar. That's usually a sure sign that I will find it indifferent...

The cat short was adorbs

Eburi manshi no yûga-na seikatsu / The Elegant Life of Mr. Everyman (1963, Kihachi Okamoto)
-
Le Mépris (1963, Jean-Luc Godard)
Tystnaden (1963, Ingmar Bergman)
Tengoku to jigoku / High and Low (1963, Akira Kurosawa)
8½ (1963, Federico Fellini)
The Servant (1963, Joseph Losey)
Le Petit soldat (1963, Jean-Luc Godard)
America, America (1963)
Onna no rekishi / A Woman's Life (1963, Mikio Naruse)
Yaju no seishun / Youth of the Beast (1963, Seijun Suzuki)
L'immortelle (1963, Alain Robbe-Grillet)
Judex (1963, Georges Franju)
Kanojo to kare / She and He (1963, Susumu Hani)
Zlaté kapradí / The Golden Fern (1963, Jirí Weiss)
Nattvardsgästerna / Winter Light (1963, Ingmar Bergman)
Au coeur de la vie / In the Midst of Life (1963, Robert Enrico)
This Sporting Life (1963, Lindsay Anderson)
Les Tontons Flingueurs / Crooks in Clover (1963, Georges Lautner)
Yukinojô henge / An Actor's Revenge (1963, Kon Ichikawa)
Mikres Afrodites (1963, Nikos Koundouros)

Kings of the Sun -J.Lee Thompson , USA

I haven't turned up any Italian peplums in the right format and language (suggestions?) -- but this Hollywood version scratches that itch real well. Mayan warriors instead of centurions, ok, whatever... It's BIG.

wow ofc i have to watch this now. tackled the big city last night, tonight will be for winter light. i may need some sunny spectacle after that

My final list
1. 8 1/2 (Federico Fellini) -My top hit
--------------
Other films:
2. The Servant (Joseph Losey)
3. The Silence (Ingmar Bergman)
4. The Leopard (Luchino Visconti)
5. Contempt (Jean-Luc Godard)
6. The Birds (Alfred Hitchcock)
7. The Fire Within (Louis Malle)
8. This Sporting Life (Lindsay Anderson)
9. Charade (Stanley Donen)
10. High and Low (Akira Kurosawa)
------------------
11. The Great Escape (John Sturges)
12. Lord of the Flies (Peter Brook)
13. Any Number Can Win (Henri Verneuil)
14. Billy Liar (John Schlesinger)
15. Hands Over the City (Francesco Rosi)
16. Winter Light (Ingmar Bergman)
17. Black Sabbath (Mario Bava)
18. Passenger (Andrzej Munk)
19. The Pink Panther (Blake Edwards)
20. From Russia with Love (Terence Young)

Watched the Judex remake. Didn't like it much. I saw and really enjoyed the orginal serial just the other month so I was kinda curious about what a feature film remake would look like. Totally anemic, the stripped down style didn't do much for me, somehow it felt even longer to sit through than the 5 hour serial. The actress who played the Musidora character was the only actor without a non-presence.

the bird heads were cool

Jean Rollin later pinched them for his Feuillade inspired The Nude Vampire. Stripped down pulp done right, if you ask me...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wn-mhR3Sdx8

For bird-heads, see also Franco's Dracula Vs Frankenstein (I think). From both Rollin and Franju, it makes sense to see them as an hommage to Max Ernst --
GF because Feuillade was a huge and often-acknowledged influence on the surrealists, and JR because I think I remember him referencing Ernst in some way in Lost In New York as well. (Sorry, K.)

rischka wrote: ↑Sat Dec 05, 2020 11:28 pm sunny spectacle

There's also a peplum-adjacent one by Chahine, Saladin And The Great Crusades, that I'm going to get to soon. i thought I had the ShawBraw Mu Lan on my longlist for this month, but if it's 1964 I'll have to change that.

Google tells me that the bird heads were likely inspired by the caricaturist J. J. Grandville. His work influenced the surrealists like Breton/Bataille/Ernst and even John Tenniel's illustrations for Alice in Wonderland.

i think i may have that saladin movie...

Ladybug, Ladybug - Frank Perry, USA

Absolutely perfect 1963 time-capsule, globs of greasy, grimy Bay Of Pigs paranoia flung directly onto the screen. From duck-n-cover to Bergman's dance-of-death to their own private bomb shelters. Total Greg movie, and available as well to anyone else who''s interested.

That does sound right up my alley. I'll have to look for it once I finish some Mubi movies I've been watching. (That damn add one/lose one movie everyday thing is a real treadmill if you're trying to see the choices before they go.)

El Camino (Ana Mariscal, Spain) was much more my speed than The Executioner -- thanks for the tip, Brian. It's on YT, but I don't know if there are subs available anywhere. I spotted 8 or 9 other Spanish movies for the year, and I may get to one or two of them, they don't look like high priorities.

had to take a second to remember what '63 movie i started last night, then realized it's bergman's winter light. not an ingberg fan, but i keep comin back for more (seen 20 ffs idkw). have no idea when i'll finish it cuz 20-30min of a movie every 2-3 days is about all i'm capable of rn, but if it grips me tonight, who knows? might plow through it. we'll see...

I watched Hud (Martin Ritt) and it is already going to be a tough one to beat for the #1 spot on my final ballot.

What a masterpiece and an extraordinary film it is! James Wong Howe's cinematography is not just breathtakingly beautiful, but also very innovative and often going places where you wouldn't normally expect from the setting and premise of the film. Some great tracking shots! Loved the music by Elmer Bernstein.

I always admire Paul Newman, but the real stars here are Melvyn Douglas, Patricia Neal and Brandon deWilde.

Not sure if I'm on the right track here, but at times it felt like I was watching a predecessor to No Country for Old Men, especially when Douglas' character was on screen.

thoxans wrote: ↑Wed Dec 09, 2020 1:38 am had to take a second to remember what '63 movie i started last night, then realized it's bergman's winter light. not an ingberg fan, but i keep comin back for more (seen 20 ffs idkw). have no idea when i'll finish it cuz 20-30min of a movie every 2-3 days is about all i'm capable of rn, but if it grips me tonight, who knows? might plow through it. we'll see...

I rewatched it last night. It's quite a short and succinct piece, kinda breezed through it. Might be the third or fourth time I watch it and I'm always sad there's not an additional 20 minutes or so. My dad, who hates Bergman, acknowledges at least that Winter Light is a masterpiece.